Posted: 10/2/2014 8:48:28 PM EDT
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1st, this is for my soon to be steps sons computer. Ill try to give as best details as I can. But again, its not my computer.
2nd: I have a good understanding of computers, but the majority of my experience is 10 years old. (Been on a Tablet forever) Its a desktop, Thermaltake with 2 fans front and back AMD 8320 GFX750 and unknown 1TB drive. plain/stock dvd drive Im not sure of the MB. thats about it in the case. He is having constant problems with the CPU overheating. We even added a window A/C to his room. Hes 16yo and has a huge YouTube channel and makes a good bit of $ from it. He does video game how-tos, reviews, etc. So the computer is always running. Id like to keep encouraging the entrepreneurship by helping him fix the cooling problem. Im thinking adding a fan to the top, and the best CPU heatsink money can buy. So thats what I am looking for suggestions on. 99% sure the fan will need to be a 120mm for the hole in the case. |
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Friend had same problem.
We removed the stock heatsink and checked it first to make sure it was seated correctly (it was). Blew out all the fans/dust/etc. Didn't help. He had one of the new (at the time) 8-core AMD chips, you could cook an egg on it. We tried a couple of aftermarket heatsink/fan combos, and he settled on one he liked. We installed a second evac fan for good measure. His system came from the factory this way, and in my opinion, was never set up properly from the beginning. Since your son's was working, and now is overheating, clean the case out (and clean it good, take it outside with a vacuum cleaner and an air compressor, take it all apart, and spend the time to clean *all* the dust out). I like to stop the fans with my finger before I hit them with compressed air, as I have had fans burn out on my after spinning at a million rpms under the pressure from a compressor. Same with the power supply. While the system is broken apart, check the CPU heatsink to make sure it hasn't come loose. Also a good time to scrape/clean off the old thermal paste (use rubbing alcohol) and install new paste. Could also be the graphics card overheating; if he has onboard video, remove the discreet video and see if the problem persists. |
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Friend had same problem. We removed the stock heatsink and checked it first to make sure it was seated correctly (it was). Blew out all the fans/dust/etc. Didn't help. He had one of the new (at the time) 8-core AMD chips, you could cook an egg on it. We tried a couple of aftermarket heatsink/fan combos, and he settled on one he liked. We installed a second evac fan for good measure. His system came from the factory this way, and in my opinion, was never set up properly from the beginning. Since your son's was working, and now is overheating, clean the case out (and clean it good, take it outside with a vacuum cleaner and an air compressor, take it all apart, and spend the time to clean *all* the dust out). I like to stop the fans with my finger before I hit them with compressed air, as I have had fans burn out on my after spinning at a million rpms under the pressure from a compressor. Same with the power supply. While the system is broken apart, check the CPU heatsink to make sure it hasn't come loose. Also a good time to scrape/clean off the old thermal paste (use rubbing alcohol) and install new paste. Could also be the graphics card overheating; if he has onboard video, remove the discreet video and see if the problem persists. OP should check to make sure Thermal Paste was applied for the CPU cooler. |
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as far as I know its bone stock. He put it in. Does it come from the factory with paste? Ill still check, but Id hate to redo a job thats been done. Quoted:
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OP should check to make sure Thermal Paste was applied for the CPU cooler. as far as I know its bone stock. He put it in. Does it come from the factory with paste? Ill still check, but Id hate to redo a job thats been done. If it's the AMD cooler that came with the CPU, there should have been sufficient paste. |
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If it's the AMD cooler that came with the CPU, there should have been sufficient paste. Quoted:
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OP should check to make sure Thermal Paste was applied for the CPU cooler. as far as I know its bone stock. He put it in. Does it come from the factory with paste? Ill still check, but Id hate to redo a job thats been done. If it's the AMD cooler that came with the CPU, there should have been sufficient paste. Im 99% sure it stock. Thats the one thing I was thinking of swapping out. Is there a better aftermarket one? I want the biggest, best, money no object one. |
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Showing my age, but you talking about in the start-up right? Or at least walk me though. Quoted:
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Could also be the graphics card overheating; if he has onboard video, remove the discreet video and see if the problem persists. Showing my age, but you talking about in the start-up right? Or at least walk me though. I just checked, and the CPU your son has is the same one my friend's son had. It overheated out-of-the-box (factory built system) and as soon as we added an aftermarket cooler, life was good. As for the video card... That AMD CPU doesn't have integrated graphics (unlike some of the Intel CPUs for example), but some AMD-socketed motherboards have video onboard. See if the MB has HDMI, DVI, or DSUB connectors on it. If so, remove the video card from the system and run it off the onboard graphics for a while. If it doesn't overheat, I'd suspect the video card. I've seen some heatsinks come loose on some modern video cards, although its rare. May I ask how you were able to ascertain that the CPU is the part that is overheating? You can also boot into BIOS and go into the "hardware monitor" area, somewhere where you should be able to see CPU and MB temps. Sitting in BIOS there should be no load at all on the CPU. You can look at its temperatures there. If temps start to get crazy, just sitting there at the BIOS screen, I would again suspect heatsink/paste/both. |
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You can't go wrong with one of these, if there is room in the case for it. http://i876.photobucket.com/albums/ab326/jkw3637/h100i_hero_fan.png Interestingly, that's exactly what we ended up putting in my friend's son's machine. He also had a retardedly high-end video card, and we figured the combination of blast furnaces dumping heat into the case made the stock HSF ineffective. Once we added another evac fan and this cooler, temps of all components in the system went down by a very large margin. How the system was allowed to leave the factory configured as it was is still a mystery. |
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You can't go wrong with one of these, if there is room in the case for it. http://i876.photobucket.com/albums/ab326/jkw3637/h100i_hero_fan.png
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You can't go wrong with one of these, if there is room in the case for it. http://i876.photobucket.com/albums/ab326/jkw3637/h100i_hero_fan.png tons of room in the case. Looking them up now |
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Corsair also makes a 120mm version of their closed loop cooler, if a 240mm won't fit. The unit in my PC has been running non stop for almost 3 years, without a problem. Have a double 120mm from Corsair (don't remember the model but it doesn't have any fancy electronics or software, and was cheap) on my 125w Phenom II and, same traffic, two or so years uptime, not a single problem, and many orders of magnitude better than the stock cooler (and with no room for a beefy heatsink/fan combo in the case, it was a no brainer) Since he runs a business with his PC (wish I was that smart at that age) I'd say leave everything alone and stable, but with a good liquid cooler, he may be able to overclock a wee bit..... Shoot since his youtube channel does reviews, tell him to do a before and after on stock cooler vs whatever you guys get. Geeks love that stuff. |
The biggest and best cooler will be a custom water cooling setup. There is basically no limit to the amount you could spend.  I'd remove the stock HSF and reapply thermal paste as a starter. If that doesn't work, buy a decent aftermarket cooler. There really is no point in going all out unless you are overclocking.
