Remember when you had to actually open the case to check the fan?

I was at a client's house in Phoenix, working on their gaming PC that kept shutting down. The software said the CPU temp was fine, but the machine felt hot to the touch. I popped the side panel and saw the CPU fan was completely still, even though the system booted. The fan header on the board had a bent pin from a previous build. I carefully straightened it with a pair of tweezers, plugged the fan back in, and it spun right up. Anyone else run into a sensor giving a false 'all clear' like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

hall.charles11d ago

Always trust the physical check over the software reading. Had a GPU once reporting fine temps while the heatsink was cold to the touch, turned out the sensor itself was busted. Good call on checking the header pins.

margaret9911d ago

Charles is right. My old motherboard kept telling me the CPU was at 95 degrees, but the cooler was ice cold. The sensor had failed. Software just reads what the chip tells it, and chips can lie. A quick touch test saved me from replacing a perfectly good cooler.