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Lock ups from over-cooling?

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  • Cooling
  • Computers
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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June 18, 2013 4:45:03 PM

Hello. I apologize if this is in the wrong forum.

For several months I've been having an increasing problem with my computer locking up at low temperatures. This problem is two fold:

Part 1) It takes several attempts at booting up the computer every morning over the course of about a half an hour before it finally boots fully. This has become so commonplace its now part of my morning routine. Power on computer, make breakfast, reboot unresponsive computer, eat breakfast, reboot again, wait a few minutes, reboot again successfully. Its as though some component needs to "warm up" before it will function properly.

Part 2) During use the computer will lock up if room temperatures drop too low. This was frequent during the coldest days of the year but less common in the warmer months. Watching SpeedFan graphs, it seems the computer will freeze when the CPU (I think) drops around 40c - 45c.

For years I've been handling overheating problems with a little desktop fan pointed into the computer case (which seemed to work very well) but now a few minutes of this cools something down so much the computer freezes requiring a reboot. This leaves me in the unfortunate position during gaming and animation work of having to manually turn on and off this desk fan every few minutes in order to walk a tightrope between overheating and locking up.

I can provide specs and/or more details if necessary.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions as to what may be causing this.

More about : lock ups cooling

June 18, 2013 4:54:56 PM

You have a bad part in the system. Most likely a cap or bad soilder trace. Part fine when hot but fails at room temp. For the no power issue it could be a bad cap in the power supply or a low CMOS battery or bad cap or vrm on the mb. The over heat..lose heat sink or dried out thermal paste.
Try a new 3.00 CMOS battery and the a power supply. With the power off I would wipe the old thermal paste off and redo it.
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June 18, 2013 5:21:28 PM

smorizio said:
You have a bad part in the system. Most likely a cap or bad soilder trace. Part fine when hot but fails at room temp. For the no power issue it could be a bad cap in the power supply or a low CMOS battery or bad cap or vrm on the mb. The over heat..lose heat sink or dried out thermal paste.
Try a new 3.00 CMOS battery and the a power supply. With the power off I would wipe the old thermal paste off and redo it.


Thank you for your reply. I was worried this was due to a failing part of the motherboard and it sounds like that's what you're describing.

I'm not really having a "no power" issue. Perhaps my description was inadequate. The computer powers on just fine but does not boot fully with the first few power ups...as if the cold start is causing it to freeze at some point in the boot process. This sometimes causes the computer to have to run checkdisk for corrupted or lost files during the restarts.

Your reference to what might be causing the overheating problem sounds possible but I do not trust myself enough to remove the heatsink, fan and liquid cooling structure from my cpu to replace the thermal paste. Perhaps I should take the computer in to have professionals do this.

I would not even know where to look on the mobo for the "CMOS battery" let alone how to replace this.
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June 19, 2013 2:41:30 AM

Before you drop your pc off at the local shop check to see if the mb under warranty. Some units have a three to five year warranty from the vendor. Also check to see the cost of a replacement mb if they find yours is the issue. Older parts can be more costly then newer ones sometime. If it a dell or other Oem mb. Also back your data up that you need. Bad shops can format your drive without telling you. Real bad shop can short out a pc on a bad day. Even good shops can have an oppies moment. I seen power spikes hit computer shops..take out coustomers pc that were in test.
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