President's Corner: HOT! You are not the only Machine!         by David Robbins, President, CCOKC    July 2005       You are not the only machine that can get hot in the summer. The CPU in your computer is affected by the increase in the outside temperature. Several years ago I had a computer with a Cyrex CPU that would start acting strange when the summer heat showed up. The computer was sitting next to the west wall of the house, the wall that took a beating from the summer sun a little after noon. Luckily, the neighbor's house provided shade for this wall after a few hours of exposure, but, being made of brick, it held the heat from the sun for quite a while. In the cooler weather of winter, the computer would give me few problems except for the expected ones from Windows. However, in the summer, it would act up more than normal. So I moved the computer to another room to see if that would make a difference. The usual summer problems almost disappeared, this room did not have a western exposure and, as a result, was usually cooler.       I have moved since then and my computers sit in a room that does not have a heating problem from the sun as before. However, these computers are a little different since they run considerably faster and use more power than the old one. This, of course, produces heat in a different manner but with what could have the same results. The summer heat outside still shows up when I check the temperature of the cpu in these computers.       So it seems that the environment for the computer, especially the newer ones, should be of concern to the operator. If your computer acts a little stranger in the heat of summer than in the cool of winter, maybe you need to be aware of what is going on.       Intel has a program called Active Monitor that monitors several conditions on the motherboard. If you have an AMD- based system, the manufacturer of the motherboard may have a similar program. Because there are so many different motherboard manufacturers, I will specifically talk about the one provided by Intel.       The motherboard has evolved in many ways in the last decade and one of the strands of evolution is the hardware monitoring system. This added hardware allows programs to take output data and turn it into information that can help an operator see what is going on inside the case.       Active Monitor takes an rpm reading from each fan connector on the mother board and reads temperature from points on the mother board as well as the cpu. You can set alarms within specified ranges to inform you when something is out of limits, a temperature too hot or fan too slow. Usually these points on the mother board are places where the temperatures are expected to be a problem.       This is a program that can be downloaded from the Intel Website, but it only works for Intel chipsets. There is some third-party software that will work for the AM- based systems. One I use is MBM5. This is a generic program and can be rather difficult to set up and use. However, I like it and it seems to do the job.      If one day you lack for something to fill your time, and are interested, you might look for a program that will let you look into your computer without taking the cover off and that will tell you things that maybe you should know.     David Robbins is President of the Computer Club of Oklahoma City. David can be reached at   David Robbins