ArtisticallyChill

Ok. So I was playing Guild Wars for an hour and then as I jump to a new district, the game crashes. I was like, “WTF is it now!?” So anyway I tried to run the game and then a new error message came up, saying that my CPUs might be running extremely hot. I didn’t think too much about it and tried to run the game again. Surely enough it crashed and forced my computer to reboot. The reboot cycle kept going and going. It would boot, try to load windows then a quick blue screen and reboot. So thinking back to the error message, I actually checked the BIOS and viewed my PC’s Health. To my surprise, both CPUs were running at about 180′F!! The CPU Temperature warning was disabled and when I looked into it to see the various levels of warning that I could use, the maximum was around 160′F. So my CPUs were running a good 20 degrees hotter than normal!! I’m surprise that my PC didn’t go into complete meltdown. I automatically assumed that the CPU fans were running at lower RPMs. Naturally, I had the original fans that came with the CPUs, tested and certified by AMD. So I popped those on as I always have, with the exhaust pulling the hot air from the heatsink and CPU. So upon booting, I jumped into the BIOS and the CPUs were still running hot. I thought that was unusual since the fans I just put on were barely used.

Time was definitely not on my side so I shut my PC down and headed off to work, vexxed and a bit frustrated. I spent most of my work zoned out and wondering about my PC. As I left work, I thought maybe the fans were actually on wrong. But I kept second guessing myself. I’ve placed so many PC fans that same way and have never had any problems. I called up Jason and told him my hypothesis. Even he always installed CPU fans the same way I did. Hersch got on the line and said it should be the other way, the fan exhaust towards the heatsink and CPU. But after I rationalized it with him, he changed his mind.

When I got back home, I quickly tested my theory. I reversed the fans so that the exhaust was blowing air onto the heatsink and CPU. I booted up and into the BIOS. Ok so here’s the kick to the nuts epiphany, the CPUs were reading at around 155′F. That’s 25 degrees below what they were running at this whole time, since day 1 of this PCs first bootup after the build. Ain’t that some freakin’ shyte or what? Could I have been installing CPU fans wrong this whole time, since my very first build? Or maybe these Athlon MPs require the fans to be positioned that way, with the air blowing on them instead of pulling the hot air away? Some thing to test on a future build, maybe. Luckily, I won’t have to spend an arm and a leg on a complete rebuild of my PC. Maybe I’ll save for an upgrade or two. There’s this DFI Lan Party Mobo I’ve been looking at onFry’s site…

~LoneWolf