How To Overheat Your PC

boleyd

Well-known member
I am always fiddling around trying things. One was the setting for the frames-per-second limiter. I usually ran it at 1/2 (30fps). However, I was curious about how fast Trainz was running when a live TV window was also open. Didn't want to miss the Covid-19 news. I would start a session and then open the TV window for 75% of the screen while watching the frame counter in the other window. It became a habit to have Trainz up and notice the clock and then bring up the TV program to run them concurrently.

Out of curiosity I turned on a little free APP (Core Temp) and saw temperature hitting the thermal cutoff of the CPU chip. Now this was after about 2 months of this type of operation. FPS for Trainz always over 100 so no damage YET. Vacuumed the inside of the PC but the temperatures remained high.

Then I recalled that I had turned off the frame limiter in Trainz to see those +100 fps. I set it to 1/2 (30 fps limit). I ran Trainz and a TV program. Now the temperature dropped from 98f (thermal limit) to the 65deg range. So now I can watch Governor Cuomo and Trainz at the same time after a close call with disaster.:wave:
 
Long time ago (probably TS2006) I managed to fry my CPU just using Trainz.

I now make sure that the BIOS settings include a warning at 75-80C for the CPU. I also use Thundermaster (or Afterburner) to magange the GPU Overclocking *and* the fan/temperature response - it's more aggressive than the standard.
The GPU is replaceable (not that I want to - it's expensive) but the CPU and Motherboard are more expensive to rectify.
I'd rather have a non-standard CPU Cooler - I reckon that most are perfectly good for Word Processing/Spreadsheets/non-demanding games, but I've seen Trainz use 90%+ of the CPU for hours without a break for cooling...

I also look carefully at the PC Case cooling ability as well - one PC case change dropped the CPU temperature by some 10C, just by having the fans and ducting in the right place.

Cheers,

Colin
 
Unless the CPU was an early AMD model, you had nothing to worry about. The CPU would throttle its self back in an attempt to cool down. If that doesn't do the job, it'll go into a thermal shutdown and crash the computer. Older AMD chips didn't have this built-in and relied on motherboard manufacturers to provide that. The problem was many of those really cheap motherboard manufacturers never bothered to, or poorly implemented thermal controls and things would go haywire. Today a couple of decades later, and this is not an issue, but even still I wouldn't push the hardware that hard because that can reduce the lifespan of the chip, and other hardware in the system due to the high amount of heat in the case.

I also recommend checking the thermal compound on your CPU. There are some new thermal pads available for about $8.00 from Walmart of all places that do a great job and don't suffer from the breakdown the goop does. Unfortunately doing the same on a modern-day video card is difficult due to their new construction, not saying it can't be done here. The video cards today will work within their operating range safely and will also throttle back then shutdown should they get too warm.

The ideal cooling method seems to be water cooling. It's not water, but it's called that and is really something similar to an antifreeze or glycerin and water mixture. There are sealed systems available if you want to go that route, but I'll stick with air. My brother-in-law used to water-cool his system and for some reason sprung a leak inside his case. The inside of his case looked like a fish tank with circuit boards in it, and it was quite a mess to clean up. I wasn't too pleased because this happened in my house at the time when he was living here and the stuff poured all over our new wood floor that were just put in! I don't remember the outcome of the components in the case. I think some were salvageable while others were not, but that incident was quite some years ago when it happened.
 
Taking covers completely off isn't so great either because there needs to be a positive air-flow in order to cool the components down. With my computer case, I ended up turning the fans around so that the air is pulled in from the sides and bottom and blown out the top. This keeps the CPU to about 60C max during the summer months and the video card around the same temperature as well.

The other problem besides fan direction is case size. If the case is too small, cables can get in the way and trap hot air causing heat build-up. Ensuring that cabling is out of the way with wires and cables neatly bundled helps a lot in this respect no matter what size case is used with larger cases working better due to more room to move the cabling out of the way.
 
Large cases with lots of quiet fans here. PC I'm on at present has two top extracting, two front and one bottom blowing in, one back extracting, plus Cooler Master Hyper212 EVO cooler and three on the 1080TI, cable managed out of sight and it hardly gets warm under load, so long as I clean the dust filters often. It's actually blowing cool air out the top at the moment!
 
Frame limiter is in the program. From launch screen select "trainz settings" and set vertical sync to half.
If your refresh rate is 60Hz this will limit your FPS to 30
Further on this subject, set your graphics card to performance rather that quality.
When set on performance the output switches between 720p for normal operation and 1080p for graphics intensive programs like Trainz.
This allows the CPU and the Graphics card to cool down when 1080p is not required.

