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I have a self-assembled computer based on a barebone (a Shuttle XPC). Its fans are running at a very high level even under moderate load, and even higher (and louder) if there's work to be done, especially USB related.
This makes me suspect that something about the machine's setup is imperfect, and I'm looking for hints about how to diagnose this systematically.
Some data:
The barebone comes with a system fan and a processor fan. The system fan is set at a fixed speed. The processor fan is dynamic. The processor fan seems to be the main problem.
System temperatures always seem normal: 41 °C system, 51 °C CPU.
I'm running Windows 7 and have already confirmed there are no intensive background processes running.
I can see occasional CPU peaks up to 90% when navigating to a Youtube window. That makes me wonder whether this is normal, on a 3 GHz dual-core system with 6 gigabytes of RAM - can the (rather weak) graphics card be causing bottlenecks?
I guess the first step will be to look for updated mainboard drivers from the barebone manufacturer - I'll do that in a second. I'd appreciate any further guidance in how to find out what is causing the load.
Pekka
Posted 2010-12-19T12:51:26.867
Reputation: 2 239
What are you using to see what you call "CPU peaks"? Task Manager? CPU fan speed when it's varying, should be related to CPU temp. So I suppose you're finding CPU getting hot with some USB activity.. Check if that is the case. You say USB activity. I'm none of us think your/a USB mouse and keyboard are the cause. so it may be specific to a certain USB device. Could be its device driver. Find out which device. You should know since you have some device in mind when you say USB related. – barlop – 2010-12-19T13:18:05.690
@barlop yeah, I use Task manager. The device I have in mind is an external hard disk when under load, but the behaviour is not limited to that. I discovered a BIOS update for the machine though, I'll install that and see whether the behaviour improves. – Pekka – 2010-12-19T13:21:50.620
@Pekka What's your graphics card? – AndrejaKo – 2010-12-19T21:36:13.947
@Andreja system says it's an NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT. It must be relatively slow, as it's the part that's dragging my "Windows Performance Index" thingy down by two points - but then, I picked a cheap one because I don't do gaming – Pekka – 2010-12-19T21:50:54.153
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@Pekka First thing to check is for clogged vents / dried TIM - check my comments to @Kronos' answer and this question in general http://superuser.com/q/220678/4377
– Sathyajith Bhat – 2010-12-20T00:07:07.517@Pekka If you're using newest drivers, go to older version. 258.96 is safe for me. There's a bug in newest nVidia drivers which makes GPU computing very very slow and Flash is using your GPU to process videos. That could be the source of problems. I know I had troubles with it. I have in my laptop GeForce 9500M GS. Don't know about USB problems though... – AndrejaKo – 2010-12-20T00:32:06.153
@AndrejaKo thanks for the hint: I think it used to be less of a problem! I'll roll back to an older driver and report. – Pekka – 2010-12-23T11:53:41.403