PC possibly overheating?

[Murphie]

So, I'm a bit concerned. I'm not the most technically savvy guy out there, but I bought my first home PC a couple of years ago and I've been pretty happy with it so far. It's very quiet, runs FFXI pretty well, but could use an upgrade in the Video Card department and maybe a bit more memory, both of which I plan on upgrading later in the year.

Anyway, the thing has run like a dream for two years now, but over the past couple of weeks, the fan has come on pretty regularly for a few minutes at a time, and it worries me, because I'm not sure if there's something I'm doing wrong. It's not near a heat source, and I keep the vents free of dust, but I assume it's still getting hot from time to time, and I don't know why.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I might solve this problem, or even how I might figure out exactly what's going on in the first place? This thing has been really good to me, but I'm just worried that I haven't been as good to it as I could have been.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

[bside]

Re: PC possibly overheating?

fans have a limited lifespan, whether it's a used-up bearing, dusts, or whatever the cause, and after 2 yrs of use no wonder it's losing cooling power.

by reading "the fan has come on pretty regularly for a few minutes at a time" i assume that ur pc is set up so the fans' rpm is kept low, when the temparture is low enough not to grant use of them. however, the fact that it's turned on more frequently means ur PC is hotter than before. one reason could be the rather dying fans that can't keep ur system cool enough anymore, or it could be that temparture in ur region is getting higher due to the season (unless of course u live in a southern hemisphere), and naturally PC is getting hotter as well.


while there could be various reasons, as long as ur PC is working fine u shouldn't be concerned too much. but if it's bugging u and u wanna do something to fix it, then i recommend to clean the fans, and see if that helps. if not, it might be a time to replace them.

at any rate, without actually seeing ur PC it's hard to tell. what i've said above is only a recommendation, and could do nothing to help it.

[Murphie]

Re: PC possibly overheating?

Still, I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I'm going to give them a good cleaning, and see if that helps, but if nothing else goes wrong, I'll try not to worry about it too much for now.^^

[Thrasher]

Re: PC possibly overheating?

Yes a 2 year old pc is most likely clogged with dust, You can use a program like speed fan http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php to check your cpu motherboard video card temperatures, and control your fan speeds (yes i know that was slightly redundant) . That program is not the most user friendly but umm... its free. And don't forget to clean out your cpu Heatsink, dust can build up in there and cause cooling problems.