DARN YOU DUST BUNNIES!

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Crucial delivered it's ram to me today, so I popped open the case, and I then noticed what about 5-6 months of service can do to a system.

I have two cats, which have an endless supply of hair. Especially during the warmer summer months, because they shed it like crazy.

Anyways, I open my case, and find every fan to have a dust bunny or two hanging onto it. The PCI slot exhaust fan was the worst. Even my geforce video card's heat sink had a few.

So, I take out a q-tip, and start whiping down the heat sink fins, and inside all the vents. The CPU heat sink was the worse, with almost a solid layer of hair between the heat sink and fan.

So everything is clean, RAM installed, PC boots up fine and shows the extra memory.

I check out the Motherboard monitor program, and my Idle temp is now a nice 40degrees C. It used to be about 45-47.

Now I have a bit more respect for those cans of compressed air.

[Hardware Junkie]

I always keep a can or 2 of canned air around for such emergencies. I used to have 2 cats aswell and my systems used to be put through hell (the same kind as yours).