*loud god-like voice* Clean your fans!

[Offerman]

After having just hit 140 days uptime yesterday I was feeling rather proud of my PC. The motherboard is getting on for about 3 years old, and its still as stable as 10 legged table.

Anywho, I thought I'd celebrate with a game another quick run through of Half Life 2: Lost Cost. However after about 5 minutes of play the computer started beeping wildly and shut-down. Naturally I was pretty livid because 140 days of uptime had just been wiped out in a flash. I rebooted the PC and tried valiently to find the cause of the restart. Sadly though my research was fruitless, and I just put it down to bad luck.

I decided to give Half Life another stab, and after running for about 40 minutes again the same thing happened. By now I was pretty miffed and was close to throwing the entire thing out the window in a vain attempt to gain some gratification.

Then it suddenly dawned on me; could something be overheating. I promptly fired up both Speedfan and ATi tool and set them to Temp Log mode. I then proceeded to replay Lost Cost, for the thousandth time and waited for the thing to fall over, and sure enough it did. After a timly 15 minutes. I quickly restart and fired up the Temp log. To my horror my beloved graphics card was hitting 95'C.

I quickly set about shutting the computer down, fearing that my GPU might have actually sustained some serious damage, rendering it a very expensive paper weight.

Within minutes I had the thing in bits and what greeted me was a huge mass of hair, dust, and for some random reason a chocolate bar wrapper lodged in the air intake of my card.

As shown...

http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/5617/graphicscard6ak.jpg

Still slightly baffled that what appeared to be abit of dust contributed to a total loss of airflow I fired her up again. And to my surprise, but relief the card returned to a rather calming 21'C.

So whats the moral of this? Well clean your fans. :P

I think I can safely say nearly 90% of computers overheating are probably due to the build up of dust in the fins of the fan, and I am the first to admit its pretty surprising.

[Dieter]

Where's the candy bar wrapper? :(

-edit-


I opened my always-on pc just for you, it's rebooted like two times in the last week and had 34 days of uptime before that (needed to reboot for apache www.kaolla.be), but the fans have never actually stopped turning, and not a spot of dust anywhere which I found strange as well, since there's an intake fan at the back. Must be a great position for a case then :) (It's in the corner of my room).

[Offerman]

Where's the candy bar wrapper? :(

In the vacuum cleaner.

[Blackfox]

Sounds advice. My CPU was hitting the 70s a couple of times. Giving the heatsink and fan a good hoover - it dropped to a more modest 30-40 mark.

[Pit-Jr]

Just took your advice and removed about an inch coating of dust from the back of my comp and found 2 USB ports where dust once was. The hoover wouldnt cut it though, i had to take it out back and use an air compressor.

[Andrew]

I'm obsessed with airflow and keeping my case as crud-free as possible. I use cotton ear-buds to get rid of all the dust from my fans, and I also have a dust filter on the intake fan. Doing this simple maintenance every few months helps improve component life by keeping everything cooler.

/me hugs pc :)

[The-Ironflame]

I use an old tooth brush generally you shouldn't use a vacuum cleaner.

[Offerman]

I use an old tooth brush generally you shouldn't use a vacuum cleaner.

Well thats abit of a myth. They say the dust zipping past the components and up into the vacuum cleaner generates static, which is true. But they then go onto say using compressed air is safe; but the same thing happens. The dust being disturbed generates static. So truthfully compressed air, not a vacuum cleaner is ideal.

A brush as you use is the best. But in my case the dust was stuck in the fins, which is covered by a plastic shroud. The screws where tamperproof, so not wanted to further void my limited warrenty I took the risk of a vacuum cleaner.

[uncle_buckman]

Just cleaned mine. Used a vacuum cleaner. You know the fan covered by a grid? At the back of your tower? Real hard to reach, screws were supertight so I used an old paintbrush of mine. Is it worth trying to get that grid off?

[Dieter]

Just cleaned mine. Used a vacuum cleaner. You know the fan covered by a grid? At the back of your tower? Real hard to reach, screws were supertight so I used an old paintbrush of mine. Is it worth trying to get that grid off?


I'd say no, as that contains some stuff that can zap you ;)

[Tyson]

I just cleaned my graphics card fan, and I must say, I'm suprised it could blow at all. Even one I cleaned all the gettable stuff (which was a huge ammount) there was alot of unreachable stuff.

On another note, nice campaign you're running Dieter.

[Lammie]

The CPU in my iMac regular reaches the high 70 degree mark. I'm guessing it's not a dust problem because the machine is only about 4 months old.

Should I be worried?

[uncle_buckman]

I'd say no, as that contains some stuff that can zap you ;)
Ok cool, note taken.

[Offerman]

Ok cool, note taken.

We talking case fan? Or PSU fan. If its PSU then yea, leave it. But case fan, then you can remove the grate on that, unless its a pre-pressed jobby onto into the case.

And Lams I don't know much about Macs but 70'C is probably the operating temperature. After all P4 Prescotts run hot, but are made to do so. Even if its never a good thing,

[Gaijin von Snikbah]

What candy bar was it?

[Offerman]

What candy bar was it?

A chocolate eclair.

[Dieter]

On another note, nice campaign you're running Dieter.

How ironic. The very day I remove it from my sig someone comments on it :P

[JonSt]

How ironic. The very day I remove it from my sig someone comments on it :P

Shit, i should remove it from my sig as well.