[Ilander]

My computer was sitting in the middle of the room, now it's in a hole in my desk...ventilation has not increased, but has instead decreased. Also Speedfan shows the same temperatures for the other items (hard disk, graphics card, motherboard). My fans have all worked from the day I got them.

Hosscat (the computer) has always ran hot. I used to joke that it heated my dormroom during the winter, and I wasn't far off. Sadly, I expect that whenever I turn on a game, it will go right back to being magma-hot (and you can tell, it makes the surrounding space very warm!).

My thought is this: When the system is booting, the BIOS runs the CPU at 100% until the OS throttles it down. This time spent running at 100% heats it up to the temperature I'm used to seeing it run at, and then, the OS can't do anything about it, because the system is in thermal equilibrium...the fans can't exhaust the heat fast enough to lower the temperature.

I bypassed the BIOS part of the boot by leaving the system in standyby, and the CPU cooled to room temperature. Then, I turned on the computer, and it booted Windows, with Windows keeping the CPU throttled back the entire time, instead of wide-open. The system is still in thermal equilibrium, as the CPU is generating the same amount of waste energy (heat) as the fans dissipate, except without the initial boost.

If that's true, then the same thing should happen on pretty much anyone's computer.

Oh, and I just checked with my motherboard utility (ABit EQ), and it yielded the same results.

[ 09-07-2006, 05:03 PM: Message edited by: Ilander ]