Overheating CPU

ViperGTI

ViperGTI

New member
So I recently upgraded my MB and CPU while building a PC for my wife. Basically what happens is while playing a game that uses quite a bit of resources, my PC will shut down and restart and I could actually smell some kind of burning. This weekend, I actually saw sparks.

I have the I7 4790K 4GHz CPU, I've turned overclocking off and even replaced the cooler with this one: http://www.zalman.com/global/product/Product_Read.php?Idx=461

Any ideas on how to sort this out?
 
You sure nothing is shorting somewhere?

The sparks is the worrying part!
What was the smell like, did it smell like hot air (like a hair dryer) or like something burning?
 
Yep, thermal paste came with the cooler and put it on before putting the cooler. 90% of the time it is working fine. This has happened so far while playing Witcher 2. Also happened while playing Saints Row 3, but that was still with the stock cooler.

Smells like burning. I suppose the shut-down / restart is some kind of safety feature to prevent serious damage to the cpu when it gets too hot, but I was hoping the cooler would prevent things from getting that hot.
 
You SURE its actually CPU overheating? what are the temps during load (run prime95 or something cpu intensive and check on a monitoring program like HWMonitor or even CPU-z).
Just confirm the cpu is ACTUALLY overheating in this case :)

I will go and say so long I blame PSU! It's ALWAYS the &#*@ING PSU! THOSE *$*&*(ING THINGS!!!

i'm gonna go lie down now...
 
Hmmm... I first considered the GPU, but then I remembered that the GPU was already there with my previous MB & CPU. CPU and MB is only components that changed during the upgrade. Haven't considered the PSU. The sparks I saw though, looked like it dripped from the middle of the box somewhere (PSU is at the bottom). I will however try the HWMonitor while playing games again this weekend.
 
ViperGTI said:
Hmmm... I first considered the GPU, but then I remembered that the GPU was already there with my previous MB & CPU. CPU and MB is only components that changed during the upgrade. Haven't considered the PSU. The sparks I saw though, looked like it dripped from the middle of the box somewhere (PSU is at the bottom). I will however try the HWMonitor while playing games again this weekend.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd say confirm that cpu is overheating, then take it from there. Sparks also feels more PSU/power related than CPU heat. Your power requirements might have gone up with new mobo/cpu depending on what was swapped with what. Either that or you have a borked IDE/SATA adapter...i've seen those things short out (causing /switch off/restart) and once even catch fire...not fun times for our client. So maybe just have a look there if you happen to have a little IDE to Sata (or vice versa) power adapter (they look something like below)

idepower_to_satapower.jpg
 
mottamort said:
Yeah I'd say confirm that cpu is overheating, then take it from there. Sparks also feels more PSU/power related than CPU heat. Your power requirements might have gone up with new mobo/cpu depending on what was swapped with what. Either that or you have a borked IDE/SATA adapter...I've seen those things short out (causing /switch off/restart) and once even catch fire...not fun times for our client. So maybe just have a look there if you happen to have a little IDE to Sata (or vice versa) power adapter (they look something like below)
Click to expand...

Exactly this! I've had some molex connectors actually melt around the HDD connector and become fused with it.
 
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