I7 PC randomly shuts off, possibly overheating

[waphles]

Hello everyone,

Bought a custom rig about two years ago and it ran fine until about 3 months ago. It would beep for about 5 minutes on start up, and the beep signal indicated fan problems. However, I went through all my fans, they were all running and spinning fine, no extra noise or anything and had good airflow, so after taking the computer apart twice I attributed to a faulty fan sensor and left it at that. Like I said, it only beeped for a few minutes then it wouldn't beep again, even after hours of use (plus all the fans were still spinning).

Then, two nights ago it started shutting down randomly. After again taking the computer apart to check connections and capacitors (I hadn't added anything since I bought the PC), I realized that I had never cleaned the filter between my push-pull fans, and it was pretty bad.

However, after cleaning, the computer no longer beeps (at all, for anything), and it still shuts of randomly. Sometimes it runs for as long as 10-15 minutes, other times it's less than 30 seconds. I have disassembled the computer from top to bottom twice, checked each component individually, ran through several different startups with no improvement. Even with no RAM loaded or video card installed, the computer won't beep. It does load to Windows fine with everything installed, it just shuts off randomly.

I did download CPUID Hardware Monitor in order to check the CPU temps, and I noticed that even at startup the CPU is running at 100° C. Sometimes it starts at as low as 95°, but after a few seconds it hits 100° and within a minute of that point shuts off. The fans all still spin, it's liquid cooled, but I still can't seem to get the temps down. Tonight I'm going to start by reapplying the thermal paste, after I checked how the heatsink was sitting it looked pretty dry and definitely wasn't sitting flat. Would that fix the motherboard speaker by chance?

I wasn't sure if that could really be the only problem though, so I thought I'd post on here first and maybe someone that had ran into before would know what to do. I'll do a separate post with my specs since this first post ran a bit long...

 

[waphles]

HAF 932 CoolerMaster Case
Intel Core i7 950 Processor (was OC'd to 3.4G, it's been at 3.06G since 3 months ago)
Enermax Liquid cooling
6GB DDr3-2000 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5970 2gb
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 mobo
1200 Watt CoolerMaster Silent Pro 80
1 7200 rpm HD
1 60gb SSD
1 Bluray-DVD burner
1 dvd/cd-rw drive

I suppose I should mention I reset my BIOS settings from my OC settings back when the beeping started, including voltages and such, so it should be back to factory settings. I am pretty sure I checked that last night (as well as 3 months ago), but will double check it just in case.

EDIT: I see spoiler tags work a little differently here haha.

 

[Thompaam]

100C is definitely not a desirable temperature, that's an automatic reflex from the system. It could be faulty block placement, can you see if it has good contact with the CPU? Poorly applied thermal paste could also be it, did you use very little/a lot?

 

[waphles]

Haven't added any yet, that's first on the to-do list for tonight. I didn't even think about it until today but the heatsink came right off the cpu, no sticking or adhesion at all. I did make a note that the old paste was pretty dry but I never gave it more thought than that. I just assumed with the heatsink + liquid cooling there would never be a heat problem with the cpu.

Hoping that it's just the thermal paste drying out and not something more serious. Anything I need to watch out for with the Arctic Silver Silver 5 thermal compound? I know it's a little different in that it uses the line method and not dot.

 

[Thompaam]

Haven't added any yet, that's first on the to-do list for tonight. I didn't even think about it until today but the heatsink came right off the cpu, no sticking or adhesion at all. I did make a note that the old paste was pretty dry but I never gave it more thought than that. I just assumed with the heatsink + liquid cooling there would never be a heat problem with the cpu.

Hoping that it's just the thermal paste drying out and not something more serious. Anything I need to watch out for with the Arctic Silver Silver 5 thermal compound? I know it's a little different in that it uses the line method and not dot.

Thermal paste doesn't have a designated way of applying it, you do what you feel is the best. Just make sure it all stays on the CPU and doesn't get in the socket or on the board itself since it is conductive, it's a pain to get off and if you turn on your system with it on, you're shorting things out and breaking them.

 

[waphles]

Update:

When reseating the liquid cooler to the cpu I had noticed some dry spots of paste, cleaned it off, reapplied the paste and then reconnected the cooler to the cpu. As it turns out, the dry spots of paste were actually covering very small holes in the copper plate. Luckily the cpu was always hot enough that the liquid pouring out was evaporating before hitting the cpu, I actually didn't notice the leak until I had the cooler totally off and the computer totally apart.

So, long story short, ordered the CoolerMaster H80 liquid cooler, got everything installed and fired up, and she's an iceberg again. It seemed to fix the issue I was having with the motherboard speaker as well, for awhile there it wasn't making a sound, not on start up or by trying to run the computer without memory/video card/etc. After about a day or two with the new cooler the speaker started working again, giving me a beep on start up. Not sure if the speaker problem had anything to do with the cooling issue or not, but it's good to have my computer back!

Thanks again Thompaam for the quick replies. Hope this helps someone out in the future.

 

[Thompaam]

Update:

When reseating the liquid cooler to the cpu I had noticed some dry spots of paste, cleaned it off, reapplied the paste and then reconnected the cooler to the cpu. As it turns out, the dry spots of paste were actually covering very small holes in the copper plate. Luckily the cpu was always hot enough that the liquid pouring out was evaporating before hitting the cpu, I actually didn't notice the leak until I had the cooler totally off and the computer totally apart.

So, long story short, ordered the CoolerMaster H80 liquid cooler, got everything installed and fired up, and she's an iceberg again. It seemed to fix the issue I was having with the motherboard speaker as well, for awhile there it wasn't making a sound, not on start up or by trying to run the computer without memory/video card/etc. After about a day or two with the new cooler the speaker started working again, giving me a beep on start up. Not sure if the speaker problem had anything to do with the cooling issue or not, but it's good to have my computer back!

Thanks again Thompaam for the quick replies. Hope this helps someone out in the future.

I do what I can