Chapter 11: Avoiding Power and Overheating Problems

Overview

I’ll bet you’ve noticed that the issue of lightning, dirty power (which I’ll tell you about in the first section), and overheating has come up often in this book when discussing types of disasters. This is because these factors join bad drivers, old hardware, unstable operating systems, and just plain user errors in creating some very nasty situations.

The challenging part of power and overheating problems is that you normally won’t witness the problems themselves, but you’ll get saddled with the aftermath of their harmful effects. You might not even realize the event has occurred, so you may end up feeling like you’re doing battle with a phantom. Nor can you completely avoid power and overheating problems, since you must use power for your PC and one of the by-products of power is heat. Heck, one of the worst by-products of trying to cool something is usually more heat. Go stand next to the outside vent on your air conditioner if you have any doubt.

Chapter 2, “How Hardware, Your Operating System, and Applications Work Together,” gave you a preview of the extra components (for example, fans) that are installed to combat the worst effects of overheating from the heat-producing components in your PC. But you may have noticed that there wasn’t much built into your PC to protect it from unruly power fluctuations that might occur when your local power transformer blows, someone runs their truck into a utility pole, or lightning hits close to you.

This chapter will help you understand the symptoms and solutions related to electrical and overheating problems. Many of the steps you can take are easy to implement and monitor, and many of the protection devices can be surprisingly affordable.

Let’s plug in, shall we?