What is a common indication of overheating in hardware?

A common indication of overheating in hardware is system shutdowns or erratic behavior. When hardware components, such as CPUs or GPUs, overheat, they can lead to instability in the system. This instability may manifest through frequent crashes or unexpected shutdowns as a safeguard mechanism to prevent damage. Additionally, erratic behavior can include slow performance, unexpected errors, or partial system failures, all of which can occur when temperature thresholds are surpassed.

The other options do not reflect symptoms of overheating. Increased storage capacity may indicate upgrades or changes to hardware, but it does not relate to thermal issues. Frequent system updates are typically associated with software maintenance and security improvements rather than hardware performance. Faster processing speed can be the result of optimized performance but is not a sign of overheating; in fact, overheating usually results in reduced performance as the system throttles back to cool off.