Overheating,a request for help.

[Col.Tarleton]

Can any of you Boffins out there help me with my overheating heap of junk?
The comp is 1 year old.the spec is:- 2.8 gig pent4,1 gig RAM.I bought it from a small firm in Yorkshire but now cannot contact him.
It has 1 PSU fan,2 case fans and a CPU fan.All are working.
I've installed a prog to monitor the Temps and CPU fan speed.
These are,as I type,32 C,28 C and 5400 rpm.
I have removed the side cases and force air in by an household fan.If the fan is removed the temps go up by 7-8 C.If I flash up Civ3 They go up even more eventually when well into the game and the CPU is working it's fingers to the bone it crashes the game.I think the CPU sheds some of the load.
The House fan stops this problem so temp is causing the fault.
This problem has been observed from new but is only really chronic when playing IP.
Does anyone know what the normal operating temp of the CPU should be and is this purely a design problem or do I have a component failure?

[anarres]

CPU's should operate fine even in the 70's. Mine runs with a super-big special heatsink and NO fan. It usually sits in the low 60's and occasionally hits 72/73 when pushed. I've never had it fail from overheating, and mine runs at the hot end of 'normal'.

If your CPU overheats it (usually) turns itself (and therefore the PC) off. Since you are not showing these symptoms it seems possible that you are not suffering from a hot CPU. Weirdly none of the temps you mention can be from CPU at all! They are all FAR too low, and must be on the chassis or m/b itself.

What could be happening (and may be more likely, depending on the exact in-game symptoms) is the graphics card overheating. If that gets too hot you get really bad symptoms, including the graphics fucking up and programs crashing.

Can you tell me exactly what happens when it crashes (i.e. what can you see, what does the computer actually do?), and also what make/model is your graphics card, does it have a heatsink/fan?

[anarres]

I just thought - the 32c could be a CPU temp, and if the max is 7-8 more than that (40c) then that is a VERY cool CPU, and no way can it be overheating.

Another possible cuplprit (apart from the graphics card) is the m/b itself, although m/b failures from heat are very rare.

[Plux]

I'm not really into all the hardware stuff anymore, but I do remember that about a year ago, many mb manufacturers put heatsinks on their chipsets, because the new types were getting hot as hell as well. Try to feel the temperature of the north or south bridge with your fingers. If you burn them, that could be the problem , and you might wanna put a heat sink on it. Another option could be malfunctioning/overheated memory chips. Maybe if you have multiple mem sticks, you should try to remove one of them to see if that is causing the problem. And I agree with anarres, if it would be the graphics card, you would probably have some fucked up graphics, but I don't think that it could cause system crashes.

What kind of temp sensors are on your CPU and MB? maybe they are to far away from the CPU-core and mb componenets which of course results in a lower temperature than it has in reality.

PS: It's not normal for a CPU to still work well with a temp of 60-65+, but if you're lucky and have one of a good batch, it might live it out. Below 60 should be fine for each CPU, although the lesser the temp, the longer your CPU will prolly live.

[digger760]

I remember reading at some stage that the AMD processors do not have an internal thermometer. I would think that Intel processors dont have then either as the take up space. I suspect the temperature device is actually located in the motherboard socket and the true CPU temperature could be 10 degree hotter than what it is reporting or the temperature you are seeing is the motherboard temperature.

You can also go into the bios settings (at least on my PC you can) and you can observe the temperture of the CPU and motherboard there. Mine is an AMD chip and it starts up int he high 40's. After playing games for a while if i restart the PC and look and the bios on startup the temperature can be in the 70's.

I have a big heat sink on mine and a low speed fan.

But as anarres said it could be the Graphics processor causing problems.

I can also refer you to the forums at http://www.silentpcreview.com/ they are keen into silent PC which usually means removing fans and causing heat problems, so there lots of discussion there about heat problems.

Good Luck

Digger760

[Pastorius]

Hey, that's what happened to mine - well, the video card fan had fallen off, but it was overheating

The service guy said normal everyday usage should be up to 55 C, and my temp of 70 C on normal usage was way off - so installing a videocard where the fan actually kept to its intended place helped a lot. Now - playing civ seldom gets me over 56 degrees - and I have only 2 fans - one on the vid card and one cpu fan. (Comp is 2 years old, and only 1.77 Ghz)

Check eventvwr.msc and look at system errors - you should have a lot of them I think, and I also expect that the support pages of microsoft says that the most likely reason is faulty hardware components.

[Col.Tarleton]

Thanks for the interest,chaps.
@Anarres,the graphics card is an NVIDIA GeFORCE FX3200,128 mb.It has no fan as far as I can see.I don't get any probs with the graphics at all.
Reading Digger's comments about the Bios,I entered (1st time I've tried this)and got these readings.
PC health status.
On start up with the house fan on:-
CPU TEMP-36C
System Temp - 30C.
Fan-2536 rpm.
Fan off, after 10 mins:-
CPU-42c
System-36c
fan-2812 rpm.
With the case sides back on:-
CPU-44c
System-39c
fan-3068rpm.
It can be seen that the fan speeds up as the temp increases.Lordy,Lordy.
In the PC health staus menu there is a shut down temp facility,default set to disabled.The settings for this are,70c,65c,60c.
So,acording to these settings the CPU is nowhere near any shutdown setting.Perhaps when the game is being played it increases more than somewhat.Keeping the house fan on definately stops all my problems.Perhaps I've got a dodgy Pentium 4 CPU.
I was rather hoping that some-one would say"I know what the problem is,the discombooberater is transmogrified,all you need to do is reset the miximitosis setting."
It's all rather mysterious.
Thanks,anyway,and if anyone gets any further ideas from what I've posted,please comment.

[Col.Tarleton]

I forgot to reply to Anarres question about the comp crash symptoms.
From brand new it would occasionally throw me out of the game back to desk top.Not knowing any better I put that down to PTW bugs.
Later,when playing IP on the net,in wintertime,roomtemp quite low,It threw me out back to desk top when quite well into the game(late middle ages to industrial age.
When playing IP,recently,room temp perhaps 30c.It shut down the comp completely bringing up what I was told the screen of death,lol.This is a blue screen with white writing,didn't bother to read it,and complete shutdown.
I took the sides off and the comp only threw me out to desktop,adding in the house fan stopped all the problems.
I don't know if this helps any,Anarres.

[anarres]

Well, I guess it is definitely heat related. Since the symptoms are not graphics-related at all I guess the CPU is most likely at fault, but the motherboard is a serious contender too.

The AMD CPU temp monitor is actually on the m/b itself, under the CPU. The CPU pushes directly on the monitor which should give quite a good reading, although sometimes it isn't making direct contact, meaning your measured CPU temp is far too low.

The heatsink on the CPU usually has a layer of thermal paste between it and the CPU To provide a good conductive property. If this is missing (as in most home-built systems, and occasionally in shop-built ones) you can get overheating since heat is not taken from the CPU quick enough. Unless you are happy with taking the heatsink off and on this is not something you will be able to check. Do you have any techie friends that could do it for you? A good thermal paste is "artic silver", although applying it is not a job for someone who is not used to the inside of PC's.

At the least you should be able to look and see if your fan is properly seated on the heatsink. Sometimes they are not fixed properly and this again can cause problems.

I guess the answer is that you need to get it checked out by a techie friend, or a PC shop. Unfortunatley a PC shop will likely charge you £30+ for doing it.

[digger760]

I would have to agree with anarres. If it were a software problem we could tell you to "discombooberate the miximitosis setting." But since it is a hardware problem...it is best fixed in the flesh.