[vox-tech] overheating

[Wes Hardaker]

>>>>> On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:26:50 -0700, Bill Broadley <bill at cse.ucdavis.edu> said:

BB> Seems kinda strange to blame a program for overheating.  Certainly
BB> anything that causes more CPU usage causes more heat.  Even a pegged
BB> CPU shouldn't overhead a system though.  The flip side is that if
BB> something is wrong even an idle system could overheat.

Typically things overheat due to a combination of problems.  Yes, when
you're running the CPU at full speed because of some computational task
then you'll generate a lot of heat.  Any decent modern system, though,
should have fans (as has been discussed) to prevent it from reaching a
critical point.  However! if you've done any personal mods to it, or if
the fans are old and not moving air as well, or if there is dust build
up then it won't get the air circulation that it needs.

In my really annoying case, my company decided a while back that instead
of buying me a new laptop (it's quite old) they'd just replace the hard
drive instead.  They sent me a new drive and I installed it.  It took me
6 months to realize that my laptop was suddenly slowing down to a crawl
when used for heavy computations not because it was dying, but because
the new drive runs a lot hotter than the old one and the system isn't
designed for it.  Thus, now when I want to do anything intensive I need
to take an external fan and aim it at the machine to keep it cool
enough to prove extra cooling so it doesn't overheat.  No joke.

-- 
\ Wes Hardaker                           http://pontifications.hardakers.net /
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