All of a sudden I'm having issues with my PC overheating, nothing I've done to try and fix it has worked yet.

[ZephyrianNick]

Hello everybody! So the issue that I'm having is that my PC is overheating quite badly. I noticed this when I went to render a video and my computer crashed with no warning. I started my computer back up and loaded Open Hardware Monitor to see my temperatures. At idle, my computer is currently running at around 40 C. That's the normal temperature it's ran at. However, when rendering with no other program open than my editing/rendering software, my computer will climb to 85 C in about two or three minutes and then crash. Before this issue (which literally happened overnight: One day it was fine, and the next day this started.) I could run a render while having Google Chrome open and using Chrome as I normally do (YouTube/Twitch watching, browsing, schoolwork, ect) and my computer wouldn't crack 70 C.

I've already cleaned my fans out, replaced the thermal paste on my heat sink, checked the connections to the motherboard, and have adjusted every option I see in BIOS for the fans and nothing has worked. It's almost as if something isn't auto-adjusting like it did before. Whenever my PC temps would begin to climb, some fan in my computer would start running faster and louder automatically. That's no longer happening, and I don't know which fan it was doing that before. I have two case fans that I can adjust manually and I've adjusted those. They're both working fine. I can adjust the fan on my graphics card, and that's working fine as well, as is my heat sink fan. That leaves the only fan on my computer that I can't adjust: The fan inside my PSU. I think that might be the problem but I'm not sure.

Does anybody have any ideas as to what could be going wrong, and possibly how to fix it?

 

[Karsten75]

What make/model PSU? Might be that it's over the hill.

 

[ZephyrianNick]

It's a Corsair CX600. I feel like I should add that I built this PC a tad bit over a year ago. (August of 2013.)

 

[Karsten75]

why don't you post all the relevant specs? Might make it easier to conjecture.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Is it the CPU or the GPU that is overheating?

Keep a good eye on the fans, you mentioned you cleaned them but could be one has stopped and you over looked it.

The PSU could be going bad, so you should try it in a different system if you can or a different PSU if you can. If not the PSU though the chances are the CPU or GPU are dying if one of them in particular is over heating. Though I kind of feel since the parts are getting really hot that it is not the PSU. Added voltage would break the motherboard first if it was pushing too much power since it regulates the power intake.

Also it could be the RAM is overheating, if the heat in the case has drastically increased then the RAM could overheat and fail. To test the RAM, you could probably open the case and have a fan of some kind blow inside to get more air going. The CPU or GPU will probably result in a crash if they are dying even with a fan blowing in the case, but the RAM if its just slightly too hot could fix it and show they are the problem.

 

[ZephyrianNick]

Can do!

MoBo : ASUS M5 A97 R2.0
Graphics Card: EVGA GTX 660
PSU: Corsair CX600
Case: NZXT Tempest 210 ATX Mid Tower Case
Memory: Kingston Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600
Case Fans: SilenX Effizio Quiet Fan Series EFX-12-15 Case fan (There's two of these, one is a 120mm and the other is a 140mm. I replaced the stock case fans with these around March of this year.
OS: Windows 8

 

[ZephyrianNick]

IInuyasha, to answer your question, the GPU doesn't seem to be it. When I load Open Hardware Monitor what I'm seeing overheating to the 85 C before it crashes are temperatures for the motherboard it seems. It shows me a temperature #1 and a temperature #2, and temp #2 hasn't varied much above 30 C, only temp 1. Sorry if that's not all that helpful, I'm not all that knowledgeable regarding PC matters. If needed I don't have an issue with uploading/linking a screenshot. All the fans I've mentioned are currently running as well, none of them have stopped.

 

[Karsten75]

OK, so it's some AMD CPU? Since you left it off the spec list (or I'm too blind to see it. ) Also, do you have the stock PU cooler?

let's eliminate the usual suspects.

When it's running hot, press with your hand on the heatsink to make a tighter bond with the CPU. If that drops the temps, then the heatsink isn't attached correctly.

By hand, verify that hot air is coming off the heatsink and that airflow is correct. Use a strip of tissue paper to verify that the air is moving.

Is your CPU fan temperature controlled? Does it ramp up as the CPU heats up?

When your PC shuts down - feel the PSU casing - if it feels hot you have a problem. Use the tissue strip to verify airflow through the PSU. Smell near the PSU and PSU exhaust if there is an unusual smell.

How old is the PSU?

Assuming that things just "suddenly" fell apart and that you didn't add in an issue when trying to resolve it, it's possible the PSU is causing this. - at least it's my #1 suspect.

 

[IInuyasha74]

OK, so it's some AMD CPU? Since you left it off the spec list (or I'm too blind to see it. ) Also, do you have the stock PU cooler?

let's eliminate the usual suspects.

When it's running hot, press with your hand on the heatsink to make a tighter bond with the CPU. If that drops the temps, then the heatsink isn't attached correctly.

By hand, verify that hot air is coming off the heatsink and that airflow is correct. Use a strip of tissue paper to verify that the air is moving.

Is your CPU fan temperature controlled? Does it ramp up as the CPU heats up?

