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I've just moved in to a new apartment. I put my PC in the trunk of my car, and when I hooked everything up in my new place, the computer would shutdown on boot (usually after entering password on Windows 7 login).
Anyhow, I've inspected almost every bit of the PC, and nothing helped. Finally, I noticed that the CPU fan was not fastened to its place, so I tried to fasten it, with partial success. Afterwards, my PC "life time" seemed to last longer, but it would still shut down after a few minutes. Then I tried again to fasten the CPU fan bolts and succeeded - it's now securely fastened to its place, and the PC seems to work just fine, EXCEPT when I try to run StarCraft II, then it shuts down after a few minutes. If I'm not running a game, it (looks as though) doesn't have any problems.

In any case - do you know if the problem was really with the CPU? I guess the CPU heats up more when I try to run a game (usually it's at about ~5% use), but what can I do to fix it?

2 Answers 2

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This sounds like your CPU is simply getting too hot and the machine shuts down to prevent damage.

Try taking off the fan again, cleaning both surfaces (the bottom of the fan and the top of the processor) then buy some thermal compound... No need for expensive stuff - usually around ~£2-3 for a small amount and place it on the processor, then put the fan back on.

If it is an Intel CPU, make sure that you twist each of them to the lock position then put them firmly down (My tip is to use a flat head screwdriver in the top slot of the screws, and bang the end of the screwdriver with a mallet/hammer (carefully!)). If it is an AMD processor, make sure the clips (or whatever they use now) are firmly in place.

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It does sound like an over heating problem, try running something like coretemp or realtemp to see how hot your CPU is getting. You should be able to find the maximum temperature for your CPU on the manufacturers web site.

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