Cheers,
Bill69
 
Large cases with lots of quiet fans here. PC I'm on at present has two top extracting, two front and one bottom blowing in, one back extracting, plus Cooler Master Hyper212 EVO cooler and three on the 1080TI, cable managed out of sight and it hardly gets warm under load, so long as I clean the dust filters often. It's actually blowing cool air out the top at the moment!

That's very much like my setup. I have one of those Crucial cases from about 10 years ago with plenty of room to allow for good airflow.
 
While having a great case and cooling fan setup is ideal, there is absolutely nothing wrong with removing the side cover and having a small desk fan blowing directly on the innards.
 
I am using the Cooler Master 4 fans (+ the700W power supply fan), all steel model. Weighing in at 40 lbs. Sort of a heat sink. CPU (4 core i5) quite old. A few months ago during cleaning I pulled the CPU and it had thermal paste that was trying to become concrete. Cleaned, applied the Silver stuff with a credit card for smoothing. Remember, you are matching a CPU,s surface to that of the cooler fan. They do not match. There are tolerances ($$$). So the paste fills the the voids (VERY small). It also fills the microscopic holes in each surface. Again they are not perfect so the paste insures that the CPU and fan have the maximum surface on each.

I was ready to replace the set of components which are quite old. As noted above, running at 100% available frame rate was a bad idea, and probably very expensive. Now I can watch the news in one window while tracking a train on a test run in Trainz in another. Temperatures very rarely hit the thermal max block, 98C. the vast majority of the time 78C is the average. I put the credit card back into my wallet.

Running without the case covers (fan holders) demonstrates the need for a better case.
 
For effective cooling water cooled is the way to go. My PC used to be fully water cooled until a minor leak destroyed the C drive (not a good advert I know) but there are a lot of sealed loop CPU coolers now and when I next rebuild my PC I will use one of those. This PC case includes a CPU water cooler in the case and if I can get the black/red version my current case will be history.

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For effective cooling water cooled is the way to go. My PC used to be fully water cooled until a minor leak destroyed the C drive (not a good advert I know) but there are a lot of sealed loop CPU coolers now and when I next rebuild my PC I will use one of those. This PC case includes a CPU water cooler in the case and if I can get the black/red version my current case will be history.

Water is also known as the universal solvent or in other words it is very difficult to stop leaks and that is the problem with water cooling especially with the minor vibrations that you get with a PC. Chemically liquid nitrogen is a much better coolant, it just evaporates if it leaks. It does have it's own set of problems though.

Cheerio John
 
Running without the case covers (fan holders) demonstrates the need for a better case.

Anytime you put a box around electronics, encasing electronics that heat up (especially in summer temps), sealing them inside a box, only results in keeping a lot of heat inside, unless you had a super high powered fan system sucking lots, and lots, of fresh air in across electronic parts. You can have the absolute best case in the world, and it still encases much of the heat inside.

Laptops are the worst offender, eventually clogging with dust, drying up and cooking the heat sink thermal paste, and overheating.

I'll still stick with a 74F air conditioned room, with desktop PC case covers removed, with a small desk fan gently blowing a nice steady cool breeze across the hot electronics. Besides, I want to actually see all the electronics that I paid money for. I am sure that any super computer server building has a efficient air conditioned, dust free, clean room, with lots, and lots, of flow through, air flow.

I worked in a building and it was absolutely frigid inside in summer months, I swear it was 50F, so cold that it gave you a headache, and you had to wear a winter coat, put your hands in coat pockets, and wear a knit hat covering your ears, the perfect environment for operating electronics equipment. However actually blowing an air conditioner output across electronic parts could cause water vapor condensation, and installing a desktop inside a damp 41F refrigerator would be be a really bad idea.

Water cooled desktop systems are a great efficient means of cooling heat sink chips, but I still am wary about eventual water leaks.

I could get a DELL, or Xidax, desktop PC, shipped from Ireland, or Arizona, or even hand pickup one from BestBuy, and during it's journey, it rides in several delivery truck(s), and airplanes, getting constantly banged around and thrown by workers, and dropped by crews, and falling off conveyor belts, which puts a lot of stress on parts.
 
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Could a failure in the water system, where the flow stops, end up frying the electronics? I have no idea how they are constructed but a water cooler that uses conductive cooling and has no backup CPU fan seems like something to avoid. My CPU, fan cooled) can't go above 98c which is its thermal max. I hit that OFTEN but never has a CPU issue. Unless I am monitoring the temperature I never know it is at max temperature. Maybe I just got a "strong" CPU.

I agree that laptops are disasters waiting to happen running CPU and/or GPU heavy loads. Cheap laptop for casual use with a 1st class desktop is the way to go. Actually my old laptop sets in the corner and a Celeron powered small PC is my backup. I usually just use it to watch the news while I play Trainz.
 
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