Chilling_Silence's blogPC / Router failing? It might be overheating
Yes, with the advent of summer, and more sunny days, hardware *does* fail.
I just recently fried two sticks of RAM, as I pulled them out of my PC they were so hot I burned my fingers. Serves me right for having so many Hard Drives in there without thinking about fans.
You may be in a similar boat, if you PC blue-screens and restarts, maybe it just won’t turn on, all are common symptoms of PC’s that are now overheating.
What can you do about it? Well to find out if your PC is overheating, grab either Speccy or EVEREST Ultimate (Trial). EVEREST is nice as it can be left in the system tray while you carry on working.
If any of your parts (Such as HDD, Motherboard, CPU or Graphics Card) are over 50 degrees for a desktop, or 60 degrees for a laptop, they’re probably getting a bit too warm for prolonged use. Naturally laptops run hotter, and some can quite happily sit between 50-60 degrees their whole life, but if possible you want to keep it cooler.
What can you do about it?
You might need to pull the sides off your PC and use a can of compressed air to blow out the dust / cobwebs. You can pick up a can of compressed air for around $30 from Dick Smith Electronics (Product code N1238). Yes, that’s $30 but if it saves you having to replace a few hundred dollars worth of parts, it’s worth it right?
Note: Do NOT use your vacuum cleaner. It’s far too easy to knock the parts, the brushes can cause damage, and to be safe you’d have to hold it too far away for it to be truly useful. Use compressed air.
Now, take your PC outside, perhaps on your garage floor or driveway with both sides off, stand it up, and blow into all the fans and around the circuitry. Be sure not to knock anything and you’ll be just fine.
What about your Router? Well if you cannot afford to replace your router with one that’s less prone to overheating, try moving it out of direct sunlight, or off the floor. You could try having a mini desk-fan blowing over it, or some people have even had good results using a Plate Stand to put their router on. If you’ve gotta get a fan on your router, it’s on it’s last legs and will need replacing sooner rather than later. See my previous blog posts for information on what routers are decent and what routers you should avoid, such as the freebies that many ISP’s give away.
If you’re still having issues with your PC overheating, restarting or freezing, then try posting on PressF1.co.nz and seeing what they say.
If this has been helpful to you in any way, please drop me a line and say Hi, share your thoughts, I’d love to hear from you 🙂
Hey,
Figured I’d make use of your site seeing as your not answering Msn.
Well ever since I got a new battery back in NZ (High powered massive thing that now sticks out and looks fugly as) my laptop has started blanking out on me randomly. Didnt occur to me until now it might be overheating. Maybe a combination of the hot weather + battery? Can a change to a larger battery do that? :S
It could do, it really depends on what temperature it’s operating at. As far as I’m aware it gets warmer there, than in NZ, so it’s definitely a possibility. Try turning off automatic restarts when it Blue-Screens by right-clicking on My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced –> Startup and Recovery Settings –> Untick “Automatically Restart”.
Next time it “blanks out”, see if there’s a STOP Error 0x00000**, where ** is two letters or digits. Either that, or some CPU’s / Laptops have a function that will deliberately hang the machine when it gets too hot, rather than it carrying on and permanently damaging the hardware. When it blanks out, is it on a bed for example? Or your lap? Or is it on a desk with nothing around it?
Using the “plate stand” trick makes my WRT160N run a lot cooler.
This is a useful blog Chill.
Thanks mate, appreciate the feedback 🙂
I’ve got to admit the Plate Stand idea did seem a little odd but I tried it on one WRT160N and it decreased it’s disconnections significantly, though in the end we replaced it anyway.