Help my CPU is BURNING UP hits 70C range

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

You might want to consider, taking off the heatsink and after cleaning off the old thermal paste/pad, with a little isopropyl/rubbing alcohol. Applying some new thermal paste and reattaching the heat sink.

Instructions for applying thermal paste can be found HERE.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

We should make another sticky "My CPU is overheating, what do Ido?!?". Its been cropping up alot lately...

yorokobi said:

And Eureka!! youve done it!! the temp went down 20C to the 50s, still alitte hot but good!!

Click to expand...

That is right in the normal range for a P4 E proc.

Your Harddrive is on its way out

I don't know if you have diagnosed your problem yet, but it sounds similar to a situation I had and it turned out the hard drive was close to failing and as a result emitted tremendous temps and sounds. Not much later it completely failed and when I replaced it everything was ok. I would try replacing the hard drive with a spare just to check if you have one. Hope this helps, but of course I could be completely wrong.

I don't think a HDD failure could've cause the CPU to overheat, but many things are interconnected in the computer to make this possible.

I have that same board and I was using the stock cooler. It is difficult to clean, I got a performance cooler by Antec.

antec.com/usa

At idle my cpu stays around 27C and after 5-6 hours of gaming it is around 30-35
The secret is the side mounted fan that lets you send the hot air away from the HS.
Mine is directed to the rear and out of the case.
I and cleaning is a breeze.
It also helps to have good air circulation

This thread is nearly 3 years old...

His case was caused by running a P4 Prescott on a dirty heatsink. Those are notoriously hot processors, so your comparison of 27C isn't comparable to his case.

I had the same problem with my P4, the temps kept getting into the 60 degrees C+ range and cleaning the stock CPU cooler from dust brought it down at least 10 degrees. I still need to reapply the thermal paste which is not on right and I want to install some internal fans for better ventilation to get the temps even lower.

Slighty Different Problem

Hi Guys,

My power supply recently died after about 18 months of use, so I upgraded from 350W to a 500W unit. Since a couple of weeks after installing the new PSU my machine has been getting hella hot, and performing poorly as a result. Now, my new PSU fan blows downwards, as opposed to straight out the back of the base unit like my old one. However the fan is really bloody big and not generating much heat iself, so I'm surprised if this is causing the whole issue.

From feeling around, the hot areas seem to be the socket in the back of the PSU where I plug in the kettle cable, and the GFX card. Checked the temps too and indeed the graphics card is burning up somewhat.

So it looks like the graphics card is definitely the problem, but I don't see why my new PSU would be causing this. Any ideas?

Details below:

CPU Type QuadCore Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2400 MHz (9 x 267)
Motherboard Name Asus P5N-E SLI (2 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
Motherboard Chipset nVIDIA nForce 650i SLI
System Memory 4Gb
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (768 MB)


Motherboard 46 °C (115 °F)
CPU 42 °C (108 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #1 40 °C (104 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #2 38 °C (100 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #3 35 °C (95 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #4 35 °C (95 °F)

GPU Diode 64 °C (147 °F)
GPU Memory 55 °C (131 °F)
GPU Ambient 51 °C (124 °F)


Cooling Fans
CPU 1805 RPM
Chassis 1607 RPM
Chassis #2 2177 RPM
GPU 1596 RPM (60%)


Many thanks for any advice

p.

Those temps don't look unreasonable to me. 70C is a bit high for the processor, but your pasted temps are half that. Does it get to 70 without being under full load? What was it before the PSU swap.

I think you really need to address the airflow direction of that PSU. Are you SURE its blowing hot air down into the case? I know sometimes the feel with just your hand can be deceiving. If you are right and its blowing down, did you buy a PSU for a case with a blowhole?

Personally if it is blowing the wrong way I'd open it up and switch the wires, but if you don't feel comfortable doing it, or don't understand the dangers of capacitors then please don't attempt it.