Welcome to summer. Well, at least in the northern hemisphere it’s summer. Full-on heat. Your computer doesn’t like that.
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\nComputers would prefer to operate at very, very cold temperatures. When the temperature gets too hot inside the case, things start to get screwy: You’ll see crashes, errors, and all sorts of Bad Things.<\/p>\n
The computer’s documentation, had you bothered to read it, said that a safe operating temperature is between 40\u00baF and 80\u00baF, which is between 5\u00baC and 27\u00baC. That’s a good range, but during the dog days of summer, it’s easy for an un-air-conditioned den or office to get much warmer than 80\u00baF or 27\u00baC.<\/p>\n
My advice from PCs For Dummies<\/em> is to Turn Off The Computer when it gets too hot in the room. Seriously: Turn it off<\/em>.<\/p>\n Even I turn off my PCs when it gets too hot out, and I’m one of those crazy people who leaves their computers on all<\/em> the time.<\/p>\n Computers don’t like heat, because they create a lot of it. In fact, the reason your PC makes any noise at all is that it has a fan designed to keep the inside of the console cool. That’s the power supply’s fan.<\/p>\n The processor also has its own fan, which it wears like a tiny hat. That’s because the processor, which runs very<\/em> fast, generates enough heat to power a munchkin sauna.<\/p>\n Your PC’s display adapter might have a third fan, one designed to keep the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) cool. I’ve even seen some display adapters with two<\/em> fans. Cool.<\/p>\n Sometimes all those fans aren’t enough: The other day I added yet another internal fan to two of my kid’s computers. Both systems were getting too hot and the second fan helps push the air out of the console.<\/p>\n How do you know when your PC is getting too hot? Well, you (the human) will probably feel the heat in the room well before the computer does. If it gets hot, turn off the PC!<\/p>\n More interestingly, most PCs come with internal sensors that read the CPU, GPU and even the console’s internal heat. What’s measured depends on the system, but you can get software to examine the temperature. Two such programs are RivaTuner<\/a> and SpeedFan<\/a>.<\/p>\n SpeedFan is pretty straightforward in its interface; you’ll find the temperature gauge right up front, as shown here:<\/p>\n In RivaTuner, you’ll need to display the hardware monitor window: In the Main tab, click the button by the word Customize (the top one), and choose the last icon on the right from the pop-up menu.<\/p>\n Warning:<\/strong> Use these programs only to monitor the PC’s internal temperature. I recommend against messing with any other settings. The programs are not<\/em> for the casual user.<\/p>\n And if you’re an American, remember to convert those Celsius values to Fahrenheit. Anything hotter than 150\u00baF or 65\u00baC and you should turn the computer off. Or buy another fan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome to summer. Well, at least in the northern hemisphere it’s summer. Full-on heat. Your computer doesn’t like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,17],"class_list":["post-755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc","tag-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=755"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4237,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/revisions\/4237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}