compy keeps shutting down V.2 - Internal comp heat gone wonky

[Midnight12]

First off I am borrowing my sister's laptop or trying to use my husbands android to get on to check so any help would more than likely be helpful. Just drop a PM and I'll send my contact information.

i am desperate because we need the computer for his online classes and my online shop...and of course important data and pics
i can leave you my number with dragon_wings, kara or stevarinoNY
(hope i spelled all names right)
unlimited minutes and text any time or leave a voicemail and will reply when we can.

the problem is that it shuts off after about 10-15 minutes. even in CMOS.
first started before the move when i attempted to carefully use air in a can as i call it to dust and plug it back in. the issues did not start until after the move.
then we even carefully took it to the table dusted it with air in a can carefully. all 5 fans and wiping down what we could of the tower. it still shuts down.
hubs says that its the internal temperature gauge that causes it to shut down when it reaches 37.1 degrees C. how can we change this? and he did run antivirus and malware and nothing came up. this is of course in the allowed moments it did not shut down. again any help is appreciated. thank you.

Sorry its a big deal to me...i've shut down my little outside income and internet so hubs would not have an extra bill to pay and daughter would get the help she needs. now that we can afford it again...it does this when we depend on it. its almost my lively-hood for extra income

[Kara]

She wants me to let yall know I have her #. So pm me or just offer advice here and I'll text her for you.

[Chromatix]

Are the fans actually turning? If not - especially the CPU heatsink fan - the machine may shut down to protect itself, and the CPU would have got much hotter than 37C to cause that. When you cleaned it, you may have jostled a connector loose.

Another likely possibility is the PSU, typically the most troublesome component in a PC *including* hard disks and fans. It might be going out of calibration above a particular internal temperature, and so the computer shuts itself down to prevent a more subtle and insidious malfunction.

In the BIOS there should be a screen with temperature readouts. Start the machine with the side off, and watch both the physical fans and those readouts. That should make it clear which of the above scenarios applies.

[sms001]

Start the machine with the side off, and watch both the physical fans and those readouts. That should make it clear which of the above scenarios applies.

Endorsing this. Also, your make, model, OS and rough specs would help should further troubleshooting be necessary.

Fingers crossed it's just an unplugged fan.

[Midnight12]

UPDATE!
got a temp computer to use via a family member but access is limited. ie school classes come first, play time after. so going through today and letting everyone know.

the issue is that the internal heat sensor on the...heck i can't recall the names. the motherboard thinks the tower is 90 degrees which it is not and two of the five fans are not working. i believe most if not all of these issues are due to the fact the tower was jostled around during moving due to not being properly loaded or packed in the van. my fault. so for now i can get on without fear of the computer just shutting off on me. and by shutting off i do not mean shut down process just straight up turning off.

Chromatix. i went in and sprayed er air dusted and just did the necessary. hubs went in after and did a thorough by taking the fans out and wiping them down with a dry towel and reconnecting. he may not have connected them properly? but then this issue was happening after i dusted and after we moved. tried changing core temp shut down at ** degrees and that didn't work either. the sensor itself is messed up

sms001
its a cyberpower made computer, OS windows 7 and lets see....
(searches for box)
x-dreamer3 tower, (Apevia), Intel i7-950 306GHZ 8M LGA 1366 1TB SATA 2GB DDR3/1600 MHZ Memory, XTREME Gear 120mm watercooler with 120mm fan ASUS 8x blue ray drive etc

800 watt power supply, EVGA GTX560 T1 1GB overclock GDD r5 pci-e directx11 that is what may be the issue?

yeah i found the invoice sheet and have little clue of this stuff

[Midnight12]

UPDATE. kara can be texted to reach me if need be as the situation is less dire now.

thank you kara. getting on for a bit today later on to check. online classes begin the 7th so after that i will not be on much if at all. *shrugs* its all good for now.

please let me know if i need more specs because i know i missed some

[protege]

When you say that the fans were removed, were they put back in facing the right way? Sometimes, if you turn them around (from "suck" to "blow") they work better. Turning one around might help the airflow inside the case.

[lordlundar]

When you say that the fans were removed, were they put back in facing the right way? Sometimes, if you turn them around (from "suck" to "blow") they work better. Turning one around might help the airflow inside the case.

Good point. A number of people think that fans either need to point all out or all in when neither is true. The best method is to ensure proper airflow through the computer with fresh air coming in and heated air going out. The most common approach for a tower is having all the fans blowing to the back. This way the front fans are forcing fresh air inside the machine and the back fans are forcing hot air out the back.

Check all your fans. If they're all blowing air out or all blowing air in you need to flip some.

[wolfie]

If you're putting together a desktop/tower system, and have filters on the intakes of the "suck" fans, your total CFM rating of the "suck" fans should be more than that of the "blow" fans. That way, any air leaks in the case will be letting filtered air out, rather than unfiltered air in, so that "dust bunnies" won't have a way to bypass the filters.

