- Oct 28, 2009
- 10
- 1
- 18,515
I have a PC I built in 2020 as a lockdown project. I've not used it much recently as my teen son more or less took it over, but for his birthday he got a brand spanking new PC and all of a sudden, I'm able to use my machine again. I knew it was having some problems because I had to help him fix them, but now I'm using it again, they seem a bit worse than I expected. In general, it's slow and it gets very hot and crashes a lot. I suspect the heart of this is the heat (and damage to other components related to that) but I'd appreciate any device people have on how to figure this out without buying a whole new machine.
1) Heat - about six months ago I became aware that the PC was getting very hot (mostly when I tried to play BG3). I opened it up, had a look around and replaced the fan on it with a newer one and that seemed to help a lot. But it still got hot when newer games were running. After installing various temperature tracking programmes, it seemed that it was (unsurprisingly) the graphics card causing this. When I opened the case back up, I realised something had happened - a loose cable had been stopping one of the GPU's three fans. I tied the cable down but I think it may have damaged the fan so it doesn't spin any more...
2) Missing Graphics Card - occasionally (monthly?) the PC seems to lose the GPU. Originally I fixed this by reinstalling the drivers, but I've subsequently learned that I can reinstall it in the device manager. I suspect this is a hardware problem, but I'm not entirely sure.
3) Slowness - in general, the PC seems to crash more often and have issues where games won't start. I worry this is a SSD issue caused by excessive heat but I'm not sure how to test it.
As you can see, I am pretty sure excessive heat from my GPU, caused by a broken cooling fan, has led to more general issues with my PC. I'd like to try to fix the graphics card, but suspect I don't have the skill and the overheating may have done the damage already meaning I should replace the graphics card and potentially other components (or the whole damn PC) as well. But I'd love some advice on how to diagnose that properly so I'm not throwing money away.
1) Heat - about six months ago I became aware that the PC was getting very hot (mostly when I tried to play BG3). I opened it up, had a look around and replaced the fan on it with a newer one and that seemed to help a lot. But it still got hot when newer games were running. After installing various temperature tracking programmes, it seemed that it was (unsurprisingly) the graphics card causing this. When I opened the case back up, I realised something had happened - a loose cable had been stopping one of the GPU's three fans. I tied the cable down but I think it may have damaged the fan so it doesn't spin any more...
2) Missing Graphics Card - occasionally (monthly?) the PC seems to lose the GPU. Originally I fixed this by reinstalling the drivers, but I've subsequently learned that I can reinstall it in the device manager. I suspect this is a hardware problem, but I'm not entirely sure.
3) Slowness - in general, the PC seems to crash more often and have issues where games won't start. I worry this is a SSD issue caused by excessive heat but I'm not sure how to test it.
As you can see, I am pretty sure excessive heat from my GPU, caused by a broken cooling fan, has led to more general issues with my PC. I'd like to try to fix the graphics card, but suspect I don't have the skill and the overheating may have done the damage already meaning I should replace the graphics card and potentially other components (or the whole damn PC) as well. But I'd love some advice on how to diagnose that properly so I'm not throwing money away.
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