System unreliable, shuts down (solved)

[baeksu]

[edit:] Problems solved, my solutions in the last post.

I recently bought a new desktop. Because my delivery got screwed, I wasn't able to receive the PC case yet. So I am temporarily using an old case. Inside I have a E4400 Core2Duo, MSI mainboard, 450W power supply, and a Samsung 160GB sata-II drive.

The case doesn't have fans, so only power and stock cpu cooler have running fans. Also, I didn't close the case yet.

Often, the PC shuts itself down without warning. This happens especially in X when I'm doing 3D stuff (compiz).

In addition, I have lots of problems with emerges: failed digests, missing files during installation, segmentation faults. My make.conf is very conservative, and I've just started upgrading the packages that came with the installation CD, so I'm very worried it's an hardware issue.

I've tried running memtest, but the PC shut itself down after a few minutes.

If I stay in BIOS screen, the H/W monitor reports that the system temperature is around 30 degrees Celsius, and the CPU settles at around 70 degrees Celsius while idling.

I'm a laptop guy and this is my first desktop, so I could really appreciate help to solve these problems.
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2. A never ending quest to make unix friendly to people who don't want unix and excruciating for those that do.

[Sadako]

70 degrees sounds way too hot for the cpu at idle (unless it was a pentium D ), and while it's quite possible the temp sensor just isn't calibrated right the fact that your system is simply switching itself off suggests otherwise.

Did you install the cpu yourself, and if so did you use thermal grease (or some equivalent) rated for your hardware?
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[baeksu]

I did install the cpu myself (I bought all the components online). The package for the cpu doesn't come with thermal paste, I think it's on the cooler already.

Like I said, I'm using the stock cooler. I figured that I hadn't attached it properly, so I removed and re-attached it, this time making sure it doesn't wiggle if you move it by hand.

Now the cpu is idling at 50 degrees Celsius stable. That's the target setting for the cpu fan, so I guess that problem is now solved. 50 degrees is ok, right?

I still get seg faults emerging gcc, though. But now that (hopefully) the machine won't shut itself down, I can run the memtest through.

[edit:] Solved the segmentation faults too. Luckily it wasn't a hardware problem. I was using a chroot environment inside an Ubuntu installation. After I booted off the Gentoo 2007.1 CD, I didn't have problems in chroot anymore. Must be something funky in the Ubuntu environment that caused GCC to crash during compilations.
_________________
Gnome:
1. A legendary being.
2. A never ending quest to make unix friendly to people who don't want unix and excruciating for those that do.