When the computer’s running, at what temperature would the parts and hardwares inside the chassis? Also, what about when the computer is NOT on?
Hypothetical situation: guy moves to college after summer vacation, packs computer in car the day before the trip starts. the Tower sits in the back seat of a car, with all windows closed, in the hot afternoon summer heat of philly for an afternoon, then the car moves inside a hot garage with no ventilation whatsoever for one whole night… would that cause some damage to the computer? Especially since said hypothetical computer starts restarting itself and crashing/freezing after the trip…
Erg, typo. First part should read
“When the computer’s running, at what temperature would the parts and hardwares inside the chassis start getting damaged? Also, what about when the computer is NOT on?”
The reliability numbers for integrated circuits start to take a down turn somewhere around 45 deg C. This, coincidentally, is also right around the human pain threshold. An old test used by electronics geeks is that if you can’t hold your finger on a part, then it needs more cooling.
However, the computer will continue to run at much higher temperatures than 45 deg C. If you were to run it at say 55 deg C, then it might run ok except it would die within a year. At work we even had a processor on an industrial controller actually catch fire (technically, it was the circuit board around the cpu that had caught fire, the cpu itself was just glowing red). Even with flames shooting out of the chassis it was still running, although at that point it probably only had a few seconds of life left in it.
I just looked up a random hard drive from Seagate, and it gives specs of 0 to 60 deg C while operating and -40 to +70 deg C non-operating. That’s pretty close to what most components will be rated for.
I would suggest tearing your computer apart and putting it back together again. This will reseat all components and may fix your problem.