Heating Issue

[Bean007]

I have a friend that I haven't seen in awhile and were running into a heat issue and I'm kinda dumb founded.

He's got a Asus P5NSLI with a Intel Core 2 Duo E6400. It's not overclocked by me but I did notice in the bios that the AI Tuning was set to Auto.

Ok so now the problem, 1st of all he has to keep a box fan running with the side open to keep it cool. Currently the lowest at idle with the side open and the box fan NOT on is 49c and the highest it got while idle and the side open with box fan off was 57c. 57c is where it would usually sit which was very odd.

I just checked and his bios is very outdated, matter of fact it was the 1st release so I'm going over to update the bios and clean out his heatsink a bit, there was some build up of dust bunnies but I don't think it's enough to get the temp's that high.

I was thinking about replacing the thermal paste of I looked and didn't have anymore so i'll have to order some.

He told me this morning that he was playing his game and that his computer shut down 2 times due to heat I guess. There's also another problem which is the video card he was sold that's also running hot as well. He's running a GTX 260 and I benchmarked it with Heaven 3.0 and the temp's reached over 80c, I have no clue why it's just so dang hot in there. It's not overclocked but I did grab MSI Afterburner to look at it's clock's and oddly enough there's nothing coming back on the actual fan speed on the screen and yet the fan is running. I didn't have time to try to see if I could use the user fan adjustment thing on the MSI afterburner.

If you need like a ss of the bios settings like the voltage just let me know. I'm about to head over there right now. One other thing and i don't have the equipment to test it but he's only running a 430w or maybe it was a 450w power supply, but that wouldn't cause a heat problem.

Please don't suggest to get a new computer cause he just doesn't have the money right now to do so. I need answers on why were having this heat problem.

 

[watters1996]

hmm, if i were you i'd update the bios, then reset the bios to optimized defaults. then use some compressed air or take the heatsink out and hoover between the fin things. also get some decent named thermal paste. also make sure the GPU fan is plugged in properly and when you change the cpu thermal paste change the gpu paste aswell.
Also check to see if the case fans are clean of dust and that they still function properly and havent worn out. if he can afford it try to get 2 high performance fans, one on the front and one on the backand set them up so air is sucked through the front and blown out the back.
The psu shouldnt cause much of a heat different because the computer specs shouldnt need 400watts... If its a cheap crap psu then try to replace it with something a bit better like an OCZ or another decent name.

 

[Bean007]

Ok so this is what happend. Took a flathead and broke up some of the dust bunnies that were trapped on the heat sink and got it down to about 47c without the box fan and with the sides on.

I was unable to flash the bios using asus's update program, it just wouldn't take it at all. I was gonna make a bootable usb drive but didn't have my windows cd to make it a bootable usb to use the dos flash program. I had the correct bios version for the right motherboard but it just wouldn't take it.

Can't replace the thermal paste cause I don't have any on me except this cheap Silicone Base Compound from Radio Shack.

As far as the video card, it was purchased from a computer store and it was used. It's a eVga GTX 260 and it looks like dried dirt all over it. Tried to take it out to clean it but I can get my damn finger on the tab to let loose the front little hook on the video card. Not sure if they broke it or it's just really hard to get at. Told my friend to take it back to the computer store and have them remove it cause it's just filthy. I'm surprised they sold em a 260 since this was only a month ago.