Good Old PC Cleaning

Starting about 2 weeks ago, I was noticing that whenever I put my video card under load (while gaming), my entire computer would crash. My video card is a rather old ATI Radeon 9800 XT. I had some problems a couple months ago with the video card fan not working but I was able to fix that with some cleaning. This time when I looked inside, the fan was spinning so I figured it was a problem with outdated drivers. So I updated them but no luck - still crashing.

Video Card Running Too Hot
I figured the video card was probably running too hot or maybe it’s just about to crap out due to old age. I downloaded some utilities to monitor various temperature sensors in the PC and the video card seemed to be running kind of hot while idling (~70°C). At load, it was probably going up to 80°C-90°C, causing it to crash. I never monitored the temperature on a regular basis so I didn’t know what to make of it. My feeling was just that 70°C seemed a bit high for idle temperature. The ambient air around the card was also at around 70°C so that seemed problematic.

I did some Googling and found out that my particular card does tend to run hot but that generally it’s okay. That didn’t help since my card was in fact crashing.

System Cleaning
I thought I’d give my computer a thorough cleaning because I had decided to either replace the video card heatsink/fan or the entire video card. When I removed the front panel I discovered that the 2 large front grates were completed caked in a disgustingly thick layer of dust! Overall the system was really dirty too. Dust covered everything but this was expected since I had not cleaned it in a long time. But to have a thick, solid layer of dust completely blocking the intake grates kind of surprised me because the square holes in the grate are rather large (almost 1cm diagonal) so you’d think dust would blow right through.

There’s actually an internal fan near the intake grates that pulls in fresh air and blows it on the video card to cool it down. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out if I clean off the intake grates to allow proper airflow, this should cool down the video card and entire system overall.

Holy Crapload of Dust, Batman!
Cleaning took me nearly the entire afternoon and almost 3 cans of compressed air. I removed all the parts and air dusted them all off. Then I meticulously wiped down all non-circuit surfaces with a damp cloth. The Dell Dimension XPS Gen 2 happens to have a lot of custom plastic molding inside so I washed all of them along with the front panel. Man, I gotta say there was a LOT of dust up in there. I’m talking giant mutant dust bunnies.

Video Card Running Much Cooler Now
Well now, my video card is idling at 49°C which is over 20°C lower than before. I’ll put it under load another time when I’m free but it should be okay. I’m still going to purchase some new case fans because my current ones are just too loud. When I build my new box in a month or two, this one’s getting inherited by my mother and she’d like it to be quieter. I’m going to buy a new video card heatsink/fan too because the current one is still a bit wonky.

Conclusion
Hopefully this wasn’t too boring. Everyone should clean their PC periodically. All you need is 1 or 2 cans of compressed air (air duster). Then just take your PC outside, open it up, and blast out all the dust. Also defragment your hard drives periodically, keep your OS updated (i.e. Windows), and always run updated anti-virus/firewall software. You do all these things and you’ll extend the life of your computer much further.

P.S. Have a great 4th of July, everyone!