Strategy for a desktop that overheats?

[twork]

I have a tower machine that's prone to overheating under load, most recently during a big 'emerge @world'.

It's a few years old, but it does have heat sensors.

Its fans work, they're all turned up full speed, it's apparently just a poorly designed chassis or something; that or I've got it packed with more gear than it was meant to handle.

Fixing the problem with new hardware isn't an option right now. In a perfect world, there'd be some way to slow the system down when it gets hot, but the amd64 architecture doesn't seem to support that, or didn't when this machine was built.

So, before I start hacking away at my own jury-rigged set of shell wrappers that talk to lm_sensors and try to suspend jobs when the heat gets high -- a project that I don't have time for, and that I'd likely not get right anyhow -- I thought I'd ask if this is something others have found a solution for?

[Ant P.]

[asturm]

Check thermal paste and/or buy a bigger CPU cooler.

[The Doctor]

Make sure there is good airflow around the case. having adequate cooling does you no good if the air can't escape. Maybe even check to make sure your fans are blowing air the right way. It does you no good to have fans trapping the hot air in the case.
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First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.

[bammbamm808]

You didn't provide information on your cpu, case, cooler, or any other information that we would need to intelligently answer your question. If we knew the current state of your system we could suggest some improvements. Is it overclocked? What's ambient where your computer is? Etc. etc.

Your post might suggest that you have airflow problems.
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MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk
Ryzen 3900x
32Gb Samsung B-die (16GB dual rank x2) DDR4 @ 3200MHz, cl14
Geforce RTX 2070S 8GB
Samsung m.2 NVME pcie-3.0
Etc....

[twork]

Adequate space, vents clear: yep. Air flows nicely. There have been times in the past when dust in case fans caused trouble, but that's all clear at the moment.

Bigger CPU fan is an idea I hadn't thought of. Shopping.

I presume that the thermal paste I used when I built the box is still good; does that stuff need periodic checkups/renewals? It has been years.

''emerge cpulimit'': Ant P. wins in our "no dollar/immediate fix" category.

Thanks, all. Much appreciated.

[twork]

...hm. But I now read that cpulimit is per-process, more specifically per-PID, right? Not much use during, say, a big emerge where the PIDs change constantly for long periods.

Still, good tool to have in my back pocket if I do end up going the "hack up a slowdown" route.

[The Doctor]

How about a new case? Their fairly inexpensive. A got a nice Corsair for around $60 that is mostly mesh.
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First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.

[Tony0945]

Besides the fans, check out dust in the CPU cooler. Blow it out with canned air. Or be VERY CAREFUL with a LOW pressure air hose. WARNING- may ruin your computer if air is blasted too hard.

Some advocate a vacuum cleaner, others say a vac can cause static discharge. Me, I don't know.

[bammbamm808]

Maybe clean the whole thing out. Unplug all the cables and dust. Also, reseat the CPU cooler, remove all the old TIM and reapply. Don't use too much. You just want a very, very thin even layer. I have a huge heatsink on my CPU, that barely fits in my case, but the huge fan on it barely turns and my system is so quiet. If your BIOS allows, you might be able to downclock/undervolt your CPU a bit, as long as it still functions. And, as metioned, you might benefit from some sort of clock governor.
_________________
MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk
Ryzen 3900x
32Gb Samsung B-die (16GB dual rank x2) DDR4 @ 3200MHz, cl14
Geforce RTX 2070S 8GB
Samsung m.2 NVME pcie-3.0
Etc....

[szatox]