I was just wondering

[Ninja]

Hello everybody. I was just wondering today about CPU temperature. The problem is that the air conditioner at my house is broken and until we buy a new unit, im using one of those standup fans to keep myself from dying in the heat in my room. What i wanted to ask is that my CPU gets really hot cause of no cool air, and the fan always spins at the highest speed. I do turn my pc off when i go to sleep at night to let it cool, but when im home its always on cause i have lots of work to do on here. So is the heatsink going to be fine with this fan until i get an air conditioner?

[Cervantes]

I'd turn it off just to be safe.

Power consumption has reached a record for this day, I believe. Let's conserve power, people!

My computer is on, but only because I really need it now to work on my CS FP. I can make up for that by not having an air conditioner, though.

[md]

I don't have an air conditioner; therefor I see nothing wrong with keeping my computers on

Your processor should be fine so long as your fan doesn't die. If you can't hear your fan any more then something is wrong.

[Ninja]

ah i see. Ya my fan is working fine, just running as fast as it can. Before i used to leave my pc running 24/7 cause i used to host some vent and game servers but now we got all rented to i guess i dont need it on 24/7 now. I do turn it off when i go to sleep and the whole day next day, its only on from 5 pm to 11 pm, 6 hours i guess it should be fine eh? Thanx for the help guys, now im sure my pc wont blow up

[Dan]

If your BIOS is made right then it should turn off the computer long before it is at dangures levels and not let you reboot intill the temp is in the sage range.

As for turing your computer off, it will decress the life of your computer with each reboot. So weather it is better off turing it off is debateble for a few reasons:

1. It uses up more life time of the computer and as such leades to more computer wast witch is aucatly exteramly bad for the enverment since alot of the computens of a computer are toxic to the enverment and hard to recely.

2. Boot up a computer use signifactly more power then running it noramly. This means if you reboot alot you could aucatly be using up more power then just leaving it on.

3. Compared to other home aplicantes and elections a computer takes up a very minumal amount of power. If you whont to save the everment try turing thos off 1st and puting your computer on a power save mode.

I whould deftaly recomend turing off monters of every kind tho, my bet is they take up just as much power and with some types leaving them on hurts more then restarting life time wise.

If you are consired about the enverment i think there alot of issues that need to be adressed before you start complaining about computers :p

Also if you have a standered monther borad there are alot of aplication witch can monder the tempcher of your cpu and if your fan is working and then do things acordingly if they stop working or start overheating.

[Ninja]

ya, my friend told me that too, that if u keep rebooting the pc its life goes down on each reboot and it takes up more engergy, thats y ive been leaving it on 24/7 since last september, in the winter it never overheated obviously but now the heatsink is REALLY hot, like i cant touch it for more then 5-10 seconds, i was just concerned about it lol. i dont wanna wake up one night and have to call 911 cause my pc is on fire lol. i think last year once my pc restarted and wont turn back on for 5 mins so i guess my BIOS is setup right as long as temperature detection goes. So i guess its not a big deal eh

[md]

rebooting PCs does not decrease their life spans, at least not in a measurable amount. It's just a myth these days, though it used to be true. Your computer also doesn't use noticably more power on rebooting; especially compared to how much it uses if you ust leave it on. Again, an old truth that is now just a myth.

Generally speaking your heat sync is supposed to be hot; that means it's getting hte heat away from the processor. if you can find an infra-red thermometer to measure the heatsync temp (or use built in sensors to get the CPU temperature) and it's not over 65 degrees you should be fine.

[Dan]

Cornflake wrote:

rebooting PCs does not decrease their life spans, at least not in a measurable amount. It's just a myth these days, though it used to be true. Your computer also doesn't use noticably more power on rebooting; especially compared to how much it uses if you ust leave it on. Again, an old truth that is now just a myth.

I disagrea. I know for 100% fact that it is ture with laptops, esptaly with the opening and closing for the screen and i am prity shure the inintal boot causes the hardrive to spin faster and work harder then normal witch increaes the likey hound of the reader to evduntaly touch the disk and permpemently scrach it casuing hard drive failure.

