Infrared: Inside a Desktop Computer Case

Having to open up a computer case is a nightmare for me. Why did I have to be a nerd? Well, the good news is that I went into my computer and had an infrared camera handy. There is now infrared camera footage available showing off the CPU, GPU, RAM, motherboard, power supply, and a bit of the hard drives.


Infrared Camera: Inside Desktop Computer

Videos
Inside a Computer during Boot-up
Inside a Computer during Benchmarking

The first one is the desktop starting from over a dozen hours of rest and a couple hours completely unplugged from anything. Visible are the individual components warming up. Seems like the capacitors get warm the quickest, then the CPU and GPU. Unfortunately, the GPU is mounted sideways so you can't really see anything on the more interesting side of the board itself. And there are a lot of shiny, reflective things like heatsinks inside the system so the temperatures are probably way off.


Inside Computer Case with Infrared Camera

Second video is the same machine while under load. The most recent Thief 4 game benchmark was run inside the game from start to finish to put the computer under a relatively heavy load. Seems like the GPU gets pretty hot. In my experience, the temperature sensors have reported temperatures much higher than ambient temperatures.

In both cases, the hard drives are hidden behind steel and mounted in a vertical position. You can kind of see the edge of the mechanical hard drive in the lower right corner. There's a clump of wires to the lower right of the GPU too.

Reminder: Temperatures are not accurate.


Related
Body Heat and an Infrared Camera
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Cooking Scrambled Eggs
Cooking with a Microwave Oven
Vacuuming a Carpet