When the PC crashes, what kind of crash is it?


The volume of the fan doesn't necessarily mean it's too hot, it could just be a noisy fan. But if it's not "just a noisy fan" then it could be that loud because the motherboard is driving it hard trying to cool the overheating PC...

Do you see a blue screen, does the pc automatically restart? does it simply shut off or does it freeze solid?

Yeah, That does sound like an overheating CPU..

There are quite a few things you can try to resolve this though...
In order of simplicity...

Run the PC for a while between each step to see if it helped..

---

1). Get a can of compressed air, an air compressor, a hair dryer on cold, even a straw and your mouth (make sure you leave the PC off for a few hours before turning it on if you resort to the mouth method...  ??) )
Then use what ever "blower" you've found and blast as much dust out of the fins of the CPU heatsink as possible...

If it's very dusty, And you clear the dust, You've probably fixed the problem already. If it's not very dusty. Then you might have to read on...

---

2). Enter your PC BIOS, Look for a "Vcore, Voltcore, Core V, CPU mv" or anything that looks like it controls the CPU's voltage, It should incremental, Select the next lower voltage, Save and restart the PC. If you have a cheap unbranded (PC Chips, Asrock, etc..) Motherboard then you might not be able to find anything similar to those settings..
The lower voltage WILL drop the temperature by as much as ten degrees Celsius, But might make the CPU unstable because it's not receiving enough power, It's a balance, But you can't damage anything by lowering the voltage. So it's worth a try. If it's stable with the lower voltage then you've fixed it. If not, The crash will be different, Because it's crashing in a different way, Rather than locking up because it's overheated, it's not got enough power so usually the PC would just restart from an under voltage...

---

3). Remove the CPU's Heat sink, Scrape (Carefully) off the thermal paste, Reapply some fresh, Around a grain of rice sized blob... (Obviously if you don't have any handy this ones ruled out.) If you don't have any, DON'T remove the heat sink, Breaking the contact it's already got without replacing with fresh would make the problem worse..

---

4). Back in bios... If you've got this far and still the CPU is overheating... As a last resort, Try lowering the FSB (Front side Bus) or the CPU multiplier, This will lower the clock speed of the CPU making it run slightly slower, But much cooler. Drop the FSB by 2 MHZ at a time. That way you'll find a balance between stable, low temps and not losing too much clock speed.

---

5). If the above fails or helps somewhat. You could always leave the side panels off the PC and make sure it's not in a cupboard, against a wall, next to a bed etc.... Give it room to breath if your case ventilation is bad...

All the above cost nothing. If you have some spare cash. New thermal paste, A new HSF (heat sink & Fan) a can of compressed air and a couple of 80MM case fans wouldn't go a miss... That should cost no more than £25 for the lot.

Hope that helps!
Let me know how you get on!
 

If you followed all the above steps and it's still crashing then the problem can't be overheating... Reducing the voltage and the other steps WILL fix an overheating CPU problem..

If you can sounds silly but take the side panel off and put the PC right up against the window (when it's not raining of course) so the cold air is getting into it. Monitor the temperatures with a temperature monitoring software and see what happens..