Overheated?

[Furious5k]

I am running a E8200 OCed and a ATI 4870 on my P5k Premium MB. The case is an Antec, I guess it would be P180 (looks exactly like that, except the top fan isn't raised but level with the rest of the case). It has Tuniq Tower on it. I bought this system, didn't put it together myself.

About an hour ago, I was playing some video intensive games and my PC just shut down. It looks like it over-heated, so I turned the fan up a bit and it did the same again. I doubt it was the CPU, BIOS said it was running at 43c and it really should have no issues under that massive fan. Also, I checked the back of the computer and the air was blowing cold over the cpu cooler, but the back of the graphics card was pretty hot (then again, I think ATI cards run how anyways?).

Long story short, I want to know what's over-heating. What should I do first?

P.S. I just installed RivaTuner and it's stating my card temp at 79c, is that good or bad for this card while in general windows use?

 

[orangegator]

That's hot for the video card for idle temp. Check the card and clean out any dust. Try running with side panel off and see what the temperature is when the card is under load.

 

[Proximon]

+1

80C might be the expected temp of a stock cooled 4850 under full load, so that temp is too high.

Your board should have squawked at you if it was overheating though. Doesn't mean it works right, but they do plan it that way...

 

[jsc]

I don't know about Asus motherboards, but all three Gigabyte boards (P35, G41,and P45) all had the temperature alarms turned off in the BIOS as a factory default. My default is 70 C.

 

[Proximon]

My old ASUS board used to beep at me when my 7900GT overheated (frequently in the summer)

I don't know about this one.

 

[Furious5k]

I opened up the case and there didn't appear to be that much dust. A light coating, sure, but nowhere near the amounts I've seen in my previous gaming computers which still ran fine.

I didn't actually take out the card, because I've never built a PC and would rather not move things around if I don't have to. What's the next step, do I need to unscrew the card and try to undust it? Can you even get anywhere inside it other than the fan opening?

Also, after a recent shut down I checked BIOS and the CPU was at 52C, is this okay for an E8200? I have some suspicion of the cooler as it makes a bit of a trembling noise if I lightly tap it with my finger, but I dunno.

 

[Furious5k]

I've also recently moved so it could've been dislodged or something. I have no idea how to check, Tuniq Tower is so huge it blocks all sight of the CPU. Now that I think about it, I remember my PC shutting down on me when I just bought it because the fan was set too low, but I increased the fan from 1400 to 1600 after the last shut-down and it still crashed.

I dunno, it could be the CPU. Team Fortress isn't the most graphics intensive game and I only saw my GPU temp go up by 3c playing it.

 

[Proximon]

No, a reading in the BIOS of 52C would be too high.

Here are some basic simple tools:
CPU-Z
Real Temp
HWMonitor


Run Real Temp and tell us what the CPU core temps are.

 

[Furious5k]

It says Minimum temp 44c, Maximum 52c. I'm currently running the fan at 1400-1450.

Here's a screenshot of all 3 of those programs open:
http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=b1nzzjnn2yj&thumb=6
http://www.merrypic.com/viewer.php?file=lg7f6t6d9vhot3hwp20s.jpg

 

[Furious5k]

What's bugging me is that the temperatures don't appear to change if I set the fanspeed to maximum (from 1600 to 2100).

 

[Proximon]

Your CPU temp is somewhat high. Your GPU temp is high. Perhaps the ambient temp in your case is so high that changing the fan speed isn't helping.

 

[Furious5k]

Well, I've tried running on full speed fan with the side of the case off. It drops the temperatures by a few degrees, maybe 3-4c on both cpu and gpu, but that still leaves them higher than you would expect in a gaming case with aftermarket cooler installed. I haven't checked hardware news in a while, but last I remember Tuniq Tower was pretty damn good at cooling, especially if you turned it up all the way.

The case itself is not very cluttered at all, wires are fairly neat and components seem to have breathing room. I'm really frustrated because I've been running this rig without problems until now.


Could anyone give me a list of things I should check/do to figure out what's causing this?

 

[typeo]

I was having issues similar to this about a month ago. I fixed it simply by buying a couple cans of compressed air at wally world, took my GPU out of the case and dusted it off VERY good, especially the vents on it. I then dusted out the rest of my case and it dropped my 70-80c idle and 120c max load temps droped to around 40-50 idle temps and 70ish max load GPU temps.

Whats the GPU temp after you have been running a graphic intensive game for a little bit?

If you have a big bowl, a small fan and a bunch of ice you can set it up to blow cooled air into your system and see if that keeps the computer from crashing so you can make sure if it is a heating problem or not.. Be very careful about getting moister in you system though.

 

[Furious5k]

I don't think I have anything particularly graphics intensive on the PC at the moment. I'll have to get something that is.

In other news, yesterday all my audio went crazy. I had to set up some configs to get it to pick up the jacks at the back and the front jacks don't work anymore. Also, I apparantly have a new startup screen?!?


Wally means Wallmart, yes? We don't have that here in UK, I think. What should I look for in a can of compressed air (yeah, air, haha). I've heard that some of them may contain additives which would be bad for cleaning a PC with.

 

[typeo]

I thought you said in your first post that your computer crashed wile playing video intensive games?

Ya Wally world is walmart, but if you dont have one you can also find them at stores such as Target, best buy, Ect. or im sure any computer store would have compressed air to use for your computer.

Also as far as I know, I have never seen a can of compressed air that wasnt safe for electronic uses, but just to be on the safe side I would look on the side of the can and it shoudl tell you whether its safe or not to use on electronics.

 

[Furious5k]

Yes, I have said and therefor contradicted myself. I guess, when I was asked to run a video intensive game I thought about it more. Team Fortress 2 isn't really that intesive relative to the card. Benchmarks on gamespot.com show "Team Fortress 2, High Quality, 2048x1536, 4xAA/8xAF" at 95 frames, so clearly it doesn't stress the card. I'll get something like CoD4 and see what that does.

Presumably I need to remove the GPU to properly clean it? Hope I don't break it, heh.

 

[orangegator]

To stress the card you can use Furmark.

 

[Furious5k]

Will I need to change the settings and increase the load the software produces to do that? I tried the trial benchmark on both 3DMark Vantage and PCMarkVantage. PC didn't crash.

 

[Furious5k]

My apologies, I thought you had misspelled and meant FutureMark. Will try to test PC with FurMark.