Computer randomly shutting off all the time :S

[Hotrod]

So, as the title says, my computer's been acting really strangely lately by randomly turning off. At first, it would only turn off after playing really intensive games (Supreme Commander, Dawn of War 2, StarCraft 2, but only at the main menu :S) for a few hours due to overheating from collecting too much dust, and I would fix this after dusting it out, so then it'd work for a nice long time until having collected dust again. Lately however, my computer would shut itself off after less and less time, starting at about half an hour, and today reaching down to only after 15 minutes of game time. It's even started to just randomly shut off after idling at the desktop.

I won't get the chance to dust my computer out for another week or so when I go home (in residence at university at the moment), but I have a feeling there's something more to it this time around, since I don't see why it should act up so quickly.

Any thoughts?

[Amit]

Either it's literally clogged to hell in your case or you have a virus. Maybe both. Pop the side panel and assess the dust build up. Usually it's the CPU fan that gets clogged with dust and ends up shutting your PC down to protect the CPU from high temps.

[Pooky]

Definitely check and make sure all your fans are working. I had the power supply fan on my computer die once, which caused it to randomly shut off a couple of times.

[Hotrod]

Well I just checked all my fans, and they're working fine. I physically took a fair amount of dust off of the CPU's fan with a paintbrush (hey, it's the only tool I had, and it worked well enough), and am about to try a game of Supreme Commander 2 with my roommate to see if my computer can last through a game without fucking up.

[Hotrod]

Sorry for the double post, but I thought I'd post my results. The fans aren't going all berserk llike they normally do when my computer overheats, but it still shuts itself off. I was about to host a multiplayer game, and the computer just said "fuck this" in the lobby before I got to start the game... Virus scans show up clean as well, so that's not it either...

[hobojoe]

What anti-virus do you have?

[Hotrod]

AVG Free, never had any problems with it.

[Dwood]

MB your fans are dying regardless. Get a CPU/GPU temperature control app and use that to check temps.

[Hotrod]

MB your fans are dying regardless. Get a CPU/GPU temperature control app and use that to check temps.
Any suggestions of ones that I could use? I've found a few through googling, but I don't have much knowledge in this specific kind of stuff.

[=sw=warlord]

This is generally considered a decent application. (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php)

[Amit]

Speedfan is what I usually use, but Everest does the trick as well. I'm not sure if the free home edition allows you to monitor temperatures that are read by all sensors in the computer, though.

[Rook]

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

[EagerYoungSpaceCadet]

I have the same problem, and it turns out my CPU is overheating because the PSU fan doesn't work for some reason. Giving the fan a little push seems to start it, but I don't know how long will I have to do this...

[Cortexian]

I have the same problem, and it turns out my CPU is overheating because the PSU fan doesn't work for some reason. Giving the fan a little push seems to start it, but I don't know how long will I have to do this...
I highly recommend getting a new PSU... I had a PSU fan fail and one of the components heated up to the point it melted its own solder connections and fell out of the PSU which obviously caused the entire system to shutoff.

[Amit]

The PSU is one of those things you don't delay replacing. The potential for messing up the rest of your PC is there.

[Hotrod]

Alright, so after some testing, I still can't figure out what the problem is. The fans still seem to be working well on the video card and CPU, and there wasn't any overheating of those during my games that I've tested. Any thoughts? I'm thinking it's most likely the PSU at this point.