compaq desktop running at 93C :help:

[c.ruel]

My dad's computer sounds like an aeroplane taking off and randomly shuts down. I said I would have a look at it and hazarded a guess that it was probably over heating, hence the fans desperately trying to keep the noise down. It is a compaq Presario SR1729UK, the specification can be found here. I installed speedfan and it returned this:

GPU:52 FAN1:3879rmp
CPU:0 FAN2:2297
Ambient:30
Remote:90
HDD:33
Temp1:40
Core:47
Ambient:0

Obviously all of the labels for the various temperatures aren't correct and some of them are repeated twice. The problem is obviously that the remote temperature is around 90C. I looked on the speedfan website to find out what the remote temperature was. It's not terribly clear and all I can deduce is that basically it can be the temperature of just about any of the components including the CPU. As the CPU temperature is returned as 0C and FAN1 is spinning at 3879RPM I reckon that the remote temperature is refferring to the CPU ... is this likely? I went into the BIOS to see if that had hardware monitoring facility which would give me an accurate read of CPU temperature and fan speed, unfortunately the BIOS did not have that functionality.

When the computer shuts down it doesn't display any messages it just dies. Would this be the way in which a computer with an over heating processor would shut down? If I do isolate the problem as cpu heat, I was thinking of getting a new heatsink for it or just reapplying the old one with better TIM. Do after market heatsinks work on prebuilt pc's, it is a standard socket 775 I believe?

Sorry for long post ... thanks in advance!

[jim]

I know this is fairly obvious, but have you cleared all of the dust out of the case and the heatsink?

[c.ruel]

Someone did that for them awhile ago. Apparently it was fine for a week or so and then it went back to randomly shutting down and it wasn't really any quieter.

[jim]

Try HWMonitor from CPUID.com

No install required, generally a lot more informative than SpeedFan. See what that says regarding temps and let us know what you've found out.

[scaryjim]

Try CoreTemp as well, which should guarantee you the CPU temp. I take it this is a small form factor old-style desktop PC? I've got a couple of similar PCs at work and they run very hot and sound like a 747 taking off.

One thing to do is check in the BIOS and see if there's a fan control at all - I found at work that several of the fans were not running at full speed. Sure, it'll be noisy if you turn it up, but it should keep it a bit cooler. I've had a quick look on the COmpaq website and can't find any mention of newer CPU support, so you probably can't switch to a cooler runing CPU, which I mean would leave you with either reseating the CPU cooler with new thermal gunk, or improving the case airflow, as your methods of cooling the computer. You might be able to get a new CPU cooler, but some pre-built PCs use proprietary fixings, and most will have very limited space for a new cooler...

[c.ruel]

I used a vacuum cleaner to get all the dust and deattached all of the fans and cleaned ... so much dust in there. Then I took the CPU heatsink off and reapplied TIM ... there was soo much gunk attached to the heatsink. Now it seems to work fine the temperatures read:

GPU:57
CPU:0c
Ambient:30
Remote:46 (rather than 90 odd lol)
HD0:27
Temp1:40
Core:53
Ambient: 0

So yeah not great but way better than before.

Thanks for the advice and stuff hexus.