ETW/Overheating Issues/CTDs/BSODs

[yankeepyrate]

I posted this over at the official forums and got flamed for it, but whatever. Just trying to help anyone having stability/crash probs with ETW. I couldn't figure out why the game was running so poorly when I knew I had the specs to run it on nice high settings.
Traced the problem to overheating in CPU, causing system instability which explained why I could not get through a battle even on low settings without CTD/BSOD. Empire is a complete beast of a game and will push the CPU to the max within minutes of launching.
The culprit for me turned out to be a solid caked on film of dust sandwiched under the CPU fan, between that and the heatsink/CPU area. It's not easily visible thru the fan blades & housing. I had cleaned out the PC not that long ago, but overlooked this little nook. The reason I never knew about the buildup prior to Empire was simply because nothing was taxing my system so heavily prior to Empire.
I thoroughly cleaned the area, and restarted. My temps instantly dropped from 46C idle to 25C idle. Max load temp dropped from 68C to 43C while running Empire. I was then able to play ETW for several hours straight with no crashes whatsoever, no glitches, or any performance issues apart from the obvious game bugs and crappy AI that we all know about.

To be clear I am not suggesting this fixes Empire, or will work for everyone. But I've seen a LOT of people across the web talking about ETW and overheating. I'd suggest this as a first point to check.

[Brusilov]

Good to hear that you've sorted this out. Many people simply won't even think that dust can be a problem - but it gets sucked in by the fans and can cause no end of problems.

[l33tl4m3r]

Excessive_Heat == Instability++;

It's that simple. A can of florene costs $4 so keep you machine clean!

[yankeepyrate]

Yup! SO true. I had always dusted out the pc fairly regularly, but just wasn't aware how much was accumulating out-of-sight.