Help! Cooling Issues

[Sared]

Long story short, one of my primary exhaust fans went out on my tower. Got in-game for ten minutes before my CPU overheated and forced a shutdown.

Theory A: CPU is already running hot enough that the loss of one fan means enough heat is not being dissipated and is causing the overheat.

Theory B: The exhaust fans are 200mm running at 1300rpm, so it's a significant airflow that's being lost by one fan.

Theory C: Imbalanced case pressure, too much intake, not enough exhaust, or vice-versa. Need to do the math on that first.


So, I'm still running the stock Intel heatsink/fan, and normally I can run a fair amount of shit at the same time without any kind of heat issues. I think that I can replace the exhaust fan and be alright (B), but if(A), then I'm concerned I would be setting myself up for the same situation in the future.

Should I be alright with a new exhaust, or should I pitch the extra on a better CPU heatsink/fan as well? If anyone can give me some feedback on this in the next few hours it would be appreciated. Give me time to run to Fry's and pick up what I need, then get it installed before raid time.

[Lithium]

Get a decent heatsink and fan. The plus being you can use it on future builds. And it'll do more than any case fan will do.

Here I bought a baseline CoolerMaster and attached some aluminum fans I had laying around to it.