Today I cleaned the dust out of my computer.  What a difference.  Here are 
the details.  The fans in my computer are temperature controlled.  When I 
turn on the computer they run at full speed and quickly slow down to a slow 
speed as the temperature sensor  becomes active.  I've had this computer for 
almost 5 years and as the air flow path became stopped with dust the fan 
started running faster.  This happened so gradually I wasn't aware of it. 
What started happening was that as the processor worked harder the fan would 
run faster.  So when I was recording sound or video the fan would run quite 
fast and when the recording was stopped the fan would slow down.  This had 
been going on for a long time but in the past couple of months had become 
more pronounced.  It finally penetrated my thick head that this didn't 
happen when the computer was new.  So today I disconnected everything from 
the back, set it on my bench and took off the side.  There were two fans I 
could get at.  There is a third one in the power supply but that case is pop 
riveted shut.  Of the two I could get at one is in the back blowing air out. 
The other is mounted to a finned heat radiator mounted on the processor.  I 
took that one off and found that the fins of the heat radiator were almost 
completely clogged with dust.  An old toothbrush was the perfect thing for 
cleaning out the fins.  There was a lot of dust in both fans so I cleaned 
that out too.    So it's all back together now.  When I record something I 
can't detect any speedup of the fans.  Also the air coming out of the back 
is a lot cooler than it was before the cleaning.  It's so nice to work here 
and not have to listen to those fans.  I didn't realize how bad it was until 
I got it fixed.     I would recommend cleanings more frequently than 5 
years.  Do as I say, not as I do.  Grin.

Regards.

Max.  K 4 O D S.

Email: [email protected]

Transistor site http://www.funwithtransistors.net
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