Gaming Why does my CPU rise rapidly in temperature?

[Originality]

Just incase... Every time you take off the heatsink, you need to completely clean off the thermal paste and reapply it. Otherwise air bubbles form.

What heatsink are you using? Stock intel, or after market heatsink?
If this has only happened recently, how were you using your computer before? Any overclocking? Any particularly demanding games?
Have you cleaned out as much of the dust as possible? Not just from fans and heatsinks, but also from the capacitors in the motherboard?
Also, does your case have enough ventilation?

 

[raulpica]

The temperature sensor of the CPU is in the CPU itself. If it's busted (I have one such Intel P4 here) it'll just display weird temperatures like -169°C or stuff - not just slightly higher temps.

 

[MindC0ntroll]

Just incase... Every time you take off the heatsink, you need to completely clean off the thermal paste and reapply it. Otherwise air bubbles form.

What heatsink are you using? Stock intel, or after market heatsink?
If this has only happened recently, how were you using your computer before? Any overclocking? Any particularly demanding games?
Have you cleaned out as much of the dust as possible? Not just from fans and heatsinks, but also from the capacitors in the motherboard?
Also, does your case have enough ventilation?

I'm using an after-market Cooler Master heatsink.

I haven't done anything lately with my computer. The only major thing I've done was install a graphics card that I bought but it was big and took up a lot of space. I had to remove my PCI-E Ethernet card (which is how I get my internet connection as the Ethernet port on my motherboard doesn't work at all) just to get the graphics card to fit (I have a Micro ATX motherboard) and had some resolution problems on my monitor so I removed the graphics card and reinstalled the PCI-E ethernet card.

My case has adequate ventilation. It's a but messy but I have most of the cables out of the way for the fans to blow in properly.

I think it's a dust issue. I just checked inside and dust has accumulated in the fans. Is there a good way to clean them?

 

[Originality]

Compressed air usually does the trick. Also pipe cleaners for the more difficult to reach parts. Don't forget that dust cakes over the fins, so you need to wipe them either with a pipe cleaner or a tissue.

You could also use a Hoover/vacuum cleaner, but be careful since they can damage the motors.

 

[MindC0ntroll]

What if I took out the fans (PC case and CPU fans) and cleaned them like that? Also, will cleaning the dust from my PC lower the CPU temp? (if the BIOS is correctly reading the CPU temp)

 

[Originality]

That can work, but it is usually more effort than its worth because you have to put them back afterwards.

Cleaning dust will reduce the temperature, but not by much. The act of cleaning the dust is to remove insulation and allow the computer to breath easier. For the heatsink it also makes heat dispersion more effective. That's about it. If I had to give a figure, depending on how bad the dust is, cleaning it will reduce temps by 1-8 degrees.

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

In my experience, the CPU does not regulate itself when in the BIOS, allowing itself to utilise all the cores and cause a heavy rise in temperature. It is therefore usually more inaccurate to measure CPU temperature in the BIOS.

Check the temperature in Windows at low load and verify this.

If that's not the case, perhaps you used too much thermal paste. A very thin film is all that's needed

 

[MindC0ntroll]

In my experience, the CPU does not regulate itself when in the BIOS, allowing itself to utilise all the cores and cause a heavy rise in temperature. It is therefore usually more inaccurate to measure CPU temperature in the BIOS.

Check the temperature in Windows at low load and verify this.

If that's not the case, perhaps you used too much thermal paste. A very thin film is all that's needed

After some 5 hours of Internet browsing and being left idle, SpeedFan shows the CPU temp @ 60 C and System and MB temp @ 36 C. Maybe you're right in that it's inaccurate to read temp from the BIOS. But then again, I never had this problem before as the BIOS used to read the CPU temp at a stable 58-60 C. Hmm, maybe I just didn't notice...

 

[raulpica]

BIOS is accurate as it reads directly from the sensor. It's not a real-case scenario as it doesn't have any load whatsoever (and that's another entire matter), but it's accurate.