When your PC shuts down - feel the PSU casing - if it feels hot you have a problem. Use the tissue strip to verify airflow through the PSU. Smell near the PSU and PSU exhaust if there is an unusual smell.

How old is the PSU?

Assuming that things just "suddenly" fell apart and that you didn't add in an issue when trying to resolve it, it's possible the PSU is causing this. - at least it's my #1 suspect.

All good things to try. After a while something like the heatsink might of come loose from vibration.

The PSU could well be the culprit, just I tend to lean a little more towards the CPU causing the issue than the PSU. Again if you have another PSU or computer you can test the PSU with its a good idea.

 

[Superkoopatrooper]

If its an AMD CPU it could be the motherboard socket overheating. my old asrock 990fx extreme for would overheat the socket causing it to reach about 80c and would shut down. I had to have a fan pointed at the socket and behind the socket so I could go past 4.4ghz. you can disable the sensor in the bios but it isnt recommended. I didnt even know it was a problem until I put watercooling in the system and the socket had no airflow.

 

[ZephyrianNick]

My bad, I forgot the CPU! It's an AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core.

The airflow is correct. It was correct when I installed it and I hadn't changed it since then. I checked it again now though and it's still working fine. I did press the heatsink and the temperatures didn't change, so I'm assuming it's on correctly. The fans are supposed to adjust automatically but the one that made the largest amount of noise doesn't seem to be one I can manually adjust and also no longer adjusts automatically. That fan in particular isn't either of my case fans, the heatsink fan, or my graphics card fan, the only other fan that leaves is the fan in the PSU, which is what's making me think it's that. However, the case for the PSU doesn't feel hot when I put my hand on it. I'm not noticing any particular smell either.

The PSU is about 13 months old.

That's pretty much what happened. I understand some people will say "Oh I didn't do anything" to save face when they really did adjust something, but I truly didn't change anything. I used my computer one night and rendered a video then with no problem, turned it off for the night, and didn't use it the next day due to being busy at college. The day after when I turned it on is the day this started.

Unfortunately I don't have any spare parts to interchange anything with to test for sure.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Nah don't worry, we believe you. It definitely sounds like something is wearing out, just need to decide if its the CPU or PSU.

What kind of activities cause the system to crash again? I know you mentioned editing software.
My thoughts are if you are doing something that stresses just the CPU and not the GPU, then I have an idea how to test it. By running a GPU stress test like MSI Kombuster, your GPU will get stressed and go to full load and power usage while the CPU will stay close to idle. The GPU you have should pull about the same amount of power from your power supply as the CPU. So my thinking is if you hit that amount of power being pulled and the system crashes then its the PSU. If it doesn't, then the CPU is probably dying.

Granted this isn't the most accurate test, but short of trying the CPU or PSU in a different computer or returning the PSU or CPU and hoping you picked correctly, this at least gives a moderate stress load to the PSU to try and determine if it is the culprit or not.

 

[ZephyrianNick]

Rendering video in particular causes it to overheat and crash in about two or three minutes. How I've been testing things is by either letting a render run and canceling it when it hits 80 C, or I'll load a game for a short bit and have a YouTube video up. Playing CS:GO and having a video or a livestream up brought the temperature to around 75 C, which it never came close to that before this whole problem started.

I ran a test for a bit through Kombuster and within a few minutes it was approaching 80 C so I stopped the test, if I kept it going it likely would have crashed. Even with that I didn't notice a large change in how my fans sound. Before this started when I were to play a game and watch a video at the same time or render and watch a video (or only render) my computer would make a very large amount of noise that it's not creating now when it's under load. Would that be caused by a faulty PSU as well?

 

[IInuyasha74]

The heat went close to 80C with Kombuster? I would for sure say its the CPU then. Double check the temps and CPU usage with MSI Afterburner's monitor.

I just ran it on my GPU which is a little faster than yours, and I checked my CPU the full time. Only one CPU core was doing anything, it was running about 70% usage, but temps never got past 50C, and probably wouldn't of got that high but my system doesn't increase the fan speed until it gets to that temperature. If MSI Afterburner confirms the temp, I would say its for sure the CPU.

 

[ZephyrianNick]

Dang.. I hope it's not the CPU, I'd be hard pressed to replace that right now, need the money for gas.

I did take some screenshots of the tests I ran, the album is here if you want to take a look at it. http://imgur.com/a/JKnB9#0

Edit: Also running CS:GO on its own without anything else running beyond Afterburner/Open Hardware Monitor, it went as high as 76 C.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Run HWinfo and take a screenshot of the sensors window when you feel it's approaching the temperature it would normally crash at. It may take more than one screenshot to include all the sensors.

 

[ZephyrianNick]

Here you are Dark! http://imgur.com/a/CfduG These were taken when my PC hit 80 C. It's at 85 C it's crashing at.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, it's definitely way, way too hot. Even if you were running Prime I'd say it was too hot. For normal use it absolutely is. Doesn't seem to be a voltage issue on the core though. The cpu fan is running, according to the RPM spec, but there is no fluxuation in the RPM from min to max, which may just be due to the short amount of time you had HWinfo open for though.