In therms of just having enegery go threw the monther bord it probly dose not have a big effect but it is the moviable parts of the computer that have the problems. The normal boot up access all the hdds, the cd-rom, and the floopy or other disk drives witch all have moving parts.

The real debate is what is worse, the sureger of use or the prolonged heat from the computer idealing?

[Ninja]

agreed. also i checked my CPU temperature last night after i posted and it was fluctuating between 65-67..so i guess im pretty close to the danger zone, although the system temp was 37 degrees celcius. But that temperature was after i turned the fan in my room off and also there was no wind blowing too, today its clowdy outsite and the temperature is around 22, so im expecting some wind, im probably gonna get my air conditioner today or tomorrow. Do u guys think buying a new, better heatsink and fan would be better? Im just running the one that came in the box for the processor, but its working fine, well atleast for now

[md]

Opening and closing the screen on a laptop will eventually wear out the hinges and the ribon wire that contols the LCD. However those are designed to last until well after the design life of your computer.

When booting the only hardship on your computer is the drives spinning up. The only reason that's hard is because it takes more energy to get a stationady platter spinning then to keep one spinning if it already is. The drives don't over rev, they will only spin up to their normal operating speed. Again, this is designed into the drives and will not lead to failure before the end of it's design lifetime.

Modern computers are designed to be able to reboot. They use a little bit extra power on boot compared to idling (when you actually use your computer it ends up using more power then it does booting), but if you turn your computer off for an hour instead of leaving it on you will indeed save power.

Things do change for servers that must run continuously however. If you leave a computer running with the drives spinning for 3 years then if you do have to restart teh drive might fail to spin up do to age. Given that most hard drive warranties are only 1 year (3 is the far limit) that's not unreasonable; if you leave your car running 24/7 you can be sure it'll break well before it's waranty is up, but a computer is happy to just keep on running for twice or three times the waranty length.

As for the heat sync; the box heat sync should keep your processor cool. If your running at %100 CPU usage then it'll be hot, but you should still be fine. It was designed expressly to keep it cool enough not to die. For reference the temperature in my room (where teh computer is) is 30 degrees; inside the case it's 37 degrees, my cpu idling while I write this is at 46, voltage regulators are at 42 and my gpu is at 49. The gpu doesn't even have a fan; though the case has three.

[Ninja]

Ah. Ya i am going to buy a new heatsinc w/fan today just to be on the safe side, ive had this pc for 1.5 years with the same old heatsinc and fan and i think its time to change it now. The temperature in my room is 30 too and system temp around there but my CPU was 65-67, which kinda frightned me, so i was worried about it and i decided to buy a new heatsinc.By the way, are there any ones that you recommend i get? cause i gotta go to the store and order them, they only have the cheap crappy ones on sale on the store so everything u wanna buy thats good, u have to order it. Thanks for the help . Oh by the way im also thinking of buying a 12 cm case fan too lol

[Andy]

seagate has standard 5 year warranty on all new drives

[md]

Then drives should last even longer! The only drive failure I have heard about because the server was restarted was on a 10 year old server 4 years ago. It had actually been runniong continuously for more then 5 years... but the uptime counter had rolled over at least once so no one is sure how many more.

[codemage]

If you haven't upgraded anything in your rig or overclocked anything, your stock fan & sink should be fine. Additionally, a new fan is only worthwhile if it's an improvement. (Newer isn't necessarily better).

If you have an outside fan running anyway - you might find it helps to point it at the case.

Clean out your case if you haven't in a while. Dust contributes considerably to the heat in the system.

Make sure there isn't anything obstructing the case; the fan outlet, or air inlets.

Finally; if you have your heart set on a new fan - you'll probably be interested in getting one that is quiet. A lot of people overlook this in favour of a fan that just pushes a lot of air.

[wtd]

Regarding fans...

Big and slow is better than small and fast. They move more air, and they're quieter.