I recently encountered a weird issue with my PC where the fans just stopped working out of nowhere, causing my CPU temperatures to climb to around 100°C even when idle. This made gaming impossible, and my PC would shut down due to overheating. To fix it, I set the fan speed to 'full speed,' but that meant enduring the loud noise while gaming. Then I found a setting in the BIOS called 'fan control use temperature input,' which was set to 'system' by default. When I changed it to 'CPU,' the fans started working fine at a normal speed, allowing me to play games without the noise. I'm curious, though—why did this issue happen suddenly, and what's going on with the solutions I found?
2 Answers
The default setting often uses system temperature, which doesn't respond to CPU heat nearly as accurately as the CPU itself does. Since the CPU heats up faster, normal settings might not ramp up the fans in time when the CPU gets hot, leading to your overheating problem. Switching to CPU temperature made the fans react appropriately to your CPU's heat levels.
Yep, temperature sensors can be tricky. The CPU has built-in sensors that measure its heat accurately, whereas 'system' temp is way less specific—it could refer to anywhere in your case. Because of that inconsistency, when the CPU gets hot, the fans might not kick in unless they’re set to react to CPU temps instead. It’s all about giving the fans the right cues!
Thanks for breaking that down! So it sounds like it could've been a fluke with the system sensor. But why do you think it would just stop working out of the blue like that, especially since I just built my PC two months ago?
Got it! So the fans were fine; it was more about getting the right temperature readings. That makes total sense. But why would the system temp sensor behave like this?