Go into the BIOS by pressing delete during POST, make sure you're in the advanced screen (Press F7 to change to advanced screen if it's in EZ mode) and not the EZ screen. Reset the BIOS to optimized defaults by pressing F5. Save settings, reboot and go back into BIOS again. Click on the Monitor tab at the top and scroll down to CPU fan profile. Set it to standard.

Now go to the AI tweaker tab at the top and in the AI tweaker disable Turbo core. Reboot and see what your temps do now.

Prior to doing all of this, I'd take a flashlight with the computer off and the side panel removed and take a close look at the heatsink under the cpu fan to make sure it's not full of dust and junk. If it is, blow it and the case out with compressed air. You can buy compressed air at most computer shops, office supply stores and retail chain stores if you don't have access to a compressor. Check inside the power supply as well.

 

[ZephyrianNick]

So here's the dealio right now! I've tried each of those independently of one another (setting BIOS to default optimal, fan speeds, ect) but not in that particular order. Doing those and disabling Turbo Core has made it so currently I can render video and watch something on YouTube without it crashing, which is what I was able to do before without any problem! Thank you so so much! 😀

There is a problem that still remains, however. Prior to this situation, this process (rendering a video while watching another one) would bring my computer to about 70 C. It's at 75 C right now, and while that's not a problem, the problem now is what you said about the CPU fan not adjusting itself. It's not doing that, and it should be fluctuating based off heat. I'm assuming, since it's not currently doing that, it was the fan that created an ungodly amount of sound when my PC was under heavy load. Any ideas what might be causing that to occur? (The Heatsink itself is clean, I cleaned it when I re-applied thermal paste yesterday morning.)

Edit: It's hovering right around the 65 C - 75 C range depending on what I'm doing while rendering, which is pretty much how it was before. I'm just worried about the CPU fan not adjusting now. It doesn't appear to be posing any problems, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Are you using the stock fan and heatsink? If so, upgrade. Get a Hyper 212 EVO or if you can afford to spend more there are better options. The stock fan sucks anyhow, should never have been included with any CPU that has Turbo features and they are known for premature failure because they are smaller fans, usually 80-100mm, and must run at much higher RPM than an aftermarket fan with a 120 or 140mm fan to do the same job.

Of course, they can only turn so fast so at some point the aftermarket fan surpasses their best CFM and pressure specs but more importantly, when it has to run at twice the RPM's to try and keep up, they die fast. Now, all that being said, it could be the fan controller on the board and not the fan itself. Make sure the CPU fan is plugged into the center of the three fan headers that are together at the side of the board there.

The other two that are to either side of it are case fan headers. I'm sure it is plugged in right since the HWinfo sensors shows a reading, but make sure the CPU is plugged in there and not one of the case fans. If it is plugged in there you can try plugging it into an unused four pin molex connector if you still have the adapter that usually comes with either the cpu cooler or psu. That should supply it with full voltage and allow it to run at max speed. A lot depends on if you do in fact have a stock cooler.

 

[ZephyrianNick]

For $30 on Amazon Prime that seems fairly affordable, I think I'll order one tomorrow morning! All of the fans in my system and the heatsink are stock apart from the two case fans, I replaced both of them.

As far as I'm aware everything is connected properly. I can't seem to locate the adapter so I'm not sure if I have one, or if I just can't find it right now. I'll look for it tomorrow morning when I'm a little more awake though!

 

[IInuyasha74]

Disabling turbo-core will help for now but has a performance penalty. The cooler might also, but its likely the CPU is starting to die, so as soon as you can you should still return it under warranty to AMD for a replacement.

Thanks to darkbreeze's idea to disable the turbo we were able to get to a point where it was for sure the CPU, not the PSU, however the sure sign of a dying CPU is that it gets too hot and is no longer stable at speeds it used to be. Your CPU is doing both of those. So it might last a month or a few months even but you should know sooner or later it will go out so you want to replace it while the warranty is still on.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Disabling turbo-core will help for now but has a performance penalty. The cooler might also, but its likely the CPU is starting to die, so as soon as you can you should still return it under warranty to AMD for a replacement.

Thanks to darkbreeze's idea to disable the turbo we were able to get to a point where it was for sure the CPU, not the PSU, however the sure sign of a dying CPU is that it gets too hot and is no longer stable at speeds it used to be. Your CPU is doing both of those. So it might last a month or a few months even but you should know sooner or later it will go out so you want to replace it while the warranty is still on.

Agreed. It can't hurt to get it replaced if it is the problem but I've seen a lot stock fans that just didn't have the strength to maintain a high enough level of static pressure anymore or bad mount jobs that emulated failing cpu's. It's pretty much your call how to proceed from here though.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I've also seen fans that had snapped or twisted off the shaft, or were otherwise unsound in a similar manner and so while the system was reporting one RPM the fan itself was only turning at about half of that in reality. Generally it would make a noticeably different sound than normal though, especially at over 1000 RPM. Of course, that's the rare exception and certainly not anything common.