Technology Section

The Hot Weather Is Coming/Is Here - Take 5 Mins to Hoover The Inside Of Your Computer - It Will Stop It Freezing

June 2006

Computers don’t like hot temperatures. We all know how they love to suddenly freeze up and crash and most of these problems are due to them overheating. This article offers a really quick and simple way to combat the heat problem, and it only takes 5 minutes.

Dust & Heat Are A PC's Real Enemy

• Computers use internal fans to cool the motherboard and processing chip
• Air is sucked into the box, blown over the chip via a fan and then the air is blown out via another fan
• This means that a lot of dust is sucked into the machine which can build up into a thick layer
• The dust then cuts the effectiveness of the fans by up to 50% which often translates into the computer freezing up, no doubt at just the wrong time (i.e., we lose that long letter we’ve been typing)

So do the following -

1. Turn off your machine
2. Unplug all the wires from the back taking special note of where to plug them back in
3. Take your PC outside because you don’t want the dust everywhere
4. Remove one of the side panels, these either come off really easily via a special button or you’ll have to use a Phillips screwdriver
5. Use your Hoover (or an aerosol can that blows compressed air) to clear up the dust and pay special attention to the fan on the motherboard and the other fan attached to the back of the box
6. If need be use a small knife to scrape any built up dust that’s around both the fans
7. When finished put the side back on and re-plug all the wires and turn the PC back on

Summary

Hoovering out the insides of a PC can literally transform it’s performance, no, it won’t make it run any faster but in over 80% of cases it will stop freezing up all the time. This kind of spring cleaning should be done every year at the beginning of the summer.

PS. If you're still having problems then get a better internal fan. Either take your PC down to your local PC shop and expect to pay no more than £20 for the fan including fitting or if you know what you're doing buy one yourself and install it, should take less than 10 mins. Personally we find that Ebay.co.uk is very good for computer spares etc. The added advantage of a new fan is that the modern ones are very quiet which should cut out a lot of the background din.

See Also

• How To Get Free Computer Help
• Dump IE & Go With The Superb Mozilla Web Browser
• How Valuable Is Your PC Data?
• Don't Waste Money on an Expensive Computer