weird oc problem

[ds083roadkill]

i ussually take advatange of the winter and oc my pc's. my main pc is in the garage atm and under idle (3-8% load) my cpu runs at 43 degree's F. now simpily increasing the power my ten percent brings me to just about 73 degee's F under idle.

lately thou, it freezes, and until yesterday frequently. now, the theroy i assumed, the thermal compound on the processor protects from radical tempreture drops and raises and that would have been my issue since i had recently cleaned my pc but had not cleaned/reapplied new thermal paste during this cleaning.

did i guess right?


also, i couldnt find any definetive answer, but there isnt a normally attainable low temp for a cpu that would be harmful under dry conditions, (but i heard someone say very cold temps are conter-productive or harmful to the HDD), is this true?

 

[masterorion]

i terms of going from cold to hot, you have to worry about condensation. during the last 3 years when i went through winters without heat, the temp in the house would go no lower than 32 degrees. during the winter, i left the computer on to avoid going from frozen to hot and avoid any condensation at all.
for thermal compound, its mainly there to get a good conduction between heatsink and cpu. not necessarily to protect against radical temp changes. since no surface is exactly 100% flat, the thermal compound gets rid of any spaces that are possible between the two objects for better contact and heat dissipation from the cpu to the heatsink so it may do its job.

as for freezing, the problem could be many things. alot of times, when i encountered a dvd/cd drive going bad, it could effect the system as far as freezing and slow/frozen startups.