Solutions for overheating gaming PC.

catoss

Reputable
Sep 30, 2015
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My current PC was built in 2013. It was my first one so I had a small budget of $650 - $700. I got a lot of my parts cheaply through the help of one of my father's friends (who builds and fixes PCs for a living).

A problem has grown larger recently where I'm playing any game and my computer will just freeze, so, I have to restart it. During start up it might run into another 1-2 more freezes.

My PC has two fans at the front drawing in air, and one at the back pulling out air. I have taken off both side covers of the computer and even put a desk fan on the floor facing up at my computer in hope to reduce the heat. (The fan isn't facing directly to the side, it's blowing air in the direction to the back of the case.). I did read about taking off the covers was a "rookie error" but with them on, it only made it worse. I have looked online for solutions and all I can find is "clean your PC" & "watercooling".

I figured it wouldn't be a good idea to water cool my PC since a lot of the parts are old, I might as well buy another PC and water cool that with parts that will last a long time. Rather than spend time and money water cooling a PC that will most likely have to be replaced.

I don't know if there are any other solutions to try and fix this problem. Could it be any other problem, and not overheating? I you require any more information and can most likely give it to you.
 
The biggest factor when it comes to PC cooling is ambient temperature. If the temperature in the room is high, then the temperature swirling around inside your PC will be high. Water cooling won't help as the radiator fans intake air from outside. Do you live in a hot climate or is the PC in a hot room?

I would first verify that the crashes are caused by overheating and not something else. Download HWMonitor or RealTemp and keep an eye on the CPU and GPU temperatures; anything beyond 90C almost certainly indicates overheating.
 


I do live in Australia and it can get quite hot during the summer months. The room is normally cool, but you can feel the heat that the PC is producing when entering the room.

I'll try out those programs and get back to you with an answer.
 
Remove the heatsinks, clean them off, re-apply with new heat grease, make sure you don't use too much, a ball a few mm across spread out should do it, even thin coating over the chips. This should include the video card if you can manage to do it. It's usually harder to clean the video card than the CPU due to the cladding around the thing. Does the system work OK when the fan is on it?