CPU overheating issue

[EagerYoungSpaceCadet]

Alright, I was playing TF2 yesterday when all of the sudden, the entire PC shut down.
I went ahead and turned the computer on again to check if everything is alright and what could have caused the issue. It booted just fine, without any errors or warnings (except for that one which MS gives you about unexpected shutdowns and safe mode).

I fired up SpeedFan and was shocked. The CPU temperature was 108 degrees Celsius (226.4 degrees Fahrenheit). And yesterday, nothing like this happened.

How the living fuck did that happen? And how did the CPU survive that?
And finally, how do I prevent this overheating from melting my CPU?

[Amit]

Have you configured SpeedFan to control your fans? If not, you should and set them at highest RPM while gaming.

We need info. What is your CPU, CPU cooler, motherboard, case, and how many case fans you run. Is airflow good in your case?

[Rainbow Dash]

Clean dust out of your case, off fans, etc. Check that all your fans are working. In the meantime, if you're using Vista/7 create a windows power plan, and set your cpu's max cycles to 50% to lower the temperature and decrease the risk of damaging your system.

[Donut]

ok first off, download another program like coretemp or speccy and find out if those readings are accurate. between my mobo and cpu (asus p67 sabertooth and intel i5-2500k), speedfan incorrectly reports my cpu temp as being 128C. the computer itself doesnt shut itself down, but those are the readings. i found out with speccy that the 128C is actually a mobo heat sensor itself just giving me a false reading and has nothing to do with the cpu at all.

if youre sure its actually getting that hot, check your heat sink. i had one corner of the heat sink pop off one time, and the cpu instantly shot up to way over the temp limit and the computer immediately shut itself off.

other than that, keep an eye on the temperatures for a while. keep speccy or coretemp or something open in the background (preferably speccy, because it generates a graph of temperature vs time, similarly to task manager's ram usage and whatnot) and see whats causing temps to get that high.

[JackalStomper]

I don't trust speedfan. It's given me inaccurate readings before and runs like shit.

I personally use Hardware Monitor:
http://i.imgur.com/2l36N.jpg
CPU is a little warm, the stock cooler takes awhile to get heat levels down after a long gaming session.


As for the heating problem, it can be any number of reasons.

The stock fan speed curve is inadequate for the heat loads.
A wire could have gotten stuck and locked up the fan.
The fan could have DIED.
Your heatsink is losing pressure.
You have very, very, very, VERY bad case airflow.

Is this system a recent upgrade or something you've been using for years without issues?
What's the specs?


If the reading IS accurate, then I would hate to see what the core temps were. Assuming the 108C reading is from the board probe.

[Amit]

If you've been using the PC for a while, then do what Sel said and clean the dust off the fans. This will work wonders for getting cooler temps, lower fan RPMs (less noise), and better performance.

[EagerYoungSpaceCadet]

I did what Selentic said.

There was a load of dust and shit in the case (I also found a ballpoint pen, what the hell). I quickly found the issue: between the fan and the metallic grating-thing to which the heatpipes or whatevers are connected to (someone please explain wtf are those, my CPU cooling is this one (http://www.scythe-eu.com/en/products/cpu-cooler/katana-3-cpu-cooler.html)), was a massive amount of dust. Cleaned it all and turned the PC on again.

So far, it seems to have worked. It's even 15 degrees cooler than before!

[Rainbow Dash]

Only 15 degrees?

Mine doesn't even get that hot when it's under a heavy load.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3332789/misc/temps.png

What are your parts, there's no way 90~ c temps are healthy for your computer.

[Nero]

Why hasn't anyone suggested to him to change the Thermal paste? That is the main cause of over heating CPU's. That or the CPU fan heatsink has now died/isn't working normal.

Get that thermal paste changed, and you are looking at over a 20 ~ c change in temp or more. Hell, my brother had his CPU giving him 110 readings and after changing the thermal paste and cleaning the dust from inside the case... It went to 50 c. That's a 60 c change!

Be careful when you do this. Look up a good tutorial on youtube and go from there.

Hope this helps. :)

[EagerYoungSpaceCadet]

Dammit, I meant before it overheated. It now averages 35-40 degrees at idle and 50 load. And yes, I'm using thermal paste Nero.

EDIT: Also, Sel:
Temp03: -128°C?

[Rainbow Dash]

Dammit, I meant before it overheated. It now averages 35-40 degrees at idle and 50 load. And yes, I'm using thermal paste Nero.

EDIT: Also, Sel:
Temp03: -128°C?

Oh ok, yeah that's much better hahah, and idk, that's just some silly bug, or dummy sensor or something.