I have an Athlon 64 x2 3800 that’s 2.5 years old now. I’m having overheating problems now. The problem first appeared when the machine was idle. The computer shut off automatically, and the CPU heatsink was noticably hot to the touch. I dusted what I could without removing the CPU heatsink or fan. Now I only have overheating problems when I run CPU intense processes on both cores. Strangely, the heatsink no longer feels hot when the computer shuts off.
Does anyone have suggestions about how to fix this more permanently? Do I just need to pull off the fan and dust more thoroughly? Or do I need to worry about the thermal paste between the CPU and its heatsink?
Yeah, I think you need to take the heatsink off and replace the thermal paste. Dusting does very little, it’s just cosmetic, maybe unclogs the fan a bit. It’s heat dispersion that really counts and if your heatsink is not warm then it’s probably not receiving heat from the CPU.
I have no idea what you mean by dusting doesn’t do much, my laptop runs noticeably quieter and cooler when I dust off it’s cooling. You also mentioned that the heatsink is hot to the touch, so I don’t think the problem is with thermal paste.
Can you confirm that the fan is working correctly? I remember I forgot to plug in the cpu fan for a desktop a while back and BAM!, it heated up and auto-shut downed to prevent damage in a few minutes after booting up(completely surprised me too).
You should put more effort into cleaning the cpu fan and if that fails, replace it.
Also, when you say you dusted it off, did you use one of those compressed air cans? Or were you using a vacuum or cloth or something? Because a compressed air is probably the best way to clean off the dust.
You could try undoing the heat sink clips and wiggling the heatsink from side to side a bit to improve the contact with the CPU. If that doesn’t improve the cooling, then go get the thermal paste.
ksensors or if you run gnome there may be a similar one is useful for tracking cpu temp for the cores.
I keep it on in the background to give me an idea of how hot my dual core turion is running at times. Though I can guess by fan sound as to the temp range it is guessing.
You may be running them already, but if not you can check them out in yast as some of the available software
Current summary:
I dusted the heatsink as best I could without removing the fan, using qtips and a bicycle pump for compressed air. I’m not sure why, but my heatsink fan does not have screws, making it difficult to remove.
I have tested the machine for 30 min or so running multiple very CPU-intense processes, and everything appears to be running fine.