Turtle Problem Solved
A few Episodes back Turtlez wrote in with an overheating problem. The hosts threw in all manner of opinions and possible causes and solutions.
Then last week or it might have been the week before Turtlez wrote back to give us an update, after try a few things like moving the PC thinking that ventilation might have been the cause. But the truth was revealed when he broke the box open.
We are pretty sure that this might have had something to do with the overheating problem:
Turtlez says that now after giving the gizzards of the PC a good going over that he is running 50 degrees at rest and 80 when gaming. Great news.
There is a lot to be said for opening up the box every now and then and giving the dust bunnies a blast with some canned compressed air. This type of situation can and does lead to a dead PC. Symptoms can be crashing, hanging, “black screens”, generalized slowness. At worse the whole party comes to a screeching halt with a fried CPU.
If you have your computer resting directly on the ground it becomes more of an issue as well. The dust created from foot traffic has an uncanny knack of ending up inside the box.
A regular inspection and quick clean is easy, takes no time and could save you a bag of cash. Compressed air will remove the start of the bunnies. Leaving them makes matters worse as the dust holds moisture. Corrosion is your next enemy and the fact that it takes a bit more elbow grease than just the can of air and then you run the risk of damaging components. The issue regarding moisture is emphasized in humid environments, like saunas and the tropics.
Thanks for the feedback, follow-up and the picture Turtlez. We are glad that your now back up and runing! But a good lesson for everyone.
One thing I was thinking writing this is what about laptops? Anyone know if this is as big a problem and how you go about maintaining them? They are a little more difficult to get into than a desktop and some of us could void our warranties.
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Looks like the bunnies had a party in there. Believe someone on the show did mention dust could be a problem. Had a similar situation w/the kids desktop, just stopped booting. When I opened the box cleaned it a bit, was good as before.
Lol, dust will do it every time.
The amount of dust and hair I have pulled out of computer system fans over the years could probably fill a small room!
Best thing to do is give your system a 6 month dust.
Also I’d recommend to anyone that has a PC box to make sure that your airflow is correctly set up, always make sure that its sucking air in the front, and blowing air out the back to create a cross flow effect!
Those with laptops are also not immune to the great temperature struggle, best thing for them to do is get a can of compressed air and lightly spray it through your vents / fans so you can clear any blockages, or best of all if you are ok with taking them apart (most have a deconstruction/reconstruction guide on the web) then you can give it a good dust out.
That looks more like a dust Wookie than a dust Bunny! Sheesh.
I was in the Apple store again today. It’s nice having an Apple store just a couple blocks away where I can go and fondle the Apple products that I can’t actually afford to actually purchase… I put the Aussie Geek homepage on a couple iMacs, a MacAir and a couple iPod Touches! Although most of the iPod Touches seem to have porn websites saved on them… Hrm.
I hope they sanitize those things at night…
Talk about Global warming !
Looks like a tribble got caught in the fan exhaust !
I wish I could post what the heatsink on my pc looked like. I have a pic but it isn’t currently on the net. I might just email it to dave. It was idle at 70 degrees and then after cleaning it out it would idle at 40 or so.