High Temps

HI

The last 2 days my pc has been shutting down after a couple hours of use. I just wondered what would be considered high temps. My vid card (ati x800 xt pe) is reaching 85c and the cpu according to the bios after it has shut down is reaching 68c. I can hear the fans working. Its not particulary hot where it is and never had a prob b4.

Any ideas would be great. TIA

 

68 degrees C is hot for a CPU. I would suggest you clean out your heatsink (by running it under running water - obviously take it away from your motherboard and fan first. try not to get water on the bottom either, and make sure it s dry before you re-insert it). But it seems that your computer is pretty new so I don't think this would be a problem.

Although it does depend on what CPU you have. If you have a high speed pentium 4 then high temps are to be expected. Also if you are overclocking you probably want to set your computer back to the normal clock speeds.

 

Thx. Pc is about year old. its clean inside but will give that a go. the processor is an amd athlon 64 3200+ not overclocked. In your opinion is it worth putting in a case fan. But i never had a heating prob b4 this tho.

 

Thats pretty hot. My AMD64 3500 is around 38c. Whats your case fan situation?
Use some arctic silver on the heatsink, works wonders for some. Also check the CPU fans RPM.

 

YES, if you do not have a case fan, put one in to clear out the hot air inside the case and draw in cooler air. Both of those temps are too hot and the CPU would be hotter than what is showing once you take the time to get back into the bios. If you do not have a case fan, you will create an overheating situation????

But your main problem is the CPU heat (will heat up the case and make other components run hotter). Your thermal paste may have separated/migrated. Take the Heat sink off and clean its surface and the CPU surface with Arctic Silver thermal cleaner and the conditioner. Then put a pea size blob of either Arctic Silver 5, Ceramic or Arctic Cooling MX-1 http://www.arctic-cooling.com/further_prod1.php on. Then see if the temp goes down.

 

68 is pretty toasty. Laptops run a lot hotter, and many of them won't reach those temperatures.

 

Pea-size? Are you sure?

Check Arctic Silver's instructions here. You'll find that AS calls for a very small amount -- about the size of a half-grain of rice. The layer of thermal paste between the surface of the CPU and the surface of the heatsink needs to be as thin as possible while still making sure that there is no air in that space.

A blob the size of a pea is going to ooze out of the joint and get into places it shouldn't.

 

Yeah, you are right about that! Should have edited my comments closer. You can use a small piece of tempered glass to test your application method if you are new to heat sink installation. If the blob is not uniform and centered, it may not cover all of the center core area of the heat spreader (ie will spread in the direction it is heaviest). If you are new to heat sink installation, that is an easy method for trial and error and also checks the smoothness of the heat sink surface.

 

Hmmm. I hadn't run across the tip about the tempered glass. It sounds like it could work pretty well.

 

Thx guys.

gave the pc a good clean out there was a nice blanket of heat insulating dust on the vid card. Plus I cleaned out the heatsink. np since plus the case is nice and cool again thx for the advice.