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PC Overheating


Koby

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I have a liquid cooling system which is suppose to require no maintenance. When I first built the PC, you could feel the air coming out of it and it'd be cool. Now the air coming out is always warm or hot.


 


My PC keeps shutting itself off; which I assume it's overheating.


 


I've taken the two fans off of both sides of the radiator-thing and cleaned it all with canned-air. It helps, but it doesn't take but a few weeks before I seem to be in the same problem again.


 


Is there something I can do to prevent my PC from getting overheated and shutting off?


 


Is there something I'm missing about the whole liquid-cooling system (it's my first)?


 


It's to the point my PC will overheat and shut off while simply idling sometimes. So doing any real work such as gaming or video encoding is completely out of the question. :/


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If someone tells me to try tapatalk I'm gonna slap 'em with a large trout.

 

Which cooler is it? Are the fans spinning fast enough?

 They seem to be spinning normally.

is your liquid-cooling system pump working?

How can you tell if it's pumping anything?

The hoses are black rubber.

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...Which cooler is it?

I forget. Will need to take a look at it again.

 

 

No one asked for temperature? Well I assume it's a self contained liquid cooler, since you said no maintenance.

 

Grab realtemp

 

http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

 

And give us the idle and load temperature.

 

Also I would assume your pump might be dead.

How would you tell if it's dead?

Will get back to you on the temp.

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How would you tell if it's dead?

Will get back to you on the temp.

Hard to tell without looking at it, but usually the temperature from realtemp will give you an indication whether it's broken or not. Pumps are generally quite quiet. If you CPU is ideal temperature, then it's probably your other components, since you never said what exactly was overheating and assumed it was the CPU if you said radiator.

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Could better/more thermal paste help/do anything?

This is my FX-8150 machine, which was just built 2-3 years ago and rarely used until a year ago when I started using it as a HTPC since my other crashed.

Too much thermal paste can be a bad thing and I do not recommend it. Honestly better thermal paste will decrease the temperature by 2-5C at best, if you aren't already using the one the was pre-applied. Pre-applied is high quality to begin with.

 

I would need the temps to know, especially when it's about to crash.

 

How do you know that's overheating? Just because it's a bit warm doesn't mean that that's the reason.

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The fact that the air coming off your radiator is warm means that your cooling system is doing its job at least a little. If your pump were out completely, the radiator wouldn't be getting warm because the system wouldn't be moving the heat anywhere.

Now, that doesn't mean that the pump isn't weak or starting to die. If it's moving the coolant slowly through the system, that could cause overheating problems AND make the radiator air warmer. Most pumps plug into the fan ports on the motherboard to get power, but you need to make sure that the port you plugged into isn't managed by the normal fan system. If you recently played around with your BIOS fan settings or you had to flash/reset your BIOS for some reason the system may have taken control of the pump power and could be throttling it. If you've made no changes in this area then it could be mechanical.

Again referencing the warm air, if the thermal paste wasn't doing its job correctly the air you feel in the back would be cool while your CPU temp would be 100C.

Your symptoms suggest to me that something is wrong within the cooling system itself. It IS moving heat away from the CPU, but it is not moving it away fast enough. The most likely mechanical components would be the pump or the fan. The fans are easy to check and I assume you've done that already, so the pump is the last suspect. You could very well have developed a leak in the system and lost a significant amount of coolant as well, but usually that is readily noticeable.

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Now, that doesn't mean that the pump isn't weak or starting to die. If it's moving the coolant slowly through the system, that could cause overheating problems AND make the radiator air warmer. Most pumps plug into the fan ports on the motherboard to get power, but you need to make sure that the port you plugged into isn't managed by the normal fan system. If you recently played around with your BIOS fan settings or you had to flash/reset your BIOS for some reason the system may have taken control of the pump power and could be throttling it. If you've made no changes in this area then it could be mechanical.

This is why I want to know the model. Some older AIO CPU coolers did not have onboard fan controllers like the newer Corsair ones do. As you said, you can manually adjust fan speeds with any decent branded motherboard, and can even turn them off if you wanted.

There's also the matter of power. AFAIK, all require some form of connectivity to the PSU, not just the motherboard. My h100 has one molex cable to power the pump and the fans (the fans are connected to the cooler itself).

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I would remove the cooler from the CPU, remove the Thermal Paste with a q-tip and small amount of rubbing alcohol, then apply NEW Thermal Paste of the CPU, then re-install the cooler to the cpu.  There are many videos on youtube that can walk you through it.


 


 


Also, it sounds like you have the Push-Pull method on your cooler's radiator, which can help cooling, but also increases dust buildup as well.  So you sould buy a pack of those white filters that people put in the Central Air Registers in your home, and attach one to the outside of your computer case where the air is being sucked in.  The filters will stop dust from getting into your radiator, and wont restrict much air flow.  So its a Win-Win.


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This is why I want to know the model. Some older AIO CPU coolers did not have onboard fan controllers like the newer Corsair ones do. As you said, you can manually adjust fan speeds with any decent branded motherboard, and can even turn them off if you wanted.

There's also the matter of power. AFAIK, all require some form of connectivity to the PSU, not just the motherboard. My h100 has one molex cable to power the pump and the fans (the fans are connected to the cooler itself).

I have an H60, that just uses 2 motherboard fan ports, 1 for the pump and 1 for the fan.

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