[Midnight12]

protoge - yes they were put back in the correct way as in i think they were as we triple checked. yes i am a dummy for not adding that

however i am not sure if they were put in the right way now, facing the right way but this is me, the doubting susan

lordlundar/wolfie- the fan set to suck in has a filter to prevent dust bunnies and we cleaned that too.
going to take the tower to a friend of the family who has said he will look at it as he has experience in computer repair. going to be there while he does this to make sure i see what is done for future instances

[Chromatix]

If it is reading the temperature wrong, then it could be that the monitoring chip (a very small one) which also controls the fans is damaged or shorted.

Unfortunately you probably won't be able to locate this chip by yourself (I looked at one of my spares, and only found the chip because I recognised the part number printed on it), so mention the possibility to your repair friend instead.

[Fire_on_High]

This may go against some of the others here, but I'm gonna throw it out there anyway. If you're *sure* that the lower temp is the correct one, disable the thermal shutdown feature entirely.

We've got a machine that insists inside Windows that the CPU is at 77C, but correctly lists the temp as 48-51C in CMOS. If you try and boot it to Windows with thermal protection enabled, it throws a BSOD or crash, don't remember which, from lsass.exe, then refuses to boot. With the protection disabled, works fine.

Shipped with XP Home, was wiped and had ME installed for several years, then 2k Pro, now XP Pro, and they all have variants on this same issue.

The machine has happily lasted 10 years like this with daily use, the first 5 or so years being mostly 24/7.

[emax4]

Most fans have a small indicator embossed into the plastic to tell you which direction the air is going. Here's an example of one of my fans:



Do you have warning sensors enabled to tell you if the machine is running too hot or not? If so, this will give you an early indication and can prepare you quickly instead of just shutting down without warning. Here's what the sensors look like on my Gigabyte board in UEFI (alternative look to BIOS):



This indicator allows me to choose the temperature threshold where the warning sounds. I have this off since I'm using regular air cooling but have 2 solid state drives. If you look in the above photo, it also has warnings for when the CPU fan (the one on the cooler -- not sure if it applies in this case since it's water-cooled) fails, as well as the power fan and other fans. The fans listed here must be plugged in to connectors on the board, not fans connected by the 4-pin Molex connector that you'll find on power supplies and IDE hard drives.

You should also have the option to set the level of the fan speed in BIOS or UEFI:



Additionally, have you tried resetting the BIOS to the factory settings? Most BIOS screens should have a selection to allow you to load optimized defaults:



If it's not already saved, make sure you save the current BIOS setting beforehand so that you can compare what you had between the optimized defaults and see what all has changed (if anything). You may have to whip out your digital camera or camera phone and take screenshots that way.

One last thing you may want to try doing is going to the manufacturer's web site and downloading the latest drivers and BIOS updates if they're available. If one of the latest BIOS updates describes an improvement to power settings, this is a must. Otherwise you may be able to go without it.

Here's a breakdown of the spec sheet:

cyberpower = brand name
OS windows 7 = operating system, can be Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux, etc
x-dreamer3 tower, (Apevia) = brand name of the tower.
Intel i7-950 306GHZ 8M LGA 1366 = Processor used. The brand name is Intel. Some manufacturers use AMD processors instead. i7 is the chip type, from the i-family. This can also be an i3 or an i5. i7 is the more powerful of the three. 3067 is the processor speed, but this is most likely 3.06 Ghz. 8M is an 8 megabyte cache, which is a temporary part of the chip to hold most frequently-used instructions. LGA1366 is the processor dye type, which is a physical indication of what socket the CPU fits in. A motherboard may have an LGA775 socket, which means that only processors that are listed as LGA775 will fit in that socket (but some processors of the same type and speed will come in various socket types instead of only one).
1TB SATA = hard drive type (SATA, SCSI or IDE) and capacity (1 Terabyte or 1000 Gigabytes).
2GB DDR3/1600 MHZ Memory = 2 gigabytes of memory running at 1600Mhz.
XTREME Gear 120mm watercooler with 120mm fan = Cooling type. You can have a combination of water-cooled and air-cooled. Some graphics cards run hot enough that allow you to water cool them as well.
ASUS 8x blue ray drive = ASUS brand drive that reads blu-ray media.

[Midnight12]

thank you emax4 Fire_On_High and Chromatix

turns out it was a combination of, the thermal paste dried out, the computer radiator (yeah i know, there are radiators in comps now) ran dry and was leaking, no damage done there thankfully AAAAND the computer needs something higher than a 800w power supply as the video card needs 500 alone at least. (not sure why its an issue now because it was working fine before) but we are going to get
a heat sync and 1000w powersupply.

thank you for the helpful pictures emax now i know. the only issue would be is that the fan is neon green so i would have to squint or have it in my face to see the arrows BUT that's ok. (or a magnifying glass too) is screaming DOH in my head right now...
SO since we are tight on things right now said computer will be fixed when tax return comes in

thank you all for your help so very much!

oh and also going to radio shack to buy some more thermal paste for future need

[Chromatix]

An 800W PSU should be *plenty* for the hardware you have. The PSU recommendation for the graphics card is based on a complete system containing the card. I don't think I've ever heard of a card consuming more than 300W by itself - and that was a really extreme case, a GTX560 is much smaller than that.

So by all means get the watercooler repaired and refilled - or replaced with a conventional heatsink if you prefer - but don't bother changing the PSU, that's not necessary.