My rig is overheating lately...

[BloodSugarWilksM]

Hey All - my current rig specs on in my sig. Lately, in the past few days or so, my rig has begun spinning the RPMs on my CPU fan at a much higher rate than normal. Using the ASUS PC Probe monitor, I usually find that under normal usage, my RPMs are at about 4600 on average. I have no idea why, but lately I noticed my rig making a bunch of fan noise, so I turned on PC Probe and it was running the CPU fan at about 5800!! I don't understand.

I recently moved from Chicago to Colorado, but everything has worked fine for weeks - normally. Also, I even blew out the whole interior with compressed air and got all of the dust etc. cleared out. All of my fans work and I'm not seeing any other strange behavior except for the overstressed CPU fan.

My CPU fan is the stock Heatsink Fan Unit that came with my Athlon processor.

Any thoughts on why this would be?? Thanks!

 

[Rob Williams]

Does the computer now have less airflow than in the old house? You might want to check that the CPU cooler is secure as it should be, since it could have shifted even a little bit during travel.

It might also be worth it to pick up some thermal paste and remount the cooler after being cleaned.

 

[BloodSugarWilksM]

Hey Rob, thanks for the tips. I will have to check out my interior and see what I can do. You know, I'm also planning on upgrading my CPU to a Phenom 9750 and then I'll probably buy a Zalman CNPS 9700 NT 110mm 2 Ball Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler to go with it. I think that might help!

I'll let you know how it goes when I get things cleaned up.

 

[BloodSugarWilksM]

By the way correct me if I'm wrong, but my conception is that Zalman is considered to be the "best" company for Heatsink Fan Units. Is that true to some degree??

 

[Rob Williams]

I tend to like Zalman quite a bit, but I'm not sure if they are the "best" (I'm no cooling guru). I've been pleased with them, though.

I have two 9700LED in the Skulltrail rig which has two beefy Quad-Cores, and considering it keeps them both at very reasonable levels, I have no problem recommending them to anyone. Just make sure you get a good model... some of their low-height coolers are useless.

 

[BloodSugarWilksM]

Awesome, I shall stick with that choice and see how it goes. Do you think that the Zalman model I chose will work with Phenom?? I would think if it works with my current AM2 CPU it should work just fine for Phenom. Here's the model:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118020

I will probably wait until AMD comes out with an official list of ASUS mobo's that they support with Phenom. From what I can tell so far, my M2N-E has a BIOS update coming that has support for all of the new Phenom CPUs, but AMD haven't tested my mobo specifically yet.

 

[madmat]

Yeah that will work and it even has a fan that's PWM capable so it should be fairly quiet. But I'm with Rob here, I think that your cooler simply shifted and needs to be remounted.

 

[BloodSugarWilksM]

Great, thanks for all of the tips guys, I'm going to crack the case and re-seat that sucker!

 

[Krazy K]

Great, thanks for all of the tips guys, I'm going to crack the case and re-seat that sucker!

While you have if off, blow clean air through it to get the dust off the fan and out of the heat exchanger.

 

[Rob Williams]

Yeah, definitely blow out the dust that's in there. I tend to do this once a week, just because I have a room that seems to be an insane dust magnet.

 

[b1lk1]

I blow the dust out of my PC every few weeks or when I rebuild it. Wait a sec, that means I do it every few weeks no matter what.....