Bool Computers_Get_Hot_With_Age();

Hello TekSyndicate Community,

return


   I've owned a couple computers throughout the years and a pattern that I always see is that as time goes on, the computers tend to run hotter. ATM I have my first build with a water-cooled solution (Antec H2O 920) cooling an i7-3770K, I've owned the chassis for a year and a half and at first it used to run idle @ 24-27 degrees Celcius (~75 Fahrenheit). Now the rig runs at 45 Celcius (~113 Fahrenheit) @ idle, and climbs to 57'C (~134'F) at load. The poor fan on that radiator. I don't know if I can take the noise for much longer. (Oh, nothing is OverClocked btw)

   The root of the question is, why do I observe computers regularly running hotter with age? I've gone through lengths to remove dust buildup and such. Does thermal paste expire or something? Does the liquid solution in a plug-it-in-and-go closed loop cooler loose its effectiveness? What is your insight ?

true:false;

A: not really

b: thermal paste does expire, i think

c: no, it's just water and antifreeze

Yea thermal paste gets old. Slap on some new paste. As for water cooling kits; I never experienced degrading over use. Maybe I'm lucky?

Lucky eh? What kits have you used?

Thanks Commissar

Thermal paste, dust and slightly degraded fan and pump performance are the only reasons I can think of hardware wise.

 

The dried up paste would make the most difference I'd imagine than the rest (unless a fan/pump is damaged and you just let dust build up to wool blanket levels).

 

Also check the software element of it. Is your baseline resource use higher now? More background applications running perhaps? Maybe even rouge programs you never intended to have running and taking resources all the time. That kind of thing.

thermal/cooling components, especially if they are active cooling (ie fan used) will collect dust and that dust will inhibit the ability of the cooling component to cool. also the thermal paste thing everyone is mentioning but i think that effect is much more gradual than the collection of dust.

OMG, I freakin love this site. You guys are awesome!!

I'm pretty anal when it comes to bloat-ware on my machine. I won't let anything run unless I tell it to (nothing boots at startup, except for things like the graphics driver and dropbox for school... maybe some Intel rapid-start :|  ). In the past I have fixed freinds' laptops with a simple system swipe (resulting in the computers running better than they did brand-new 2 years ago with awl-dat-blewt-huair. Imma crack open my machine and see what's up. Maybe some dust build-up in the radiator itself that I missed. Or maybe some ol'crusty thermal compound (that I cheaped HARD on btw...). Or both o.O

OMG again, I can't even tell when I turn this thing on! Its sooo quiet. I realized that I only had a fan at the front of the case and one on the radiator for the cooler. I bought a Cougar Turbine 4-pack for around $20 at NCIX and I can barely hear a peep. When I checked the thermal compound, it didn't look like it had gotten old or anything so I'm not completely convinced that was the culprit (I changed it anyways of course).

Moral of the story, get some fans ya cheap &$#%&@$!