For a couple of weeks now, I’ve experienced my computer abruptly shutting off. At first, I thought it was just some power surge or something so I suspected my UPS to be defective or just can’t handle the total load of the PC and other devices I’ve plugged into it.
It was only lately that the shutdowns were too often that I thought there could be other possible reasons. My second suspect was the exhaust fans that might not be working. Next was the CPU fan. I fired up PC Wizard to see if it can detect any problems with the fans and the CPU temperature.
That’s when I found out the CPU core temps were thru the roof — all 4 cores were averaging 100 degrees. I double-checked with the BIOS monitor and it was also showing a similar reading. I practically touched the heatsink to see if it was indeed really hot.
The fans were running (both system and CPU) but I thought they were slow so I cranked them up to maximum speeds. Still nothing. A cooldown didn’t work — the CPU temp would shoot back to 85 degrees within minutes of boot-up.
The last remaining item on my list was that the CPU could be busted or defective. I was about to remove and check it when I noticed all the dirt that was clogging up the CPU fan. The fan was working but the passage of the airway between heatsink and the fan was completely clogged.
I immediately cleaned it off and that did it. Within minutes, the CPU temp was already dropping to around 50 degrees.
So next time you experience having your PC erratically shutting down, check the fans they might just need some cleaning up. You can also use PC Wizard here to monitor your CPU.
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