So I noticed my box was running a little warm...

[Smith6612]

So last night I took it out to my garage to blow the dust out of everything! The system itself was physically clean, with only a thin layer of dust on the hardware. My PC is on 24/7. Here are the average temps of my box before I blew it out. System was overclocked and fully loaded!

CPU Core 0: 52 Celcius
CPU Core 1: 54 Celcius
CPU Core 2: 49 Celcius
CPU Core 3: 53 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (1): 63 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (2): 65 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (3): 61 Celcius
HDD 1: 34 Celcius
HDD 2: 34 Celcius
HDD 3: 35 Celcius
HDD 4: 35 Celcius
Ambient case temperature: 32 Celcius

Now, at the garage I opened up the case, fired up an air compressor with an air gun tool, and then blew out the dust from the PC. I also blew out the dust from my heat sinks and the dust out of the video cards. Note that this was very little dust. Taking my PC back inside and firing it up and then stressing it for over an hour with 100% load on the GPU and CPU from Folding@Home, I get the following temps with the same settings on the system.

CPU Core 0: 39 Celcius
CPU Core 1: 40 Celius
CPU Core 2: 41 Celcius
CPU Core 3: 40 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (1): 45 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (2): 46 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (3): 44 Celcius
HDD 1: 30 Celcius
HDD 2: 30 Celcius
HDD 3: 28 Celcius
HDD 4: 29 Celcius
Ambient Case Temperature: 26 Celcius


Notice how much of a drop in temperature that was? This was only from a couple months of the box running. Also note that I do filter the air in my home so that rules out much of the issues. Take note that the fans on my box are automatically controlled unless I override them. Before I blew the box out, the video card fans as well as the system fans would start to turn their speed up as I increased the load and temperatures rose. Now that I blew the box out, the fans barely turn up their speed and the temps remain much lower. (each fan runs at 30% of it's maximum speed and starts to spin faster after the temperature starts to get beyond a threshold, and will keep turning up the speed until the temps start to fall or the fan maxes out).

So, my message to you guys is this: If you have the tools, clean out your PC once a year! If it's a high end box, clean it up every couple months. This is what I've been doing for years and it does keep my hardware alive

[ichwar]

So last night I took it out to my garage to blow the dust out of everything! The system itself was physically clean, with only a thin layer of dust on the hardware. My PC is on 24/7. Here are the average temps of my box before I blew it out. System was overclocked and fully loaded!

CPU Core 0: 52 Celcius
CPU Core 1: 54 Celcius
CPU Core 2: 49 Celcius
CPU Core 3: 53 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (1): 63 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (2): 65 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (3): 61 Celcius
HDD 1: 34 Celcius
HDD 2: 34 Celcius
HDD 3: 35 Celcius
HDD 4: 35 Celcius
Ambient case temperature: 32 Celcius

Now, at the garage I opened up the case, fired up an air compressor with an air gun tool, and then blew out the dust from the PC. I also blew out the dust from my heat sinks and the dust out of the video cards. Note that this was very little dust. Taking my PC back inside and firing it up and then stressing it for over an hour with 100% load on the GPU and CPU from Folding@Home, I get the following temps with the same settings on the system.

CPU Core 0: 39 Celcius
CPU Core 1: 40 Celius
CPU Core 2: 41 Celcius
CPU Core 3: 40 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (1): 45 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (2): 46 Celcius
GeForce GTX280 (3): 44 Celcius
HDD 1: 30 Celcius
HDD 2: 30 Celcius
HDD 3: 28 Celcius
HDD 4: 29 Celcius
Ambient Case Temperature: 26 Celcius


Notice how much of a drop in temperature that was? This was only from a couple months of the box running. Also note that I do filter the air in my home so that rules out much of the issues. Take note that the fans on my box are automatically controlled unless I override them. Before I blew the box out, the video card fans as well as the system fans would start to turn their speed up as I increased the load and temperatures rose. Now that I blew the box out, the fans barely turn up their speed and the temps remain much lower. (each fan runs at 30% of it's maximum speed and starts to spin faster after the temperature starts to get beyond a threshold, and will keep turning up the speed until the temps start to fall or the fan maxes out).

So, my message to you guys is this: If you have the tools, clean out your PC once a year! If it's a high end box, clean it up every couple months. This is what I've been doing for years and it does keep my hardware alive

I try and clean my box out at least once a month as I've been experiencing much the same thing: it runs incredibly quieter right after I vacuum the whole thing out.:thefinger

[zen-r]

That's because you sucked all the circuit boards out of it as well. Didn't you notice how nice & black your monitor screen was right afterwards?!! ;)

Seriously though, this removing of dust is a good idea but you must be very careful to not cause harm whilst doing it. There are a number of risks ;

Knocking & breaking off small components, leads etc with the nozzle.
Creating high static voltages by the air flow, damaging sensitive electronic parts.
Causing small adjustable devices like trimmers (variable resistors or capacitors) to become re-aligned to a new value, resulting in the circuit performing differently or not at all.
And so on...

So take care!

[Smith6612]

I am careful with my hardware. Why wouldn't I be?

Might I mention, a few months ago just for kicks to benchmark my cooling capacity, I turned up every fan on my PC to 100% speed. Case fans, PSU fan, and GPU fans. I recall that as soon as I fired them all up I could see some dust blowing out of the back of the computer and that the computer sounded like a jet engine.

[adamparkzer]

I have a laptop that's about two years old, and it runs on average at about 60 degrees Celsius. It can shoot up to 90 degrees Celsius if I'm gaming, watching videos, listening to music, and multitasking more. I tried cleaning out my laptop by sucking out some air through the fan hole, but it didn't really do much, and I didn't see a drastic reduction in running temperature.

[ichwar]

you'll need to open it up to effectively clean it out.

[zen-r]

....I recall that as soon as I fired them all up I could see some dust blowing out of the back of the computer and that the computer sounded like a jet engine.

Now we know the source of the last tornado in your area!

... It can shoot up to 90 degrees Celsius if I'm gaming, watching videos, listening to music, and multitasking more. I tried cleaning out my laptop .....

Congrats. Throw away your electric kettle. You have just invented the laptop water boiler. A cup of coffee now need never be more than an arm's length away.

[Smith6612]

Now we know the source of the last tornado in your area!



Congrats. Throw away your electric kettle. You have just invented the laptop water boiler. A cup of coffee now need never be more than an arm's length away.

Tornado? What tornado :laugh: (in all seriousness my area doesn't get tornadoes. The only things we get close to that are very weak funnel clouds, water spouts, and level 1 tornadoes that die after 5 seconds. Even so these only happen maybe once every 15-20 years or so).

But the laptop running at 90 celcius reminds me of the CPU Stove video on YouTube. And yes, it's not unusual to see a laptop running that warm. There are ways to help cool it though. One is to use SpeedFan to crank up the fan speed on it, and the second way is to give it more air flow on the bottom of the laptop. The third way is to, of course if you want to sacrifice some performance, have the laptop underclock itself by running it off the battery/booting it up off the battery.

[adamparkzer]

One is to use SpeedFan to crank up the fan speed on it

How do I do this? When I go to the Fan tab in the SpeedFan options, there isn't anything listed. Does the fan speed control exist in some other section of the interface?

[Smith6612]

If the fan's not listed then it's probably not a controllable fan. I've seen a lot of OEM based PCs lately where they don't allow you to touch the fans as that's entirely controlled by the fan and motherboard itself. Older PCs? Sure, no problem, just as long as it was a high end one/one with a decent motherboard in it.