Weird overheating problems

[Xenium]

I have recently bought a prebuilt computer off of the internet, and it has been running flawlessly. I have been playing crysis 2, bad company 2 without a problem. Recently, if the CPU has too much load it gets to a point where it just switches off and the fans spins to max speed. My system is as follows;
-AMD Phenom II x6 1055T @ stock w/ stock cooler
-ASRock 870 Extreme3
-8Gb DDR3 PC3-10700
-ATi 6870 1Gb
-Hitachi 1Tb sata 2 HDD
My normal CPU usage on idle is about 1-4% and sits at around 38-41 degrees C (with 3.5k RPM on the fan speed), when I load a demanding game, such as Bad Company 2 the CPU goes up to 60% and the temp hits the mid 50s (with 4.5k RPM fan speed) then after ~15mins it cuts out, black screen and the fans rev up. This has only started to occur recently, I have not made any changes to the system (in terms of hardware) and nothing I know of on the software side(but that is hard to pinpoint). I am thinking that it may be caused by;
-The stock cooler/the thermal paste may be failing or wrongly applied?
-The ASRock OC utility has this CPU temperature limiter that maybe affecting it?
This has only happened recently, as I was able to play these without a problem.
Cheers for the help.

 

[Outlander_04]

All motherboards have thermal protection for the cpu . Your temps look fine . Can you confirm it doesnt get hotter before switching off?

Its unlikely to be a thermal paste problem , but check the heat sink is firmly attached .

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Also, use HWMonitor to check video temps as well. The other thing, what kind of power supply is in that thing? I've personally had situations where power supplies get too hot and did not want to power a pc right unless you had an exhaust fan right under them.

 

[tsnor]

Get a can of compresses air, blow the dust off the CPU cooler. See if you can blow dust out of video cooler and power supply. Clean front vents. Remove dust from motherboard heatsinks.

Use a program that logs CPU temps, like REALTEMP (google it). See if temps spike above the temps you are seeing. You should hit more like 100C than 50 before shutdown.

Check and see if the bios in ASRock 870 Extreme3 has anything funny set to shutdown at temp. It's summer now, you may be a few degrees hotter than in winter. (I need to adjust my video OC and fan speed to stay at 70C in summer vs. winter.)

See if ASRock 870 Extreme3 overclocking utility has anything strange in it's fan mapping (map of cpu temps to fan speed).


edit: Post above said "I've personally had situations where power supplies get too hot and did not want to power a pc right unless you had an exhaust fan right under them. " I like this a lot. Have you maxed your power supply? PSU output can drop quite a bit when the PSU gets hot. There is a sticker on the PSU that gives brand and output. Knowing your video (ATi 6870 1Gb), CPU=amd x6, and overclock of each people can guess your actual power requirements. Knowing the brand and claimed output of PSU people can guess if you are hitting PSU problem.

 

[gonemtbiking123]

Mid 50's for 60% is not ok. Those CPU's have a max temp of 62C and most people dont like to let them get above mid 50's completely maxed out. What case/ what kind of airflow do you have? I have read for every 10C the life of the component with decrease by half. It may be worth is to buy an aftermarket cooler, they are not that expensive and will drastically decrease temps along with fan noise.

 

[Xenium]

@Outlander_04
I do not have any re-assuring data, but I have run HWMonitor while testing, and it does raise the temperature while the load increase before it shuts off completely, so I do assume it does get quite hot under the load.

@Ohiou_grad_06
I have been concerned about the PSU, it is one of those cheapo no name brand PSU. It is a Ritmo Force860 (860W) gaming PSU. I do have a very reliable OCZ Modder Xstream 600W PSU I was thinking of replacing it with, if that is the case I can swap it.

@tsnor
I have started to clean out the dust, but I did not find too much on the components, but will continue to clean too make it absolutely clean. The OC utility does have this temperature limiter which was set to 45C (for some odd reason), but I have since changed it too a higher temp (the recommended temp of 62C). In terms of the PSU, I think the 860W is enough to power the system but I am not even remotely educated to make that assumption. HWMonitor registers 132W usage when it hits 40% cpu usage. Both my 1055T and my 6870 are both at standard clock speeds, 2.8Ghz and 900Mhz/1050Mhz (GPU/Memory) respectively.

@gonemtbiking
I do not know the specific branding of the case, as it looks like it is solely made by the company, it does have a massive fan at the front, and one attached to the side door. The PC sits on my desk and has enough access to airflow around the room. I do have two fans that I can implement into the system, but the aftermarket cooler recommendation would be a good option to go for, and would not be much effort to perform. I was looking at the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ for the system.

Once again, cheers guys for the support. It came in an amazing time, and has been most useful for me. Thanks again.

 

[gonemtbiking123]

I would get the 212+ and go from there. It is a great cooler, I have a dark knight which is comparable (i think its a little cooler) but it keeps my phenom ii x4 955 at 3.8 at 48C max. Your CPU temp should not be a problem at all after that, until you start doing some overclocking, which that cooler can handle fine.

As far as the PSU, you may want to swap in that OCZ Modder Xstream. 600w will be enough for your current rig.

 

[Xenium]

Best answer selected by Xenium.