CPU Randomly overheating

[EggyFishLegs]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering if this has happened to anyone else. A couple of hours ago I was watching some Youtube videos and I heard my cpu fan ramp up to 100% so I felt the air my case fans were pushing out and it was pretty warm (much warmer than usual). It's only happened that one time. I think the CPU could possibly be dying, it's a core2 duo e7400 @2.8ghz with the stock cooler and I've been using it most days for 6 years now with the standard clock. I have noticed it's been running warmer than usual for the last couple of months but not too much higher. Anyway I turned it off and let it cool for a while and it's been performing fine since. anyone know what the cause of this was?

[Enderman]

When was the last time you cleaned out the dust from your PC and replaced the CPU thermal paste?

[SImoHayha]

You might need to change the thermal paste.  And reseat it and that will be that and it will probably run more cooler.

[TheKDub]

Try removing the cooler, cleaning off the thermal paste, cleaning out the fins of the cooler, applying new thermal paste, and putting the cooler back on.

 

Might as well clean out the rest of the dust while you're at it.

 

 

From what I have seen, after a few years of use most computers need the thermal paste replaced as it tends to be pretty cheap shitty stuff that dries up over time and becomes useless, though that typically is with pre-built systems.

[EggyFishLegs]

Thanks for all the replies already, I cleaned the dust out pretty recently maybe a month ago and did the thermal paste in January.

[Krzyimprt]

Thanks for all the replies already, I cleaned the dust out pretty recently maybe a month ago and did the thermal paste in January.

Check your temps with RealTempGT.

[EggyFishLegs]

my temps are alright, idle is around 40c and playing Thief I had 57 max

[Guest]

Do you know how to correctly apply thermal paste?

[EggyFishLegs]

Do you know how to correctly apply thermal paste?

Yeah put a bit of paste the size of an uncooked grain of rice on the center of the cpu

[Octavialicious]

Like everyone said applying new thermal paste would be good; it's something you should try to do every once in a while.

[EggyFishLegs]

Like everyone said applying new thermal paste would be good; it's something you should try to do every once in a while.

But I've done it and it has normal temps the rest of the time it's only that one time that it's heated up like that.

[LogicalDrm]

That kind of overheating isn't something that can really be called even overheating. Its more likely that some background process started and required that tad much more CPU power that fan needed to boost its rpm. However you should consider continuous temp monitoring. RealTemp is good for that as you can use its task bar icons to check temps while on desktop. If ramping happens again, check highest temp that cores have reached. If thats over 85C then we can talk about overheating.

[EggyFishLegs]

That kind of overheating isn't something that can really be called even overheating. Its more likely that some background process started and required that tad much more CPU power that fan needed to boost its rpm. However you should consider continuous temp monitoring. RealTemp is good for that as you can use its task bar icons to check temps while on desktop. If ramping happens again, check highest temp that cores have reached. If thats over 85C then we can talk about overheating.

Ok, I didn't even think about it being a background task I think that was probably it