Prevent CPU from overheating this summer in India

By Shekhar Sahu on 01 February 2018 12:42 AM

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Does your system shut down or restart automatically because of CPU overheating? Do you live in the hot climate of India? Or did you find a reduction in the performance of your system?  You just formatted your system but the machine couldn't gain speed significantly. Then that's too because of CPU heating toot much.

Prevent CPU from overheating

CPU overheating can be caused by poor chip design, poor heat sink, poor fan, adverse ambient or room temperatures, CPU usage, worst living in hot summer in India. In all, it's about heat dissipation. Too much heat can cause your systems to crash and it decreases the life of your expensive chip. The optimum CPU temperature is between 20 degrees to 60 degrees, any rise in temperature above 65 or 70 degrees would be dangerous. In this tutorial, we would be discussing some ways to keep your CPU cool, and especially how to properly apply a suitable thermal grease on CPU and Heat Sink.


You have to take care of your hardware otherwise you might heat up the CPU to death. There are various methods you can follow each of them.


Open the cabinet 

If you have seen some gamers or geeks around you would find they(we) keep the cabinet open. So more heat will dissipate from the hardware. It is observed that about 10-degree centigrade reduction of CPU is possible by opening the cabinet. But this is not advised if you have kids in the home, who can accidentally touch the running components.


Dust the heat sink

The heat sinks are usually made of Copper & Aluminum together due to their high thermal conductivity. Sinks need to be cleaned quite often to keep up the heat dissipation power of them. The dust has an insulating property. 


Use a powerful fan and good heatsink 

The bundled fan & heatsink with PC, Mac, CPU, PS3, PS2, Xbox or other devices are not so powerful. They are tested in a cool environment and not for heavy tasks. If you can invest in an expensive fan & heatsink like water cooled or nitrogen cooled sinks or other liquid coolers, then go for it. Also, make sure of their size, so they easily fit on the motherboard with other hardware. 


 If you can't afford to buy a powerful fan, you can also use an external table fan to cool the system.



Underclock the processor

Reducing the number of cycles of the processor may reduce the heating of CPU but will also result in the reduction of performance. This may be done temporarily only.


 Replace the thermal paste

If you ask users about the need for Thermal Grease (Thermal Processor Paste) it is more likely that 9 out of 10 will respond "NO". This is because they don't know anything about it, or perhaps heard it for the first time from you ;)

Thermal grease also called a thermal compound, thermal gel, thermal paste, sink compound, thermal processor paste, etc, is a compound containing metal/conducting particles used to increase the contact between CPU & Heatsink. This compound is highly conducting. Actually, Thermal Grease is used because the surfaces of CPU and Heatsink are not smooth and there remains an air packet in between them. Which results in very high thermal resistance. By applying the thermal compound properly you can overcome the problem of thermal resistance and double up the heat dissipation power of the sink. We will now discuss this in detail.




Which thermal compound should I buy?

There are various Thermal Compounds available in the market but Arctic Silver Thermal Compound is best for both Intel & AMD processors. We recommend you to use Silver Arctic Thermal Grease only.










Components required

These components can be bought from your local computer hardware vendors or Amazon.

1) Cotton or Soft Cloth for cleaning
2) Alcohol Cleaner
3) Silver Arctic Thermal Compound or Shin Etsu G 749 available for $0.5 to $5
4) Anti Static Hand Strips (optional)



Steps to apply the thermal compound

Before we start I advice you to use anti-static hand strips to avoid any damage to hardware components from the body static charges (optional). Follow these steps carefully and at any point you find difficulty feel free to comment here.


1)  Detach the power cable of the fan and then the heat sink from the motherboard carefully by turning the 4 keys.

CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal Grease on Heat Sink & CPU to Prevent CPU Overheating windows 8 BIOS launch silver arctic thermal compound paste gel sink cooler hardware 
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CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal Grease on Heat Sink & CPU to Prevent CPU Overheating windows 8 BIOS launch silver arctic thermal compound paste gel sink cooler hardware 
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2)  If you haven't cleaned the fan and heat sink for a long time, it would look dustier than mine shown in the photo above. You can also detach the fan from heat sink further on and wash it thoroughly.

CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal Grease on Heat Sink & thermal paste ps2 ps3 xbox  
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3)  Now remove the CPU from the socket carefully. You would find the previously applied thermal compound hardened on both the heat sink and the Processor. This must be removed and cleaned properly. Here you have to use any soft cloth and 90% cleaning alcohol to remove the thermal compound. Make sure no dirt has remained. Don't apply too much pressure on the CPU, or you harm it.

CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal prozessor Paste on Heat Sink & CPU to Prevent CPU Overheating windows 8 BIOS launch silver arctic thermal compound paste gel sink cooler hardware 
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4)  After cleaning take the Thermal Compound and open the seal, apply on top of the heat sink. Use a razor blade or a piece of plastic to evenly spread the gel on the surface. Make sure it doesn't get out of the boundary or will short circuit the hardware.

CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal Grease on Heat Sink & CPU to Prevent CPU Overheating windows 8 BIOS launch silver arctic thermal compound paste gel sink cooler hardware 
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CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal Grease on Heat Sink & CPU to Prevent CPU Overheating windows 8 BIOS launch silver arctic thermal compound paste gel sink cooler hardware 
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5)  Now put the CPU on the socket (before applying) and apply some thermal paste in the center. Do not apply too much of the thermal paste. Applying too much thermal paste may cause the paste to spread out of the CPU, into the motherboard. Which can cause a short circuit and permanent damage to the device?


CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal Grease on Heat Sink & CPU to Prevent CPU Overheating windows 8 BIOS launch silver arctic thermal compound paste gel sink cooler hardware 
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CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal Grease on Heat Sink & CPU to Prevent CPU Overheating windows 8 BIOS launch silver arctic thermal compound paste gel sink cooler hardware 
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6)  White the compound is fresh, install the heatsink & fan on the CPU so the paste gets set properly. Connect the power cable and start the computer.

CPU Overheating-Apply Thermal Grease on Heat Sink 
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7)  To test the current temperature you may either use one of many software available or directly from BIOS (Basic I/O System). To check the correct temperature from BIOS, first, run some applications you normally use then restart your computer and enter BIOS. Now you can see that the temperature has halved than the previous overheating temperature.

CPU to Prevent CPU Overheating thermal compound 
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Now if this is the perfect season (winter) and thermal compound applied, overclock the system.

What do you say? Did it reduce your CPU temperature? Is there any point you would like to add? Then please comment below.


Shekhar Sahu


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3 comments for this post

Great and very knowledgeable tutorial.. keep it up :)

Posted on November 3, 2010 at 2:08 AM  

@Amandeep Singh
Glad that you liked it, keep reading ('',)

Posted on November 3, 2010 at 3:08 PM  

@Amandeep Singh
Glad that you liked it, keep reading ('',)

Posted on November 28, 2010 at 3:33 PM  
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