Pc Overheating Even When Low Cpu Usage.

At the outset I'll just say I suspect the thermal paste getting old/overused or a drivers issue. Specifically the drivers issue mostly, but at least partially the thermal paste.

Bottom line, around 5 days ago I started to notice the fans of the computer were running a whole lot (as is sometimes the case unless I update drivers and make sure no bloatware etc. is running in background accidentally). I tried to kill off processes running in "background" that were keeping the processor running at 5-20% or so even not doing much, closed all my dozens of tabs open in chrome, and shut off all high end games. In so doing I turned off the "runtime" realtime protection for the antivirus in windows antivirus (windows defender I believe). And I got a CPU heat measuring tool to observe the CPU heat (it was maxing at 100 deg C which somehow it didn't seem to go over, I guess it just throttles itself to not allow it to go over that, as performance starts to dip hard). This turning off antivirus realtime protection may have allowed some potentially unwanted programs/viruses to get in as I will later detail MBAM picked a few up and quarentined them. But it was eating 2-4% cpu on the regular so I wanted to see if I could get that CPU usage down.

I started updating my drivers, only a few showed up in EasyDriver as needing updating and I did a few of them, some of them I always leave un-updated as they are not very relevant to anything and I know what they do fairly well. In any event, after I used Quickdriver to update one of the drivers it seems like that was when it started getting to 100 deg. C even with practially 2-5% CPU usage and it just idling with no chrome or anything much at all running.

I tried to do a restore, but it is locked behind paywall in the Quickdriver software (and I don't want to pay just yet). I didn't do a normal restore point like an idiot. I have all my drivers backed up in "Double Driver" but when I tried to restore them all back to a year ago's versions more than half of them just gave an error and wouldn't restore in Double Driver (maybe 1/4 of them did). Bizarrely even after the supposed roll back, Driver Easy still says all drivers are up to date, not sure how that is working just yet as I haven't checked.

I cleaned out all the dust and made sure all fans are working and ventilation is cleared and all is great on that front.

I additionally ran MBAM (malwarebytes) and it found a few things not present at the beginning of all this, so I quarentined them. It is running a bit less hot (76-78degrees C) but still not great. I'm not sure what I should be running at, but I would guess it is way lower than 76-78 degrees C constantly near overheating. And if run much it still starts overheating to 100 deg. C at the drop of a hat.

The temperature was somewhat hot in apartment when I started all this, so I had figured that might be the case. But turns out it's not really all that impactful.

I am planning to just run more antivirus, then if things don't improve wipe everything but windows and a few games from the main harddrive and send it in for diagnostics/thermal paste replacement. I do not think it is overclocked all that much or anything, though I'm not sure how to check on this rig (new this year to me tho it was used before and they did new windows 10 install) as I have no overclocking software specifically installed that would give ez view.

I can give full stats if anyone needs, it's windows 10 OS. Which I think might be why Double Driver is screwing up as it seems to be mostly for older windows, a youtube vid I saw using windows 11 showed how to get double driver to work well without the error I was getting and you had to make some specific reboot pattern to enable driver modification in windows 11 it seemed like, but for windows 10 I'm not sure how to do it.

If anyone has any suggestions or anything I'll appreciate it.

 

Got it looked at today at the shop, turns out it was the thermal paste after all. Got it all sorted. Thanks for all concerned.

 

Glad you got it sorted.

 

Appreciate it. Turns out though not awhile after I wrote the last update the repair girl called me back to say the overheating shot up again and they ran more diagnostics. Turns out there is additionally some fault in the CPU (probably why dude sold it to me back a year back lol) that makes the liquid cooling system also show a fault. Seems to all come from the chip fault though which then causes fault in the liquid cooling system. Not sure how this all gets out of hand and shoots the temp up super quick. In any event, this was going on on top of the thermal paste (replacing that restored normal temps for a few hours before temp randomly shoots up again, restart PC, normal temps for hours, shoots up again randomly, repeat). So, the thermal paste issue is resolved but the chip problem remains, I'll either have to replace the chip or live with the problem intermittently restarting, or more likely just put down for a new rig. 1k buys a lot of rig these days and it was almost 200$ just to get the problems taken care of so far.