New
#11
Hi Arc,
Got it cleaned up and new thermal paste in there. The old stuff looked a right mess, and since then temps are noticably lower on the CPU.
Cleaned all contacts, blew out all coolers and fan grilles.
But, still there have been a couple of crashes since :/ and at low temps too, under 50C I think.
Anyway, lower temps are an improvement nonetheless...
I did notice some scratches on the motherboard just today, near the edge near the PCIe slot, and where the graphics card backplate would slot behind the motherboard, near the case. This was after I took the graphics card out to clean, and I'm pretty sure I haven't made those myself as they're in a location where I have hardly ever accessed. Odd.
Anyway, most were light surface scratches, but one seemed to have scratched through the surface and exposed one of the copper circuits in the board itself. Hmmm. This is obviously not good, but would this in itself be enough to cause all these kinds of issues?
Currently I am in the process of finding a second hand deal on a replacement graphics card anyway, as I still suspect my ATI/AMD card due to my friend's history with his own, and it should be an upgrade at the same time.
I'll do some more Prime95 testing and see what happens. I will try and collect any minidumps etc from Win8 that I can find too.