Dust 1 - Cooling 0

[MrChops]

A mate asked me to check his girlfriends' PC this weekend after it was pulled from her fire damaged flat. The outside was black with soot but no signs of heat damage. Opening it up it looked pretty clean inside, not much soot had got in; thankfully it wan't running at the time of the fire (no-one was hurt btw).

Then I noticed the dust on the CPU fan...and the dust behind the fan



Taking the fan off revealed a solid mass of dust packed tightly into the heatsink fins.



I've seen some dusty heatsinks over the years but this beats them all! A stiff paintbrush and compressed air has breathed new life into the cooling (decided wearing a dust mask a good idea!)

It's worked fine anyway and when I see my mate i'll ask how it was running...i'd imagine the AMD 64 was running a tad warm

 

[VaderDSL]

As bad as that heat sink is, I;d be more worried about the inside of the PSU

 

[Emphacy]

Holy ****.
I'm surprised it wasn't her PC that caused the fire. Do you know how it started by the way? Just interested.

If the CPU Heatsink is like that, what about the PSU? Gah Beaten.

 

[Ginger-Menace]

for a moment there i thought that was Thermal paste

thats some thick dust

 

[MrChops]

Holy ****.
I'm surprised it wasn't her PC that caused the fire. Do you know how it started by the way? Just interested.

I believe the fire actually started outside the flat but I don't know details.

I took the compressor to the PSU in an attempt to clear as much dust as possible but looking in through the fan it didn't actually look that bad. The CPU fan probably did a good job of catching most of the crap!

 

[scrlk]

By any chance is that a Compaq?

 

[MrChops]

Yeah, Presario something.