Practical Tips to Decrease the Temperature of your Computer

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 23, 2006
Updated • May 8, 2013
Hardware
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9

One phenomenon can be observed every year when the warm summer period begins, or year round in regions where the thermometer never drops below 25 or so degrees Celsius. People notice that their PC systems start to reboot automatically, or stop working altogether after they have worked with the system for some time.

If you have experienced this in the past, you may already know what is causing this behavior. PC components such as hard drives, the cpu or video cards may overheat because of the temperature increase as the surrounding air gets warmer as well and air cooling becomes less effective as a consequence.

You can do a few things to check the temperatures of your PC components, some automated, so that you receive warning notifications in advance before temperatures reach critical degrees.

Speedfan is one of that programs that does exactly this. It checks all temperature sensors so that you get processor and hard drive readings right in the application interface, provided that your system supports that. The program can also manage system fans so that you can slow them down to reduce the noise, or increase their rotation speed to improve the cooling.

The motherboard needs to support this feature of course, but most modern boards should. Lets say all fans are working 100% and your components are still getting to hot. You could start by checking the airflow in your case. Where is the fresh cool air coming in, where is the warm air going out. Are all components in the flow or is one bypassed by the flow?

The airflow may be blocked by cables or other components in the tower, so make sure you get some cable binders to move cables out of the way. Also, remove any cable from the tower that is not needed.

If you are using a standard CPU cooler you may want to consider buying a more powerful cooler to replace it. A new cooler may drop the cpu temperature by ten or more degrees easily.

If you need your computer to work right away but it does not, you may want to try the following: take a regular fan and point it directly to your PC. Open one side of the case of the PC so that the fan is blowing straight at it. While this is not a solution for all eternity, it may get you through the day without further issues.

You could also check the fans and clean them. Especially useful if you are a smoker or never cleaned them before. Remove dust from them which also blocks their effectiveness.

Do you have additional tips that keep your computer from overheating? Let me know.

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Comments

  1. Mike J said on July 7, 2010 at 2:18 pm
    Reply

    I open up the case & clean fan blades & heat sinks very carefully with a Q-tip ( forgot what the English term is) lightly moistened in alcohol. I also of course clean the vents. I’d advise, don’t keep the PC on the floor, esp. if you have pets.
    I was surprised a couple days ago, peering at the BIOS, to find that heat warning/shutoff was disabled. I have no idea how that happened unless it is default. I redid a Windows install a while back because the fans were kicking into high gear even when the CPU wasn’t stressed ( maintaining the registry the Windows MVPs keep telling us is everlastingly fine, bloated beyond reason??) and a new XP fixed that problem right up.It had been 15 months of hard use since the last re-install.
    I use the desktop in a room sans A/C in Florida, and thus far, no problems.

  2. trsts said on February 3, 2010 at 10:16 pm
    Reply

    my computer video card overheats until it has 107° :S

  3. Csabe}{pert said on January 7, 2008 at 7:03 pm
    Reply

    If you did everything and your PC is still overheating try to increase your performance.
    Like:buy some memory,or you haven’t got money
    then you can change the Best look into Best performance,defragment your hard drive,take you’r PC-s case of,clean your fans, check if the air flow is good(I put some holes in the case and from 60c° decreased to 40° -but look out where you put it becuse you cud ruin the air circulation and that wont be useful)
    other tips for more speed :

    (use this for your own responsability)

    start>run, type in system.ini then hit enter
    and you will see something like this in a Notepad:

    ; for 16-bit app support

    [drivers]
    wave=mmdrv.dll
    timer=timer.drv

    [mci]
    [driver32]
    [386enh]
    woafont=dosapp.FON
    EGA80WOA.FON=EGA80WOA.FON
    EGA40WOA.FON=EGA40WOA.FON
    CGA80WOA.FON=CGA80WOA.FON
    CGA40WOA.FON=CGA40WOA.FON

    then under[386enh](the 386 can be other number)
    type in:

    LoadLocalHigh=1
    ConservativeSwaPfileUsage=1

    it shoud look like this:

    ; for 16-bit app support

    [drivers]
    wave=mmdrv.dll
    timer=timer.drv

    [mci]
    [driver32]
    [386enh]
    LoadLocalHigh=1
    ConservativeSwaPfileUsage=1
    woafont=dosapp.FON
    EGA80WOA.FON=EGA80WOA.FON
    EGA40WOA.FON=EGA40WOA.FON
    CGA80WOA.FON=CGA80WOA.FON
    CGA40WOA.FON=CGA40WOA.FON

    after that restart.

    for coments and questions Csabexpert_665@yahoo.com

  4. Rick said on July 26, 2006 at 3:31 pm
    Reply

    Lapping your heatsink and using a quality thermal grease will drop cpu temps up to 5°C. It takes a while to get a mirror polish, especially on “rough” sinks, but any/every drop in temp increases the life of your cpu.

    Using a quality thermal compound, properly, will offer temp reductions of a couple degrees, just by itself.

  5. Ruffian said on July 25, 2006 at 11:51 pm
    Reply

    Hm, my PC is noisy as hell because I always keep my case open to avoid overheating. The only problem now is 3 HDDs which are very close to each other and usually heats up to 45 C. When temperature grows up to 50 I take my portable room fan and place it opposite to my HDDs – it helps :)

    1. HZ said on January 18, 2011 at 4:41 am
      Reply

      you should always have your pc case CLOSED to allow for Maximum airflow. Air comes in from Front and Leaves from the Back. if its Open air will come into the case and generally stay there causing heat buildup. ass for the hard drives only have one in the pc and make the others external.

  6. Martin said on July 24, 2006 at 7:57 am
    Reply

    I don´t see a reason why it should not be working with laptops, it depends on the chipsets of the motherboards and the hard drives if they have a sensor for temperatures or not.

    Try it.

  7. Max said on July 24, 2006 at 3:20 am
    Reply

    Is this program (Speedfan) also going to work on/with laptops?

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