PC Dying

[Airspeed]

I feel like I've missed a step here, Adrian.
You were trying to stop your CPU from overheating.
Did that not work, and you're now looking at a new computer or CPU?

[adysmith]

I have "re-gooed" my CPU, marginal improvement in temperatures (down from 100 to 97!)

Still squealing (but not as often and maybe not as bad) and still getting V poor performance from FSX, frame rates used to sit happily in the high 20s all the time, now varying between TWO and 20 so contemplating replacing PC.

Current PC specs:-
Intel Core i5-4690L @3.50Ghz
8Gb RAM
Win7 Home Premium
512Gb SSD hard drive
DVD re-writer
Nvidia GeForce GTX980 running four monitors

[Vc Ten]

Have you narrowed down which fan is doing the squealing Ade? I think only the cpu, and maybe the gpu would cause throttling issues ( think you said the cpu cooler was OK). 100 ° or close is very hot, even being stressed with a cpu intensive program (fsx). Has the fan speed setting in the bios been reduced somehow? (when the CMOS battery let me down a month or so back, I had to go into the bios to put it back to its normal (very fast) setting. Is there anything else on the PC that could cause the stressing? Have you loaded any fsx addons that don't play happily together. Take a look in task manager (ctrl alt delete) see if anything is pulling resources away from Fsx. If the PC once ran at 30 fps, no reason why it shouldn't now. Fsx hasn't changed. (unlike msfs2020, which seems to change weekly, we had sim update 14 yesterday). Worth a reinstall?
If your getting into thinking of upgrading, most of what you have will be incompatible. New or later cpu won't fit mobo. New Mobo will need ddr4? memory, etc etc. Reused may be a good solution but difficult to work out what price point to pitch at, and what you might want for the future, msfs 2024???
Dale

[adysmith]

I can't identify which fan is squealing, I've tried stopping each in turn without success.

I checked Task Manager (CTRL SHIFT ESC gets there quicker) but there doesnt seem to be anything hogging the CPU

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[Vc Ten]

Wonder why so many instances of Navigraph ?? Is that how it normally is (I know MSFS handles Navigraph differently)
Dale

Just a shot of mine mid flight :-

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[Archer]

I'm a bit late to this party... but just to add my two cents:
- The question here is whether you're seeing a hardware issue (components dying, bad cooling, etc) or a software issue (non-normal allocation of threads/tasks).
- If your CPU is still getting warm, or hot, under load you could try a reinstall or running FS without any add-ons and see if that changes anything.
- You could try running something else that's CPU hungry and check if you're getting the same values and behaviour. The only suggestion I can think of right now is something like Handbrake, which is a freeware video conversion tool. Load any video you've got on your harddrive into that and set it to convert to a different format. See what your CPU temp does. I'm sure that you can find PC benchmark software that can do something similar, but I am not very familiar with those things. You could try watching another video at the same time and see if you get any strange behaviour in the framerate on that.
- If a test like that is showing similar CPU temps and behaviour, there is a fair chance that there may be a hardware issue, but I cannot be a 100% sure of course. Any high intensity task will run the CPU temp up, the question is whether your system can manage that without throttling back other tasks.
- Squealing fans can be annoying, but they shouldn't throttle your PC in any way. Still, it's a sign of an ageing system of course.... (I've got one in my desktop PC at the moment... can't be bothered to pull it apart though as I do not use it very often).
- I'm reading the specs on that Lenovo PC the same way as you: it should fit... but if a store employee can't answer that question it doesn't instill a lot of confidence in that store. You could still get a decent replacement PC from a place like that, but I'm not too well versed in PC lore these days to be able to provide advice on that.

[Charlie Bravo]

Just another thought but does the motherboard have a small (usually 40mm) chipset fan?

[adysmith]

Well I "regued" the CPU fan a while ago, it still ran the same high (100degrees) temperatures and slow frame rates.

I phoned the company that made the PC (about ten years ago!) and the guy on the phone was incredibly helpful despite the machine age.

HE remoted in and tried assorted things (took him a while to find some that worked in WIN7) and eventually concluded that perhaps when I redid the cooling sealant it maybe didn't sit quite right, he gave me some tips for ensuring a good contact.

I decided to give FSX one more try before stripping down (again) and I got a steady 30 Fps, and max CPU temperatures of about 85 across all four cores.

Pleased with the result (apart from the spurious water landing penalty - see my flight report and other forum post) I decided on the ultimate test - FSLabs Concorde to Barbados.
Result, steady 30 Fps and max 85 degrees.

I'll take that unless i get the squealing back.

Thanks for all the advice.

[Airspeed]

Very good to hear that, Adrian