Asus COP and pure evil

[Mercutio]

Asus has an overheating protection feature on their motherboards called COP. COP shuts down the system if it even THINKS the CPU is about to overheat.

COP can't be disabled in the BIOS or by jumpers, and is a hardware-only feature with no software controls.

I have an Asus A7V400 that seems to invoke COP even under thermal circumstances I'd consider excellent.

e.g.

Closed midtower case, 80mm fans blowing air in at the front and out at the back, 80mm Speeze "Bigrock" on a Barton XP2500, CPU temp of 45 C.

or

Open midtower case, 30" box fan blowing air on the processor (same fan etc), CPU temp of around 40C.

Under either condition, the system will shut down in under 1/2 hour of operation in the manner identical to descriptions of the COP shutdown process (screen goes black, system power goes off ungracefully).

I've had this board a while (four months or so), and it's been RMA'd. New one does the same thing. I've experiemented with numbers of fans and different types of airflow and about five different cases. I've tried 2500s and 1800s and even a Duron 700. BIOS flashes don't seem to make it better.

I am stumped.
Do all new Asus boards do this crap?

 

[ddrueding]

Mine doesn't, I've had the CPU in the mid-60s for extended periods without issue. What is the northbridge temp? Might it's heatsink be incorrectly installed?

 

[Mercutio]

I'm fully capable of installing a HSF the vast majority of the time, so I'm guessing I didn't do it the wrong way 8 or nine times in a row with different CPUs on the same motherboard.

I don't recall NB temps off the back of my hand but IIRC they didn't strike me as unsual at the time. The board in question has Asus' more than adequate 1" tall fanless northbridge cooler on it, which I have observed to keep the nforce2 bridge chip at reasonable temps.

 

[P5-133XL]

I'd start wondering if they don't have a thermistor somewhere else, other than the CPU, measuring temps like the chipset. Also, installing a MB monitor program might help in identifying if ASUS really thinks something is really too hot. Then there is the BIOS setup where you can monitor voltages, fans, and temps as an information source ...

 

[Mercutio]

Not having an electronics background, how would I recognize that part?

I did use both the BIOS and monitoring software (couple different programs, even) to check temps. At first I simply thought the PC I first used was either actually overheating or that the PSU had issues. Neither of those seemed to be the case. It was only after 20 minutes or so of googling that I found out about COP. I set that idea out of my mind for a long time while I looked for more rational issues with that board, but came back to it after other troubleshooting didn't lead me anywhere.

One of the first things I tried after I found out about COP was to move the uATX board from a uATX case to a full ATX mid tower with nice side and rear fans.

David you said you aren't having problems with COP. Do you have the same board?