CPU Overheats when playing StarCraft
 

My CPU never overheats except when I play StarCraft for more than about 45 minutes. When it overheats, the computer totally freezes which I believe is a common reaction that AMD processors have to deal with excess heat. Looking at my temperature logs, it looks as though it gets up to about 93ºC then freezes. Anyone have any insight? Information below!

Processor:
AMD Phenom II X4
3.0 GHz True Quad-Core
8.0 MB Cache
Socket AM3
Average Temperature: 60ºC

Operating System:
Windows 7 Professional x64

Holy jesus 93°C. Umm, way too hot?

Try taking you fan off and see if there is a lot of dust between your fan and CPU.

My computer's fan kept making loud noises, speeding up, and slowing my system down a while back and when I took the fan off to look I swear I had like a centimeter of compacted dust sandwiched between the fan heat sink and the CPU. It is amazing how dust can build up like that.

...Starcraft though??? :twitch:

Is it when someone rushes you with 400 zerglings? or attacks with Carriers and interceptors? I just can't really see such an old game being that taxing on a modern computer. I had a few slowdowns with that game long ago when I played it, but they were mostly bandwidth/lag related.

It doesn't matter whether I'm actually playing a game or not, if StarCraft is open it does it. I noticed after making this post that while having Windows Media Player full-screened for an hour+ that it got into the upper-80's. My dual-core AMD never reaches 60ºC doing either of these tasks >.<

What if you run Starcraft from a CD image sitting on your hard disk, instead of using the CD drive?

It is running from an image! Also, I should state that when I bought this processor a year ago, it sat at about 40ºC so it has gotten progressively worse at keeping itself cool, but for some reason freaks out when I run StarCraft and full-screen WMP, possibly other full-screen applications as well: more testing is needed! I'm going to try and talk to AMD tomorrow (I work during their tech support hours except on Tuesdays).

Reapply thermal compound to the CPU - some low quality compound can really degrade over time reducing effective heat transfer from die to sink.

Best thing is to combine this with your dust bunny hunt inside the system ;)

Thanks for the input. Do you have any suggestions for thermal compound? After checking whether or not the CPU was being fed the proper voltage, AMD agreed to replace the processor.

I didn't install this myself, and I don't think I've ever removed a processor before. Does anyone have any tips, no-no's, or other guidelines to follow for me to remove this and send it to them, as well as advice for reinstalling the processor?

Youtube will probably have pretty good walkthroughs as to how to install a processor.

I think the biggest things I've found is don't touch any non-edges with your bare fingers, don't use too much thermal paste, and you really really don't need to force anything.

@DeLorean: Make sure you're potential-free when working on your system (microelectronics in general). There are some gadgets like antistatic wrist straps but I think it suffices to ground yourself before starting to work. And make sure you don't work on any surface that could potentially charge you (my slippers in combination with the synthetic carpet my parents have produces quite a "electrifying" experience...)

Try using prime95 or some other cpu burner app and monitor your temperatures. It may not be a cpu issue, especially if happens in nothing else.

It depends on how the game was coded, not how old it is. Tiberian Sun halves the framerate due to insufficient cpu power if you have, like, more than 6 titans on the screen. On my 3ghz core 2 e6550.

Framerate isn't a linear performance indicator:
FPS Versus Frame Time

That's why comparing framerates doesn't give you a good picture about performance improvement / degradation.