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Right... Probably shouldn't have done this, but I wanted to clean the dust out of my heat sink. I popped it off the motherboard, cleaned it out with compressed air and popped it back on again. I wouldn't have thought it would be a big deal, but for some reason now my fan doesn't want to kick in at high RPM. It will speed up, from 2200rpm to about 2600rpm, but no faster. It used to sometimes get upwards of 4000rpm which seemed kinda fast (and loud) which is why I wanted to clean the heat sink. Currently my utilities program (Intel Desktop Utilities 2.0) is set to throw up a warning if the processor temp exceeds 75C. Since the fan speed now won't go above 2600rpm, it does this as soon as I run anything more processor intensive. Do I need to get a new fan/heatsink? Or is there something I can set somewhere to tell the fan to go faster than 2600rpm (maybe there is something that limits it now?)
Anyway, if anyone has had this happen or knows something for me to check, I'd very much appreciate it. For now... no more games or 3D stuff. =P
Did you thoroughly clean off the old thermal material from the CPU & heatsink, then apply a fresh layer?
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Hi, no I didn't. I didn't know I was supposed to. I'm a n00b. =) What sort of stuff am I supposed to use?
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OK I took the heatsink off again (hopefully this won't make things worse) and I think I see what it is you are talking about. There is a softish grayish substance both on top of the CPU as well as on the bottom of the heatsink on the copper plate. I'm guessing this is the stuff that needs to be cleaned and replaced? I'm not sure how that would affect the fan speed, but perhaps if the thermal conduction across the connection isn't consistant... hmm yes, if the fans' temp sensors are on the sink rather than the CPU that could affect it. What is this gray stuff called and how do I get a hold of it?
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The thermal material may or may not have anything to do with your fan speed, but it definitely has something to do with your processor temp. Get some ASAP
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the grey stuff is called thermal paste you do not need very much so don't go crazy with the size of the tube
the paste is to fill in any voids between the heat sink and the cpu so there is constant cooling
to clean it off use the highest percentage isopropyl alcahol with a lint free cloth
it is possible that your fan was spinning at higher rpm because it was dirty
now that there is no dust it is not stressing the motor anymore
(depending on how dirty it was)and good for you for getting your hands dirty by opening your pc and cleaning the heat sink but you don't have to take off the heat sink to clean it
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Lots of compressed air was sprayed and there was much merriment. Until I turned the machine on again after everything was put back together. I wasn't so merry after that.
The fan spins just fine, it just doesn't want to spin really fast. It does CHANGE speeds so it is sensing some temperature change and is responding to that. But it's not sensing the CORRECT temperature change. The fan seems to think that the processor is cooler than it really is and therefore doesn't spin up. My worry was that the sensor/speed regulator was broken, but if the issue is just that the heat transfer is poor, as "jam" suggested, then hopefully that will be an easy fix.
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Hi, That "Softish Grayish" substance on the Processor and Heatsink is exactly what you should see. Any excess Pidgeon Pooh is squeezed out and will always look like that.
There was no need to remove the HS, but it's always good to check.Luck, Jim
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Ok, lesson learned. =) Don't remove the heat sink unless you really REALLY mean it. However, in this case I think it wasn't a bad thing. I headed over to Fry's this morning and picked up some Artic Silver Ceramique. Followed their site's step by step instructions for cleaning and reapplication, and my CPU is now running about 10 deg cooler than it ever has (idle is now around 50C). I ran it through PassMark's Stress Test (comes with Intel's Desktop Utilities) and never exceeded 74C. 3D games are running right around 68C without stressing out my poor fan.
Thank you all very much for the help! =)
Now I just have to figure out what the stress test meant when it reported "Video Memory Corruption" under 2D graphics.... >.>
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Argh... ok I thought things were working ok but maybe not.
I was just doing some more processor intesive artish stuff (moving around large layers of image data) and suddenly got the temp threshhold warning again. I went back to look at the temp monitor and once again it reported reaching a high temp on the CPU with no response from the fan. The fan stayed at 2200rpm even though the temp was going up to 70C+. Which is very weird because just earlier when I ran the stress test, it responded fine changing RPM as the temp went up.
I quit out of my art program and got a strange error I'd never gotten before, and then IE wouldn't connect to this website. I shut the whole thing down to let it cool off for a while.
I'm afraid now there is not only something wrong with the fan sensor but that I've damaged the CPU somehow. I'm not sure what to do at this point. =/
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