Ok, it's my turn to have a computer question.

I've got a 2.26ghz p4 overclocked to 2.55ghz. I've been running it like that for just over two years now. It's always been completely stable, and never overheated.

Recently, its developed a problem with overheating when I'm playing some games and (this is the strange part) under heavy disk IO. I know it's overheating because I have a BIOS alarm for that. Typically, I'll hear that beep intermittently, quicker and quicker, and then the system hangs or the program crashes.

I've reworked all of the internal cabling to maximize airflow, checked all the fans, and it's still overheating. I can't even play WoW for more than 15 minutes without crashing out. Yesterday, I was FTP'ing a 300MB website and it was overheating even on that.

Any ideas? I know I should try reducing the CPU overclock back to stock, but I'd rather try to understand why it developed this problem all of a sudden -- when nothing really changed at all.

1) Has the RPM on your CPU fan (or any others) changed at all?

2) Is there a lot of dust buildup on your CPU heatsink or fans? Put a straw on the vacuum hose and start cleaning or if you have an air compressor or reversable shop vac blow it out (don't overspin your fans)

3) Pull off CPU heat sink and re-apply the thermal grease

Well I can think of two possible causes.

A: there isn't good contact between your CPU and the heatstick anymore.

My father's machine died in a similar way after working for over a year just fine. After removing the cover to inspect the fans I noticed that the CPU cooler was looking kinda funny. Came out that one of the plastic latches holding the stuff on top of the CPU was broken and it wasn't holding it firmly in place anymore. The machine booted just fine but froze/rebooted if you tried to do some more stressing work.

B: a bearing is dying in your HDD.

But in your place I would try to run the thing without cover and see where is the hot air coming from :D

I'm gonna check the CPU heatsink when I get home. That sounds like a good idea, since it's happening on both graphics and non-graphics applications. Places like CompUSA sell the thermal grease?

They should Sancho ...

Also check the fan. I had a fuckload of dust melted onto my fan, dunno how the fuck that happened but when I chipped it off it all worked fine.

if its a stock HSF get a $15 one, most come with goop or a pad already for use


does your p4 support mhz throttling? if it does and it is no longer throttling down due to heat it could of gone bad (jolt, shock, bad part, heat dunno)

Wow. I wish I'd thought to take pictures.

I dropped the OC to continue using it until the WoW beta was over. Tonight, I pulled it apart and got the CPU/heatsink out. There was a ton of dust buildup visible through the fan, on top of the heatsink. I went and got some compressed air and thermal grease, and sprayed some air on the dust on top. About 5 tons of dust buildup came blowing out of every nook in the damn thing, from top to bottom.

So, I went ahead and got to the connection between the heat sink and chip. What used to be thermal grease that came from the factory (this was one of those boxed chips, with the attached heat sink and fan) had been cooked into a powdery, cakey gunk. No wonder... What little heat that was transferring was getting sent into a jungle of dog hair that was insulated from the fan on top anyway. Cleaned it down to bare metal, regreased it, and turned the OC way back up. Seems good as new.

Thanks for the suggestion. It was dead on.

u r a newb

get thee to the overclockery and git yerself some watercooling. you need to move from those archaic aircooled ways.

I can overclock it as high as it seems to want to go with air cooling anyway. It's not like it's an AMD or something.

never had to watercool an AMD


had to set up a watercooling unit for an intel based system, man i'm never going to do that again

Dust is the killer of ball bearing fans all around the world.

I pray the common industry never moves to water cooling. The Cash I earn from cleaning pc's that overheat from people at work pays for my movie buying and eq habits :(

haha same here man, plus watercooling is a bitch to remove

Watercooling has its advantages, you guys forgot about leaks, people messing up with water pressure or one of the many components breaking. That's plenty of stuff to repair (or tell to go to the store and buy new components), plus watercooling is just badass when you add the UV reactive stuff in the water. Actually, I've never touched a WCed systems, the people's comp I repair are always lame celerons :(

The part that's annoying is that I actually did check all the fans and look for dust buildup. I regularly clean (read: blow at really hard) the vents and grills on the case/ps fans to make sure they aren't blocked. I just couldn't see it underneath the CPU fan until I pulled the whole assembly off the MB for a closer look.

Oh, and damn is it hard to get that thermal grease off your hands.

For the most part (and I don't want to hear any old Celeron 400a stories) overclocking is a vast waste of time, money and warranties for anyone who needs it explained to them.

If you need a faster processor, buy one. In the long run, it'll be cheaper.

Mine's over two years old, and hasn't ever given me any trouble due to the overclocking. I didn't buy it with the intention of OC'ing it, but when I saw how easy the BIOS on my new motherboard made it, I had to try it. I'll take an extra 300 free MHz, and not complain. The difference isn't huge, but it is noticable in some applications.

I'll definitely be overclocking the next one I buy, if it seems to handle it as well as this one has.