Computers need to breath you know, and the dangers of simple static

BMC123 · 30th November 2006, 00:45

Customer left in a PC the other day as it was "crashing all the time" no other info apart from that. I assumed the usual spyware/trojan/virus stuff, but while I was doing my normal checking of the BIOS settings (to make sure no young fingers had been messing around in there first) I noticed the CPU temperature to be 85 degrees and rising

this was less than 2 minutes after switch on

so i naturally switched off, and went to investigate.

this is what confronted me.

what the picture does not show, is after i took the fan assembly apart, the white "fluff" was just on the surface, underneath was a thick black mess that I literally had to remove with tweezers. the heatsink itself was totally clogged with more dirt, and I spent a good 15 minutes cleaning it.

the PSU fans and the chassis fan were not as bad, but still took a bit of cleaning, and all that dirt had accumulated in just a year. (since I built the thing!)

Turns out the PC had been sitting on the floor in a bedroom that had a fluffy carpet. Once cleaned, and with a couple of gauze filters installed over the air intake grills it worked fine.... the same could not be said of the next machine that came in totally dead.

that's the motherboard power plug. part of it is still in the motherboard

power surge? lightning? nope.

simple static electricity. the bloke took a normal household hoover and a paint brush and proceeded to brush out all the dust from his computer and hoover it up at the same time.

ouch.

30th November 2006, 00:45	#1
BMC123 Posted a thing or two 2004 1.8 Connoisseur SE, 1999 XJ8 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Northern Ireland Posts: 1,163 Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post	Computers need to breath you know, and the dangers of simple static Customer left in a PC the other day as it was "crashing all the time" no other info apart from that. I assumed the usual spyware/trojan/virus stuff, but while I was doing my normal checking of the BIOS settings (to make sure no young fingers had been messing around in there first) I noticed the CPU temperature to be 85 degrees and rising this was less than 2 minutes after switch on so i naturally switched off, and went to investigate. this is what confronted me. what the picture does not show, is after i took the fan assembly apart, the white "fluff" was just on the surface, underneath was a thick black mess that I literally had to remove with tweezers. the heatsink itself was totally clogged with more dirt, and I spent a good 15 minutes cleaning it. the PSU fans and the chassis fan were not as bad, but still took a bit of cleaning, and all that dirt had accumulated in just a year. (since I built the thing!) Turns out the PC had been sitting on the floor in a bedroom that had a fluffy carpet. Once cleaned, and with a couple of gauze filters installed over the air intake grills it worked fine.... the same could not be said of the next machine that came in totally dead. that's the motherboard power plug. part of it is still in the motherboard power surge? lightning? nope. simple static electricity. the bloke took a normal household hoover and a paint brush and proceeded to brush out all the dust from his computer and hoover it up at the same time. ouch. __________________ [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]