I've never seen a heatsink clogged so bad....

[virge]

http://tinypic.com/r/107jksz/7

I was recently called upon to work on my sister in law's computer-- it kept crashing. I opened it up and was horrified. Take a look at the pic. Dell owners will be familiar with the green ventilation shroud. I think it's a good cooling design, but there is a drawback. All the dust and crud gets pulled into just one side of the heatsink! I pulled off the lint/dust on one corner to demonstrate.

Clean your computers once in a while people!

[lead_org]

many high performance server and workstation machines use this directed airflow shroud, it increases the cooling efficiency, but you have to clean them frequently to ensure maximum cooling efficiency.

[Unknown_K]

That setup allows the OEM to use a larger FAN then what can be slapped onto a heatsink while blowing the hot air out of the case instead of it building up inside the case or heating up the power supply as it gets sucked out.

Personally I like a decent heatsink/fan combination plus case fans to keep the insides cool.

As fas as dust goes, the absoluet worst I have seen was in an old IBM PS/2 Model 90 desktop I got from a recycler. The unit ran at the shop, but when I got it home to look inside (and clean it) the whole unit was a sea of gray dust like the heatsink in your picture. It was so bad you could not see anyting inside but that dust sweater, came out easily with a shop vac and I completely took it apart and washed everything before putting it in the collection.

Another common problem people have with newer machines is the video card fan either gets clogged up with dust so the machine crashes, or the fan fails completely and the machine crashes. People need to check on video cards as well.

[poshgeordie]

Have a look at these!

We see this all the time with laptops which are fitted with failed Nvidia GPU's. Vents block up, overheats, and the chip becomes faulty.

We recently had a Thinkpad T4x belonging to a smoker which was so disgusting we wore latex gloves to clean it out - the customer will remain anonimous....

[mediasponge]

This is the prime reason not to have a desktop machine on your floor. Your computer acts like a stationary vacuum cleaner, dutifully sucking up the dust in its environment until it can't function anymore. Not so bad in an office that gets vacuumed every day, and probably has close-napped carpet, but still. This is what's called Preventive Maintenance. When the dust is so thick you can measure it with a ruler, then it becomes remedial maintenance...

[poshgeordie]

When the dust is so thick you can measure it with a ruler, then it becomes remedial maintenance...

I guess if you collect enough you could spin it into a little hat for your PC...a Red one of course to match the Linux OS you would've also installed.