Kim,

Thanks again for the help/tips! This is the best forum ever!

Tom,

You asked:

"Is your heat sink seated properly? Not too much thermal paste (or none at all)? Fans are working? Case door intact?"

Not sure if the heat sink is seated properly - lol! I think everything is in the right spot. I have no idea about the paste stuff. I've never added any paste to anything in my computer lol again! Yes, the two little black fans run all the time and kick into high gear when it gets hot. Yes, the case door is on properly - that is, if you mean the tower side cover thing-a-ma-doodle. And LOL at your comment about your photo - silly silly man!

Kim,

Yes I have ccleaner and I use it quite frequently, that's why you saw it running on the task manager. I keep it open and minimized most of the time, especially on days when I'm using FireFox for long periods of time. I'll occasionally close FireFox and run ccleaner.

After my last post I closed everything and rebooted. Right now all the core temps are in the upper 30's - low 40's.

When it was really hot earlier - I had been at blogtv.com for a long time & had not cleared cookies/cache or ran ccleaner in a while - maybe that had something to do w/it? At blogtv I was watching a "show" w/live streaming video/audio, not sure if that "builds up" over time and might have been making my pc run hot. But even if stuff had "built up" on my pc, shouldn't I have enough ram or whatever to not make my pc hot? Or does that matter?

As for running a defrag - haven't done that in a while! I know that process takes some time, so I'll run the defrag program when I go to sleep tonight. Maybe that will help too! Thanks for reminding me

Oh, and yes ccleaner was running and minimized when I took the screen shot of my task manager. I wasn't actually "cleaning", but it was minimized in my taskbar thing. And no it doesn't load on startup. I have a couple of programs that do run on startup but I always close them right away if I don't want to use them. I guess I could go to those progs and change the setting to NOT open on startup lol!

Ah, one more thing - Kim - you asked Tom:

"do you think it be a good test for her to boot up and run her computer a bit without the side cover to see if it is indeed trapped heat that is causing the over heating of her cpu? Just an Idea."

I did have my cover off for about a week and I didn't notice any trapped heat. My pc tower should be getting plenty of air flow. It's not up against anything at all - plenty of space all around it.

Well I think that's about it. Oh, I called a computer repair place & told them about my hot pc issue and they said I could bring it in and for $125 they would run a test. I'm not so sure I want to spend $125 just yet. I was thinking about ordering that arctic cooling freeze fan thing, but I don't know if it will fit inside my computer. I think I could figure out how to install it - THANK YOU KIM for the install video link.

But for now my pc isn't running hot. I'll run the defrag tonight and hopefully that will solve the prob for good.

THANK YOU ALL for all the help!

Hope you all have a grrrreat day!

UPDATE:

I went ahead and ran the defrag program & I noticed that I have it set to defrag once a week. The last time the prog ran was this morning at 1 AM - and again about an hour ago manually by me.

One thing I did notice what the the temp shoots up when I open more tabs in FireFox. So I'm trying to keep the # of tabs to 5 or less. TRYING. lol!

Thanks again everyone!

I may have missed this, but your fans are pulling air out of the PC, but where is the air coming in from, if the inlets are close to the bottom of the case, and the case is sitting on a rug, the air flow might be restricted. Also maybe in a vista upgrade the power control profile got changed. A free program called speedfan might give you the control over your computer fans you want.

I have seen some people open both sides of their cases, and put a regular house fan blow through, but they were hard core gamers.

Out of the box thinking, do you have heated floors, and now with winter and dryer air your pc is just not cooling as efficiently?

Actually, it is better to leave the case door on as the case is designed to move air through the case for better ventilation and heat dissipation.

David, very cool out of the box thinking! No, no heated floors here. I live in Georgia and it just doesn't get that cold here, even in the winter

The fans in there are blowing air out? huh? I thought they were blowing air on the components inside!?!? LOL! I dunno where the air is coming IN from. Should there be fans inside blowing air IN? Oh dear!

I don't see that airflow around the tower unit is a problem. The unit has at least a foot on each side - on two sides it has several feet. It's not on a rug or anything furry lol! It's on my desk.

I will check into that speedfan program soon! Thank you for the input/help!!!

Yep, I thought so. Case cover is on

I never thought about the fan direction. I know mine pulls air in. It has a large opening in the front with a screen and the fan has a big cone that connects to the front of the fan. It sucks the air in through the vent and cone and pushes the air into the case. Then in the back their is a huge oulet that allows the air to come out. I know it sucks it in, because I am constantly cleaning the screen in the front.

It's a gateway and It is actually a really cool design. My graphic card heats way up, because I did not realize that for 2 years it was packed with dust. I use to have an office out at the barn and the kids were always dusting the concrete floor. A few weeks ago I open it up to find a thick layer of dirt on everything. Even with all that dirt, my cpu and other components ran cool, except the graphic card. It is running at 92 degrees. I think it is barely hanging on. I love to pull the hard drive apart and see how much dirt is in that, but I got to keep her going until I get the new one.

I was looking at the smaller stream line computers, but I think I will buy a tower, just for the extra air space... haa haa

Looking at yours - I wonder if it is pushing the air out? I see a vent at the top of the box. Maybe you have one on the other panel. If you do I bet it is pulling air throught those two vents and pushing it out the back. That fan you were talking about pushes the air past the cooler and I think it said in the installation instructions to have it aim for the fan to pull it out. So it be slick if it worked in your computer.

Hiya Kim! Thanks again

I'll have to remove the case cover and take a closer look to see if there's another fan somewhere. On the backside of my computer where all the plugs are, there are slots where one of the black fans is - and dust gets on that so I think air is coming in w/that one. Right? LOL! I dunno!

And yes, that one arctic freeze fan looks uber cool but I have no idea if it will fit in my pc. Gotta do more research!

Thanks again everyone!

http://www.coolerbooster.com/images/airflow2s.jpg

typically (and some are different) computers suck air out of the back, causing fresh air to be drawn into the front. The fan on top of your cpu's cause more of that fresh air to move around the heat sink on the processor, I've seen numbers around 30-40 cubic feet a minute exchange, so roughly the air inside your computer is being replaced around 20 times a minute.

Not a small volume of air i do say do the fan's make more "noise" than they use to? a bearing could be wearing out and the rpm of the blade might be lower than it should and cooling less efficiently.

Do all the fans on your computer spin?

Are the fan's on your computer attaced with screws or rivits? If with screws, you should be able to replace one if it is not working as easy as unscrewing, and un plugging, then replaceing. A new fan should run 10-20 dollars (if that much).

Is there space in the back of the case to add an additional fan? That might be an option.

Are there case modders in your area? Your local college might have some tech student's that can add more cooling to your case quite economically.

I saw one case modded up as a keg of beer, cooled the beer, and computer... what more could anyone want