Im on a relatives computer at the moment and it shuts off randomly due to in the BIOS boot-up screen it states a "thermal event occured". I assumed that this meant it was overheating however on touch of the case it feels cold. I installed speedfan and it showed that the "core temp" was a blazing 66 degrees and thats JUST ON BOOTUP! I actually like my uncle so i dont want his computer to die out on him is there anything i can do to lower the temp aside from installing a new cooler and physically opening the case? (it says core0 25 degrees, core1 24 degrees, HDD 30 degrees. Everything else is cool)
If the cores themselves are cold, the heatsink etc. is working fine. It may simply be there's a faulty temperature sensor in the CPU.
I concur with sammorris if comp is left for a while & upon boot it goes straight into shutdown then it's a sensor issue,would'nt hurt to open the case & clean any dust from the heatsinks & fan blades etc,those temps you've posted are quite low compared to mine
It doesnt go STRAIGHT into shutdown. I was actually visiting this site when it shut off the first time. Its normal for the core temp to be 66? I guess it could just be a faulty sensor.
So i just re-checked speedfan only to notice that "CORE" is actually his NVIDIA Video Card. Its a some-what brand new NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE. Any way to just cool this? (weird that a graphics card idles at 67 though?)
Really? The majority of people I know use speedfan and not a single one of them have their graphics card temps on it. You usually need a graphics card tool like ATitool to see that, or Everest.
Well unless im reading this wrong: http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t143/imamember12/untitled.jpg http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t143/imamember12/untitled1.jpg
That's interesting. Speedfan's not compatible with my motherboard so I can't check, but from what I can recall about using it, the temperatures can often get mixed up. I note it mentions nothing about your motherboard's chipset temperature in that, and Speedfan does record the chipset temperature.
Im stumped. He was on the phone with Dell support for 2 hours today and they were like "are you overclocking the video card?" I was like wtf my 45 year old uncle doesnt know what that means. He has a 7300! Theres no point to even overclock that thing when it can barely handle low quality on MS Flight simulator (oh and it shuts off after playing it after a good hour or so, thats why i was almost certain it WAS the graphics card) My little brother was watching T.V on here and it did the same thing after a half hour or so. (media center)
Well, if watching TV causes it, it probably isn't the graphics card. If it takes the same amount of time to happen when you're playing a game as when you're doing nothing, it probably isn't the graphics card. If the system fully shuts down and doesn't reboot, it probably isn't the graphics card. This all points to the CPU or Motherboard getting hot. Have you cleaned the inside of dust?
Well as it turns out i asked my little brother what he was doing when it shut off on him and he changed his story from being on playhousedisney.com/watching t.v to playing battlestations midway. (he was lying to my mom because she doesnt want him to play "violent" games. I put it on his computer for him..) Soo that narrows it down to ONLY playing games. The computer was left on all night and nothing happened and my uncle was watching episodes of the office on here for 3 hours yesterday. Nothing happened then either. I opened up the case and noticed that there was only 1 extra fan inside the case. Aside from the one attached to the CPU and the PSU i mean. Its not even really POINTING at anything either its just "there".
Well, case fans aren't supposed to point at anything in particular, especially when there aren't very many of them. Their role is to draw air through the whole case so that all the components get cooled (there are far more things that need cooling in a PC than just the CPU, Graphics card and PSU). It surprises me that the PC would shut down if the Graphics card overheats, however I'll come clean on this, I've not ever had an nvidia card overheat. I know what the procedure for an ATI card is (because I set the speed to minimum in ATItool then played FEAR and forgot to up it... LOL) and the PC simply reboots. nVidia may use a different strategy. Are there any additional places to put fans? If not, perhaps try installing a faster fan? It may also be worthwhile refitting the graphics card heatsink with Arctic Silver V.
