Motherboard overheating can surface in the form of stuttering, or thermal throttling. You may also notice it via system monitoring tools, or due to thefull-throttle fans.
In all cases, it’s best to resolve the heating problem quickly, as high temperatures are not good foryour component’s lifespan.
This can meancleaning the PC,ensuring optimal airflow,upgrading the fans, andensuring your system cooling is sufficient.
To find the best solution foryoursetup, first try to understand and identify what’s making your motherboard overheat.
Why Is Your Motherboard Overheating
Motherboard overheating mainly happens due to airflow and cooling issues or faulty components. Other causes include:
How To Fix Motherboard Overheating
Monitor PC Temperature Properly
To start, use at least two different programs to monitor the temps. I useHWiNFOand anOEM utility(MSI Center on my work PC). This will ensure you’re working with accurate data, which is very important for a few reasons.
First, it minimizes the chances that an app is reporting wrong temps. I’ve seen a ton of users freak out because Speccy was incorrectly reporting absurd motherboard temps like140°C.
Second, you can pinpoint exactly which sensors are reporting the highest temps.
Clean the PC
Removing accumulated dustis generally the goal when cleaning the PC. This means cleaning parts like themainboard,heatsinks,CPU cooler,case fans, and dust filters.
Depending on which sensor is running hot, focusing on specific parts is also a good idea. For instance,
Optimize Airflow
If multiple sensors are running hot, yourcase may have an airflow problem. There are various ways to deal with this:
Change the Components
There are two reasons to change your components. The first is to replace faulty ones that are causing overheating (normally thefans,PSU, ormotherboarditself).
The second reason is toupgrade the cooling. This meansadding more case fans,upgrading the CPU cooler, or liquid cooling your GPU, whatever is best foryoursetup.
What If the Motherboard Is Still Overheating
Taking overclocking too farwill cause the CPU or RAM to overheat. Although indirectly, it’ll raise the motherboard temp as a result. So, ifyou’re overclocking, check if taking it down a notch or disabling it helps.
Undervolting is also a great idea. On my system, I’ve lowered the peak CPU and GPU temps byover 15°Cwith no reduction to the clock speeds (meaning no loss in performance).
Similarly, I’ve seen some BIOS bugs cause unintentionally high voltages to be supplied to the components. This is rare for sure, but it doesn’t hurt to research whetheryour current BIOS versionhas any such problems. Then, if required,update the BIOS.
If the motherboard is still overheating, you’re dealing withdefective parts. Consider taking your system to a service center. The repair professionals there should be able to diagnose the faulty component and suggest the best solution for you.
