Patent ID: 7370242

Claim:
A method of monitoring thermal conditions within a computer unit which includes a system-level temperature sensor which responds to a temperature of intake cooling fluid for the computer unit and a subsystem-level temperature sensor which responds to a temperature condition of a subsystem-level component which is cooled by the cooling fluid within the computer unit, comprising: determining whether the temperature sensed by of the system-level temperature sensor falls outside of a critical limit; determining whether the temperature sensed by the subsystem-level temperature sensor generally correlates with the temperature sensed by the system-level temperature sensor when the temperature sensed by the system-level temperature sensor falls outside of the critical limit; and shutting down operation of the computer unit only upon recognizing a correlation between the temperature sensed by the subsystem-level temperature sensor and the temperature sensed by the system-level temperature sensor when the temperature sensed by the system-level temperature sensor falls outside of the critical limit.