Dust works its way into the fan and sticks to the
grease and accumulates there, eventually interfering with the action of the fan
and causing that horrible grinding 'sick computer' noise.
Before we get to
the solutions for this problem, I'd like to share a brief rant about two of
the major contributors to the death of innocent computers: Cigarette smoke and pet (cat)
hair.
I've seen horrible things happen to systems in the houses
of smokers and pet owners, and I bet any computer tech could tell you
likewise.
Two stories to illustrate the point:
A couple of years ago at my store, a rather old PC was
brought in by a rather old gentleman, who smelled rather strongly of
cigarette smoke. It had stopped working he said, innocently. The computer case had turned from beige
to a sort of parchment yellow, and I guess this should have been a clue
to what awaited us inside the case. Ignoring the warning sighs, we opened it
up.
Suffice
to say that the gentleman in question had obviously not been particularly discriminating in his smoking
habits around the system... There was a thin layer of yellow residue (tar?) layered across
the inside of the case, to which a considerable amount of dust had actually
stuck.
The smell was... unpleasant. Needless to say, we closed it up instantly and
made a half-hearted attempt at diagnosing the problem. When it unsurprisingly failed to boot, we
bundled it up and handed it back to the customer; "Sorry, nothing we can
do." He seemed rather offended when we suggested that his smoking habits might
be the issue, and went off looking for "someone who knows what they are
doing!"
Now granted, this is an
extreme example, but cigarette smoke can be very damaging to computer components because
of the residue it leaves behind. You wouldn't smoke around kids would
you? Good, because if you work around computers for a living, now's a good time to practice discretion for later in life.
As for pet hair, one of
my best customers at the store had persuaded me to do an on-site upgrade for him since
the huge shiny server case he had just bought from us was too heavy to
safely get out of his apartment. This particular gentleman depended on computers for his
livelihood.
Imagine
my surprise then, when I arrived and found this drool-worthy $600 split-server
case with its thousands of dollars of state-of the art components and multiple
SCSI drives sitting on the floor in a small, semi-closed cupboard next to the
cat-litter box.
It will come as no surprise that the filters this case thankfully had installed
on the outside fans were absolutely clogged with cat hair and assorted particles. The computer
was still working fine, but it had only been there for a couple of
weeks.
I shudder
to think what it would have looked like after a year. Cat hair especially is
extremely fine and light, and will clog up your fans rather quickly if allowed
inside.
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