Re: [Hampshire] More on overheating boxes

john eayrs wrote:
>> Rob Malpass wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all
>>>
>>> Without wishing to resurrect a thread from earlier this week, my
>>> question is - Would removing the number of peripherals (e.g. one
>>> optical drive, one hard drive) inside the case reduce CPU
>>> temperature? Common sense tells me it should - but then again I
>>> didn't appreciate that keeping the case enclosed (i.e. not having any
>>> missing blanking plates) was also advisable - so perhaps my common
>>> sense ain't up to that much!!
>>>
>
> Have a look at the hard drives. A modern hard drive can get very hot (hot
> enough to fry an egg on). This in turn can cause the electronics to draw
> more current. This could be leakage current which may not exist if the
> drives were running cooler. Hot electronic devices tend to fail faster than
> cooler ones.
>
> Try a drive cooler if you have not got one and see what happens.
>
> Check the video card. Some video cards do not have adequate heatsinks.
> This has been known to cause a problem again due to leakage currents caused
> by high temperature.
>
> What is important inside a case is turbulent air flow around the components
> that get hot. Smooth air flow does not remove heat as efficiently. This is
> sometimes a matter of trial and error and experimentation due to the various
> cables inside a case that have the habit of altering the way the air flow
> behaves.

Probably not as relevant on a desktop machine as on a laptop, but check
for dust-bunnies lurking in your heatsinks. That said the CPU and
graphics card heatsking might be getting bunged up.

My wife's laptop started to overheat recently and this turned out to be
down to a big lump of dust blocking the air-in onm the CPU heatsink. I
removed the heatsink, removed the dust and reapplied thermal paste. It
has been considerably quieter since, and no overheating incidents.

Sean