Core Overheating - Shutting Down

[CosmicCharlie]

I keep getting this message.  With a craft I've already used and landed successfully. The program starts slowing down and eventually stops. What does it mean?

[Temstar]

It means your CPU is getting too hot. You probably need to open up your case, take out the CPU cooler, unclip the cooling fan and vacuum the top of the heat sink. Over time a layer of dust builds up over the top of the heat sink (especially if your case is in a dusty environment) which greatly reduce the cooling capability.

[CosmicCharlie]

That doesn't sound right. It's an ingame message, and when I close the program, the computer works fine. And I can call up the task manager while the game is frozen and shut it down.

And I've done the exact same thing before with the exact same craft with no problem. Multiple times.

Are you sure?

[steve_v]

8 minutes ago, CosmicCharlie said:

It's an ingame message

Interesting, I've never seen nor heard of anything like this in KSP... any mods installed?

The game slowing down gells with the CPU overheating and clock throttling, but that would be a message from the OS, not the game.

Edited January 5, 2016 by steve_v

[Temstar]

Okay in that case you better post a screenshot of that warning message.

[FancyMouse]

Running ISRU without radiator?

[*Aqua*]

6 hours ago, Temstar said:

You probably need to open up your case, take out the CPU cooler, unclip the cooling fan and vacuum the top of the heat sink.

Don't do that! A vacuum cleaner usually is highly electrostatic charged which can easily fry your computer! Instead remove the heat sink and then vacuum it or pull a tissue between the sinks. And don't forget to discharge yourself everytime before touching the insides of your computer.

[Temstar]

CPU cooler is a block of aluminium or brass, it's not affected by electrostatic discharge.

I use to do the vacuum thing at a computer shop all the time as a part time job. Often the "my computer restarts all by itself after turning it on for a while" issue is caused by dust build up on the heat sink. Despite vacuum being a easy fix you'll still get billed $300 though

[GDJ]

I had to take apart my 2008 iMac and vacuum the living heck out of it, and I used a central vacuum cleaner. Use the fabric attachment (the small one with the long bristles on the nozzle) and it will do the job fine. You don't have to remove the heat sink to do this.

You might want to look at 3rd party fan controllers that has settable parameters for the fan, like SMC Fan control or Mac Fan Control (just for example) or whichever works with your operating system.

[sormi]

I have heat problems in all Unity games. Turning on vsync helps a ton. Recently bought a new PSU which helped aswell (the old one was falling apart though).

[Azimech]

This is a standard message of the ISRU's.

[CosmicCharlie]

It's a laptop, so (hopefully) sealed against dust.

I have an ISRU on the craft, but it's off when I get the message. And I extended all the radiators.  I have some tiny little Twitches blowing on 2 of the radiators, and they warm up, but they aren't red hot. And I've done the same thing before with no problem.  It's when I'm using MEchjeb to land it on the mun.  Message appears, game keeps going but gets slower and slower, and finally freezes enough so I get tired of waiting and shut the program down.

I'll take a screenshot if it happens again, thanks all.

 

[Temstar]

1 hour ago, CosmicCharlie said:

It's a laptop, so (hopefully) sealed against dust.

No definitely not. Laptops are aircooled just like desktops. And because laptops have a rather confined case the dust build up problem is actually much worse than desktops.

[steve_v]

On 5/01/2016 at 11:23 PM, Temstar said:

CPU cooler is a block of aluminium or brass, it's not affected by electrostatic discharge.

While this is indeed true, the danger is not static discharge to the HSF assembly, it's accidentally contacting and discharging into other components. If you're using a vacuum cleaner on PCs in a professional setting, I sure hope you've got an antistatic tip on the thing - while relatively rare in the first place, static damage to components can manifest itself long after the machine has left the shop.

To be safe, one should use either an antistatic brush + some canned air (being sure to hold fans to prevent bearing damage) or a vacuum with an antistatic tip, one with a brush built in being most effective.

Damage due to static discharge is actually quite rare, assuming you're not removing individual components, but do be sure to ground whatever you're using (including your hands) to the PC case / ground plane before touching anything else.

[Temstar]

9 minutes ago, steve_v said:

While this is indeed true, the danger is not static discharge to the HSF assembly, it's accidentally contacting and discharging into other components. If you're using a vacuum cleaner on PCs in a professional setting, I sure hope you've got an antistatic tip on the thing - while relatively rare in the first place, static damage to components can manifest itself long after the machine has left the shop.

To be safe, one should use either an antistatic brush + some canned air (being sure to hold fans to prevent bearing damage) or a vacuum with an antistatic tip, one with a brush built in being most effective.

Damage due to static discharge is actually quite rare, assuming you're not removing individual components, but do be sure to ground whatever you're using (including your hands) to the PC case / ground plane before touching anything else.

Yeah I asked the boss this quite early. We did have some measure in place regarding static when assembling new computers but when fixing old computers we never really bothered. The boss knows about potential damage from static discharge too but he's never bothered to take much care about it and there hasn't been any incidents in all his years servicing computers, and he started when Windows 3.1, 486 and 5.25" floppy was the state of art. Either we're exceedingly lucky or it is in fact exceedingly rare.

Although it must be said, it's kind of pretty hard to not ground yourself to the case when you open it up, at some point you have to touch the bare metal and it's usually before you touch anything inside.

[pxi]

5 hours ago, Temstar said:

Yeah I asked the boss this quite early. We did have some measure in place regarding static when assembling new computers but when fixing old computers we never really bothered. The boss knows about potential damage from static discharge too but he's never bothered to take much care about it and there hasn't been any incidents in all his years servicing computers, and he started when Windows 3.1, 486 and 5.25" floppy was the state of art. Either we're exceedingly lucky or it is in fact exceedingly rare.

Although it must be said, it's kind of pretty hard to not ground yourself to the case when you open it up, at some point you have to touch the bare metal and it's usually before you touch anything inside.

15+ years maintaining computers and computer networks professionally here.  I can't recall any issues regarding static myself either, nor do I take a huge amount of precautions other than having a habit of grounding myself before I begin.

Regardless, I still feel it is something worth being aware of.  Specifically the advice about avoiding the vacuum cleaner is one I strongly endorse.

[Randazzo]

20 hours ago, CosmicCharlie said:

It's a laptop, so (hopefully) sealed against dust.

I have an ISRU on the craft, but it's off when I get the message. And I extended all the radiators.  I have some tiny little Twitches blowing on 2 of the radiators, and they warm up, but they aren't red hot. And I've done the same thing before with no problem.  It's when I'm using MEchjeb to land it on the mun.  Message appears, game keeps going but gets slower and slower, and finally freezes enough so I get tired of waiting and shut the program down.

I'll take a screenshot if it happens again, thanks all.

 

Next time this happens, press alt+f2 and see if the game is throwing NRE's or other errors. If so, check your output_log and see what part it's referring to specifically. Also, try adjusting the ship design so that the twitch engines are not blowing exhaust directly into the radiators and see if it resolves.

I don't know if this is precisely what is happening, but if the game starts spamming a boatload of NRE (Null Reference Exception) reports repeatedly it can drastically slow the game down. I am, on the other hand, almost entirely positive that KSP has not started monitoring any of your processor cores, so I don't think you need to worry about vacuuming anything.