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Old 22-01-2024, 07:57 PM
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alpal
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alpal is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 3,786
I'm an electronics technician and I can't be bothered building
my own computers anymore -
it's better to buy one fully made with 2 years warranty -
but I did add a Hard Disk and some more memory to mine
without affecting the warranty.
I did some maintenance on my computer 2 weeks ago.
The desktop computer is just over 2 years old running Win10.
It was getting hot when running all 8 cores at over 55% CPU -

as monitored by the program Core Temp 1.18.

Solution:

I cleaned the dust off my fan and heatsink -
by pulling it out of the computer.
see pic:
https://i.ibb.co/dGkJs7P/Heatsink-cleaning.jpg
I didn’t have an air compressor to blow it out
and I wanted to check that the heatsink compound was correctly applied.
It was applied correctly but a previous computer built by another company wasn’t - over 13 years ago and caused many problems.


I cleaned the dust off each fan blade with a tissue moistened with water and a weak solution of Palmolive liquid detergent.
The heatsink was vacuumed out from all directions
with a small air nozzle attachment.
Also by not using an air compressor I didn't spread dust everywhere through the computer.
However my method is risky as the 4 plastic clips can break when they get old.
2 years old is OK but at 5 to 10 years old & they could easily break –
they are cheap and nasty.
Unless you buy a commercial Server - that’s all you get.

Re-assembly -
It was a fiddly job to get the 4 clips right that hold the fan on to the heatsink and connect it back to the PCB.
It took 3 goes in the end.
I cleaned off the old heatsink compound and used new Nano Diamond compound:

https://www.jaycar.com.au/nano-diamo...cator/p/NM2018

I ended up having to put slightly more Nano Diamond heatsink compound on until I was satisfied with the results at 55% CPU.
It's been working well now in the summer temperatures.


cheers
Allan
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