Weird ramping of CPU fan

So I have never noticed the cpu fan speed ever change in my computer. It's only an old stock AMD cooler on a A10-6800k, has tonight decided to randomly ramp up and down. I went looking for a program which will monitor temps, and got Psensor (I'll add this in here I'm running Linux, Mint 17.1) however that is showing one core to have a max temp of -3c the other core has a max of 10c. This is clearly not something that's real, the room is probably between 10-15 at a guess, it's cold that's for sure.

So can anyone provide suggestions on what may be causing this erratic fan behaviour or how I might find a cause/solution.

It's happening less frequently now, and usually just a quick rev up then drops back to normal, less sustained rpm increases compared to when I first posted. Which was about an hour earlier.

One of my previous computers started doing that when it was getting old. Before I chucked it out, I stripped it down, only to discover that there were no case fans installed, and very little ventilation.

Make sure you have case fans installed, make sure the CPU fan is in proper working order. If the computer is old it may need thermal compound reapplying to the CPU. Every 5 years I would suggest reapplying, depending on usage.

Like @Grog said. Just apply thermal compound. i would allow adjust your fan curve to suit your needs better.

This is how to apply thermal compound - the Cisco way:

I forgot to mention this in my last post. When a computer is new it can most probably handle most modern-day applications. After a while though it will begin to struggle, especially coupled with the wear and tear of the hardware. My older computer fell off the cliff pretty quickly. I don't think there was actually anything wrong with it, but one year it was chugging along, the next it was spluttering along.

I personally prefer to apply a really really thin layer over the whole CPU. That way you don't accidentally apply too much, or too less.

I used to do the thin layer method myself, but the consensus seems to be that it leaves air pockets. I'm not entirely convinced, but I used the cisco method on my latest, dual socket 44 core system.

What about the metal method?

1 Like

Hmmmm I guess I just need to find some thermal paste and give that a try. It seems to be most obvious around start up when the cpu is cold. I'm still getting very strange temperature readings though.