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Quoted: The biggest and best cooler will be a custom water cooling setup. There is basically no limit to the amount you could spend. I'd remove the stock HSF and reapply thermal paste as a starter. If that doesn't work, buy a decent aftermarket cooler. There really is no point in going all out unless you are overclocking. |
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That, apply some artic silver (you can get this shit at radio shack) and clean up the proc and HS with rubbing alky before you apply. Quoted:
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The biggest and best cooler will be a custom water cooling setup. There is basically no limit to the amount you could spend. I'd remove the stock HSF and reapply thermal paste as a starter. If that doesn't work, buy a decent aftermarket cooler. There really is no point in going all out unless you are overclocking.Agreed, but with all do respect, AMD;s stock coolers leave a lot to be desired on their higher-end chips. "Money is no object" -- well, $30 or $40 at newegg would get you an air cooler many orders of magnitude more efficient than the stock HSF, if that's what the OP's son has. $50+ and you could get something that will last him several generations of upgrades, easily. I have a Cooler Master "tower cooler" Hyper D92 that kept an elderly Core2Quad frosty as heck, and that was in a garage PC in Arizona summers. Think I got it for $40 shipped on ebay. Now its on a Phenom II X6, same traffic, frosty. The X6 almost cooked itself in the garage in July on the stock cooler. It gets loud, but its in the garage so I don't care. A sub-$100 turn-key water cooler (Corsair, Cooler Master, Thermaltake, etc) will tame that CPU's heat and he can put it on future systems since CPUs seem to be getting cooler and more power efficient as we go. |
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We had a few business class PC's with overheating problems a few years ago. The OEM sent us new CPU's and then new heat sinks. We even went ahead and swapped out the fans for newer, more efficient models. After all that it ran where it was supposed to. I'd go with the new CPU sink.
The funny thing is, I was literally looking at CPU sinks earlier before I read this. Not for computers, but to replace/upgrade sinks on the back of some GE radio equipment that has been out of production for 30+ years now. |
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Little update.
We threw the single fan version of the Corsair posted above. As far as I knew, it worked like a champ. He said temps never got over 40*ish C. Well I was out of town all last week. He bought a 900W power supply while I was gone. Last night when I got home I helped him install it. 99% sure we did everything correct. It ran all last night, and most of today. He told me earlier it turned off and would not restart. He was downloading something, not sure what. We threw the old power supply in it and it fired up just fine. Any ideas? Do they just go out like that? Like I said, 99% sure everything was hooked up correctly. He got it from Tiger Direct so hopefully they will swap it out. |
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Quoted: Little update. We threw the single fan version of the Corsair posted above. As far as I knew, it worked like a champ. He said temps never got over 40*ish C. Well I was out of town all last week. He bought a 900W power supply while I was gone. Last night when I got home I helped him install it. 99% sure we did everything correct. It ran all last night, and most of today. He told me earlier it turned off and would not restart. He was downloading something, not sure what. We threw the old power supply in it and it fired up just fine. Any ideas? Do they just go out like that? Like I said, 99% sure everything was hooked up correctly. He got it from Tiger Direct so hopefully they will swap it out. You can also bench test the suspect power supply, see link. |
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Since it works fine with the old power supply, it can only be one of two things. The new power supply died, it can happen. Or the power switch lead to the motherboard is not making a good connection. What brand power supply is the new one? I think all have at least a 1 year warranty, better ones have a longer warranty. You can also bench test the suspect power supply, see link. http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-power-up-an-ATX-Power-Supply-without-a-PC/ Quoted:
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Little update. We threw the single fan version of the Corsair posted above. As far as I knew, it worked like a champ. He said temps never got over 40*ish C. Well I was out of town all last week. He bought a 900W power supply while I was gone. Last night when I got home I helped him install it. 99% sure we did everything correct. It ran all last night, and most of today. He told me earlier it turned off and would not restart. He was downloading something, not sure what. We threw the old power supply in it and it fired up just fine. Any ideas? Do they just go out like that? Like I said, 99% sure everything was hooked up correctly. He got it from Tiger Direct so hopefully they will swap it out. You can also bench test the suspect power supply, see link. http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-power-up-an-ATX-Power-Supply-without-a-PC/ we threw the old one on it. Worked just fine. Threw the new one on again, nothing. He said TG is giving him a 5 day no questions asked so we are going to send it back in the AM. Will report back with any findings or advice. Thanks to all that have replied. |