Could this ruin my copmuter??

Back in 2009 I played a game called Dragon Age: Origins. The game made the computer start whirring louder than anything I'd ever heard (loud enough to wake people up in the next room) within the first 5 minutes of gameplay, and it would start and stop every 5 - 10 minutes the entire time I played the game. I'm not 100% sure on the system specs, but I know it was dual core and the computer died not long after I quit playing the game. The hard drive and graphics card were both ruined.

My current set up is:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit operating system
AMD FX 6100 six-core processor
10.gb of RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7450 Graphics


Recently, I decided I wanted to replay the game and try it out. It caused my newer computer to do the exact same thing!! A nice member here on sythe helped me figure out what the problem was. He found that the game has some kind of memory leak and it causes it to take up 100% CPU no matter what. So it ran perfectly on a dual core, no lag at all, but took up 100% CPU. It does the exact same thing on a 6 core! It doesn't cause other programs to lag either, it just uses up ALL available CPU.

For example, if I have nothing but Dragon Age running, it takes up 100% CPU. when I have 5 other things running that normally take up a total of 25% CPU, they sill take up 25% and Dragon Age takes up 75% but there is no change in performance on any programs.

There were many suggestions to fix the problem, running the game in windowed mode, turning on vsync, putting the programs affinity to only run on 1 processor. I tried all of these, but none worked. Setting the affinity made it run well for around 1 hour, then it starts whirring every 5 minutes.

I do not understand why setting the affinity to 1 makes it not whirr, because even though only 1 processor should be running it, using speedfan, it still shows all 6 processors are 100% CPU used.

As for the main problem, I'm using CPUID Hardware Monitor to see how hot everything gets. Every temp stat it shows reaches up to 70 degrees Celsius. , the graphic card went as high as 74c!!

Could this after all infact be the reason my old computer died? Could it harm/ruin this computer? I find this game extremely fun with a story that keeps me interested throughout the entire game, but it's just not worth needing to buy another new computer and also lose all of the stuff on this computer.

 

From some quick googling, it looks like the max operating temperature of that cpu is 70c, so you really don't want to be pushing that or you could do damage. Your cpu should be able to run at max load without getting that hot though, so you should probably look into a better cooler

 

Why would a shitty 2008 game make it get so hot though? I'm not very knowledgeable about computers, does having such a high cpu what makes the graphic card temp and stuff get so high? Because I run a heavily modded (200+ mods) skyrim on this computer without any problems like this at all.

I realize that it has a problem that causes the game to take as much CPU as it possibly can. but if this isn't what causes it to get so hot, then what could it possibly be, as mentioned above a much more graphically advanced and harder game has never once made the fans come on, atleast not to a point I could hear them.

 

I've already explained this to you. Its a shitty game that has been poorly optimized and has tons of memory leaks. That is what is causing all of those problems.

 

Hardware components in your PC that overheat tend to damage them and shorten their lifespan by a lot. You honestly don't want to go over 80 max, but the lower the better. Personally I don't like going over 60c, although my coolers manage that just fine.

The problem I'd say is the game, for some reason it was never fixed for that.

Also, what version of the game are you running?

 

sounds like you are having some heat problems, are you using a desktop or laptop?

Laptop: put some bottlecaps under your computer to suspend it, let some air in

Desktop: buy another fan or a better fan

If it is a CPU problem, you can limit the priority of the game under task manager

 

You don't want to limit a game's priority as that will tank performance of the game and make the game unstable as well as the DX draws, and when directx crashes your video card drivers can become unstable and bluescreen.

The loud noises you heard were your video card's fans starting up, but the ball bearings inside them were shot. The failure that resulted from that was a direct result of heat not being displaced properly.

When you start to hear grinding noises from your computer, power it down, open the case up, and power it back on (if desktop, if laptop listen to which fan is making the noise). Using an aircan, GENTLY spray the dust out of the noisy fan (too much air pressure can burn out ball bearings as well). A few gentle bursts of air should send dust everywhere and help fix the airflow problem. If it keeps making grinding sounds, replace them.

Fans are cheap and easy to replace. The diameter of the fan is the size of the fan you need to purchase. Don't run a computer for long periods of time with faulty fans as heat builds up quickly, especially in gaming rigs.