PC Overheating

[enon8727]

So I think I've finally figured out the cause for my PC always freezing....has to be overheating. Although, I didn't think the temps were all that high, but that's where you guys come in.

Check my sig (BigBlack link) for my hardware (only difference is I'm running one hard drive now, not two). After about twenty minutes of the PC running, not under much load at all, the CPU stays at a steady 39-42C, hard drive is around 29C, and ambient is around 31C. First off, do these seem like crazy high temps?

Wow, perfect example. I just turned it on ten minutes ago, brought up iTunes and it's frozen already....CPU is only at 37C but the HD light is solid. The reason for thinking it's overheating though and not something else causing the freezing is because I've taken my PC into work and ran it hardcore for 8 hours and it didn't hang or freeze once. Even ran stress tests and iTunes at the same time...all kinds of stuff.

I'm not sure what to do. I've been researching more heavy duty fans and like the idea, but I don't want to spend $40 in fans and have them not solve the problem. Yet I also don't know about water cooling...it just seems like a lot of work, and frankly, a little unnecessary for me. I mean I don't even game...at all. Just heavy music listening and multitasking (two or three browsers with 10 tabs each, iTunes blaring, Dreamweaver and Photoshop chugging away, and watching a movie, etc.).

Please help me out with any suggestions at all.

Thanks!

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: enon8727
After about twenty minutes of the PC running, not under much load at all, the CPU stays at a steady 39-42C, hard drive is around 29C, and ambient is around 31C. First off, do these seem like crazy high temps?

Those are... perfectly normal temperatures.

I've had on my test bench an overclocked Core i7 965 running Prime95 at around 90ºC. :shocked: No instability that I could detect.

If your PC runs fine at one place and not at another place and the ambient temperatures are similar, then your problem is not heat. It could be a crazy interaction with one of your peripherals. I had an ECS NFORCE4-A939 board that would randomly lock when using certain USB devices. It could also be the power source, as in your wall outlet either being wired improperly or the quality of the output being really subpar.

 

[roid450]

Dont worry about those temps, its gotta be a piece of hardware possibly failing or bad drivers. Maybe dying hard drive.

 

[enon8727]

Zap - Damn, that's twice what mine's ever gotten to be. Next thing I'm going to try is using a plain jane Dell USB keyboard and mouse with one monitor and no peripherals. That sounds like it could be the culprit more so than the power source because I have a UPS/AVR between the wall outlet and the PC.

roid450 - I really don't think it's hardware, as I've had this problem for over a year now and I've replaced all the hardware in it. The HD is recently RMA'd too.

Thanks for the comments guys, I'll keep you posted.

 

[zagood]

Since it didn't freeze up at work, figure out everything that may have been different between your work and home setup. In particular, try skipping the UPS and going directly into the wall.

-z

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: enon8727
Zap - Damn, that's twice what mine's ever gotten to be.

Yeah, it was pretty toasty. It was overclocked to 4GHz and had Prime95 running 8 threads of large FFTs.

 

[enon8727]

Well I went home and first just unplugged my keyboard and plugged in the same one i used at work (just trying to remove one thing at a time). Then it froze. So I rebooted and then it couldn't find a boot device. Great. So that's where I am right now....fucked. I've had to reload this thing at least 8 times in the last two years, including replacing all the hardware. Guess I'm about to do it one more time....

 

[faxon]

actually dude it sounds like your hard drive might be on the way out. i would check your connections first, and test your power supply with a multimeter, because a bad PSU can kill hard drives, but not finding a boot device when it did before is a clear sign the drive is dying. it would explain the solid HDD light and the random lockups as well.

 

[enon8727]

Gooosh, I'm so stumped.

I was thinking that about the HD too....

But I took the PC back to work and turned it on, couldn't find boot device, so I switched to a different SATA port on the mobo and it booted up. Ran it for two freakin days, itunes jamming melodies the whole time (I figured that was a good long term HD test since I have 14 GB of music and it was on shuffle), and ran 4 or 5 stress tests at 100% duty cycle on all hardware. Bring it home, within a half hour it freezes. FML

So I tried skipping the UPS (with AVR) and going straight to the wall - freezes in 15 minutes. Different outlet - freezes in 15 minutes. Different room and different monitor, keyboard, mouse, and power cable - freezes in 15 minutes. WTF!

 

[skillyho]

Okay....I know this is seems like a hardware issue.....but have you ran any spyware/virus checks? The simplest things sometimes are the problem. Try running "Dr. Web Cure It" and just see if it finds anything. (I know...I know....)

Also, do you use the updated drivers from the vendor website or the ones on the disk? ....specifically the VGA drivers? Lastly, try swapping PSU's (even if this means using onboard video with a cheap one borrowed from a friend). That Corsair is a nice unit, but it wouldn't hurt to rule it out.

Run Seagate's "SeaTools" on the drive (long test) to make certain it's not anything funky with that, too.

Good luck!

 

[PUN]

the title should be "my PC is UNDERheating"

 

[enon8727]

Well I'm back at work and booted up and it froze....then I looked inside and saw that one of the memory sticks wasn't pushed in all the way (blush face). So I pushed it in, booted up and it's been good to go for a little over an hour. I REALLY hope that's all it was. When I get home will be the real test though...

PUN: Haha, yea I guess so. Makes me feel good that those temps are relatively cool.

skillyho: Yea, I've run spyware/virus scans on it before and hadn't found anything, but now that's it's been up for some time (this past hour), I've run AVG and Malwarebytes. AVG found nothing but Malwarebytes found 6 cases of Backdoor.Bifrose. So I removed those, but I'm thinking the memory had more to do with it.

But like I said, tonight at home will be the bigger test...

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Originally posted by: enon8727
Well I'm back at work and booted up and it froze....then I looked inside and saw that one of the memory sticks wasn't pushed in all the way (blush face). So I pushed it in, booted up and it's been good to go for a little over an hour. I REALLY hope that's all it was. When I get home will be the real test though...

PUN: Haha, yea I guess so. Makes me feel good that those temps are relatively cool.

skillyho: Yea, I've run spyware/virus scans on it before and hadn't found anything, but now that's it's been up for some time (this past hour), I've run AVG and Malwarebytes. AVG found nothing but Malwarebytes found 6 cases of Backdoor.Bifrose. So I removed those, but I'm thinking the memory had more to do with it.

But like I said, tonight at home will be the bigger test...

Come back and make a brief post after you run your home-test.

I think you may have found the problem, though . . .

 

[enon8727]

Welllll about an hour and a half went by and....freeeeze. So I'm trying to remove one stick of RAM at a time to see if maybe that's the issue. I pulled one stick and have been running solid for almost two hours. I'll keep you posted.

 

[enon8727]

Soooo, it ran perfectly for like a week then froze. So basically I've been pulling sticks of RAM one at a time in all kinds of different combinations and noting which works and which doesn't...hoping to narrow it down to one stick or one slot. So far...it's confusing....but I'm getting somewhere, I think...