When your fans kick on because your PC is tackling a particularly arduous task, most PC gamers will stick their hand against the chassis to make sure things aren’t running a bit too hot.
There’s a much more scientific way to determine if your PC is overheating however, specifically by installing monitoring software, like HWMonitor.
From here you can monitor the exact temperature of your PC and whether the issue is isolated to your CPU and/or GPU.
PC Gamer has provided a handy guide as to which temperature ranges are ideal for your processor:
- Under 60°C: You’re golden. Nothing to see here.
- 60-70°C: Running okay, but perhaps a bit warm for stock (check fans/dust)
- 70-80°C: Maybe okay if you’re overclocking and trying to eke out the last 100MHz, otherwise check cooling fans, dust, and maybe back off the voltage or overclock (if applicable)
- 80-90°C: Potential for throttling to occur, and about as far as we’d ever want to push a CPU
- Over 90°C: Almost certainly throttling, and combined with high voltages could kill a CPU within months to a year or so.
The next step is figuring out why your PC is getting so hot.
Usually this is as easy as jumping into Task Manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) and monitoring system usage.
If something is hogging up your system resources it will begin to throttle your PC’s performance and cause the temperatures to rise as the PC battles to continue with its other normal functions.
If this still doesn’t fix the issues, it may be a case of getting the dust bunnies out of your case and making sure fresh cool air is getting in.
Check if your CPU cooler is correctly mounted and re-apply thermal paste. It is also important to maintain a healthy airflow in order to move the hot air outside of your chassis.
If you can’t determine the issue from there, it might be a bigger issue such as hardware malfunction.
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Unless you’re running an AMD, in which case 100 degrees might be normal? 😛