Overheating or not? whats wrong?

[<Mr.Red>]

I got my computer about 2 years ago. Ever since I have been having overheating problems.Randomly when I was playing a game it would just go black and restart. I finnally found out why it was overheating, the heat sink to the cpu was covered in a think layer of dust. I cleaned it out and that seemed to solve the problem.

Then a couple months later it started to do the same thing again. Except this time the cpu wasnt covered in dust. The screen just goes black and restarts when im playing games or when im just on the internet or somthing simple like that. I got a new fan to increase the airflow and installed motherboard manager. It says my cpu is around 36 degrees celcius yet it still restarts itslef like its overheating even when its not.

What could be causing this problem? could it be the power supply? I read somewhere that this guy was having the same problem as I am and he solved it by plugging his case fan into the motherboard rather than the power supply. And I do have a fan that is powerd by the power supply.

please help, thanks.

[TechZ]

Welcome to the forums

There are a few things you can try and test:

1] The other components like vga, psu, motherboard, HD may also be overheating due to poor case cooling, what are the pc specificiations, and the case cooling setup.

2] A possible malware software issue, when was the last time you did a complete online AV scan and scanned for spyware?

3] Test your ram with : http://www.goldmemory.cz/ or http://www.memtest.org/

4] It could very well be the PowerSupply, generic brands tend to cause such intermittent problems. Only way to test is to swap it for another and see if the same issues occur.

[Tecumseh]

Welcome to the forums

There are a few things you can try and test:

1] The other components like vga, psu, motherboard, HD may also be overheating due to poor case cooling, what are the pc specificiations, and the case cooling setup.

2] A possible malware software issue, when was the last time you did a complete online AV scan and scanned for spyware?

3] Test your ram with : http://www.goldmemory.cz/ or http://www.memtest.org/

4] It could very well be the PowerSupply, generic brands tend to cause such intermittent problems. Only way to test is to swap it for another and see if the same issues occur.

Hey, TechZ ... quick question. I notice you recommend that folks with possible virus/spyware infestations do online scans. Is there a benefit to this process or are you figuring that they probably don't have AV & SW apps installed and running?

[TechZ]

Hey, TechZ ... quick question. I notice you recommend that folks with possible virus/spyware infestations do online scans. Is there a benefit to this process or are you figuring that they probably don't have AV & SW apps installed and running?

Local AV's always have a chance to be compromised by malware of some sort, and users tend to not bother with keeping it updated (online scans always have the very latest definitions).

Also the basic free versions of some AV are just not good enough (or dont have those extra features) to deal with malware. And some people just dont have local AV's installed