Ok, so I had this weird thing happen with my self-built PC where one day the computer would turn on, but nothing would be on my screens. Its a different problem than I am about to ask you guys about, but it did lead to me cracking open my computer and resetting the processor, along with me re-installing my OS. Now that I have it working, I have been noticing some problems with overheating in the cpu. Dragon Age: Inquisition is the game that I've been playing the most, and when I finally got my computer working again, I loaded that game up with a temperature monitor open on my secondary screen. It got up to the high 80's Celsius on the start screen, which scared me. I want to the advanced power plan settings and turned the max processor power down to 70%. Dragon Age works fine on max at this setting, and my temperature stays around the mid 70's during gameplay. While I am ok with how it works now, I don't want these overheating problems to hurt me in the future when I'll need more power to run games.
Now, my initial thoughts are the thermal paste (or that's what I am hoping is the problem since it is cheaper). The computer is closing in on two yeas old, and the paste was what came with the part when I first put the computer together. When I tore it apart in a vain attempt to fix my original problem, I did notice that it wasn't applied all that well either. Will cleaning off the old paste and putting on new paste significantly help to reduce the temperature? Or will I need to go another route? If I do have to do something else to help keep my cpu cool, what would that be?
Now, my initial thoughts are the thermal paste (or that's what I am hoping is the problem since it is cheaper). The computer is closing in on two yeas old, and the paste was what came with the part when I first put the computer together. When I tore it apart in a vain attempt to fix my original problem, I did notice that it wasn't applied all that well either. Will cleaning off the old paste and putting on new paste significantly help to reduce the temperature? Or will I need to go another route? If I do have to do something else to help keep my cpu cool, what would that be?