My computer will overheat. What type of hardware do I need to fix it?

[Dan Murphy]

You'll have to forgive me; I'm not very good when it comes to hardware of computers. I bought this computer off of Craigslist and since have added a video card to it. When I try to do anything demanding it, it'll overheat to the point that the sound becomes delayed and scratchy.

I have the stock fan and another fan added inside. Is there anything else I can do? It only overheats when I try to play games on it. When I am rendering out things in Maya it seems to work just fine. Only when I tried to play Titan Fall or the Tomb Raider game did it overheat. To be fair, I had the highest settings on, but why have a computer like this if I cannot take advantage of the higher options?

Are there any cheap solutions? Thanks!

My computer specs:

GPU: GeForce GTX 660
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
Memory: 16.00 GB RAM (15.99 GB usable)

 

[woltej1]

buy a coolermaster tx-3 cpu cooler, under $20. Also clean out the video card. Make sure your PSU is up for a discrete card too, that could be what's over heating.

 

[Dan Murphy]

buy a coolermaster tx-3 cpu cooler, under $20. Also clean out the video card. Make sure your PSU is up for a discrete card too, that could be what's over heating.

Thanks man.

Are those coolermaster's hard to install? Could a dipshit like me do it? lol...

How would I go about checking if the PSU is suitable for my system? I think I remember checking into that before (the guy that sold me the computer told about it) and it's a 450volt power supply. Will I need to upgrade that for the card I have? If so, are those hard to install as well?

 

[woltej1]

450 is not ideal, but it should run it. A heatsink is very easy to do, just make sure you buy 90%+ isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) to remove old thermal paste.