I have yet to have a computer last 5 years except for one old 386 running DOS which is just hardly limping along since 1993.
----- Original Message ----- From: Max Robinson To: Blind Handyman Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 11:40 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Cleaning my computer. 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 Vacuum tube site: http://www.funwithtubes.net Music site: http://www.maxsmusicplace.com To subscribe to the fun with tubes group send an email to, [email protected] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
