I was going to write a blog earlier today, but I wasn’t able to because of the extreme heat in the house. Temperatures have reached over 109 degrees in my area over the weekend. Too hot for a computer to be comfortable and work right.
You see it was over 95 degrees inside the office where the computer is, and because there is no A/C in the office, I can only use fans directly on the computer, and hope that the fans on the computer itself will cool it adequately. I had no choice but to leave the computer off until later in the evenings to keep from burning it up. This a new computer, and I don’t want to ruin it. I don’t have the means to get a new A/C into the office, and there is really no room for one in the office anyways. It is much too small.
I was going to write about something else, but figured this is an important topic to cover.
There are many enemies of a computer, and one of the biggest one is HEAT. I will cover the other areas of computer enemies later, but this is a major enemy. Heat can destroy a computer...
I’ve seen computers get ruined by too much heat. When a computer chip is running, it has so much energy going through it that it runs extremely hot. Without fans or heat sinks (a metal cage that helps to cool the chips off, with a fan blowing through it) the chip would burn out. It can handle only so much heat before getting fried.
Where I live, I am out in a dry desert region of San Diego, that gets extremely hot in the summer months. So I can only run the computers at night when it is cooler or early in the mornings. Since I lead a very busy life, it is not always easy to run the computers at ideal times.
I keep a digital thermometer next to my computer at most times when I am using it. When the reading on the thermometer reachs 90 degrees or hotter, I shut the computer off to keep from burning the chip up. I could try and put 3 fans in the office, to cool the machine, but that would be impractical with all my papers being blown around.
One of my many projects is scanning in large amounts of important tax papers, forms, photos, legal papers and old files into the computer for archiving. So I have stacks and stacks of papers in the office to scan in, that I later shred when I finish scanning them. Many fans in the office would be impractical as I would have a horrible mess of papers everywhere in the office, defeating the project's purpose which is to get rid of paper and clutter in life. I can't do that until they are all scanned in and archived. Once it is done, the papers get shredded and recycled.
I avoid taking a chance of burning up the new computer that took me over 4 years of savings to pay for it. It will be a few more years before I can afford another new computer. It is not worth it to me to overheat and ruin my main computer that I depend on so much for all the work that I do.
Of all the enemies of a computer, I take heat very seriously.
The computer I use is an Apple Intel Imac that has a metal aluminum case. At the top of the computer, there is the vent hole for the computer fans to blow out the hot air. Once in a while I will carefully touch the very top of the computer on the aluminum metal. If it is too hot for me to touch, I simply close out of my programs and shut the computer down or put it into sleep mode to cool it off. It is just too hot to run at that time.
The aluminum casing can get pretty hot if the room temperature is high, and the computer itself is running hot with hot exhaust air.
A HOT room + a computer running too hot, is a recipe for disaster. Unless you have a custom computer that has a special water based cooling system in it, or you have A/C in the computer room, it is ideal to shut the computer off when it gets too hot.
My previous computer that was a typical desktop tower, that had 3 internal fans... I would watch the dos screen on boot up, and if I saw the internal temp guage was running at over 100 degrees, I would simply shut down the computer. That meant the chip was Already at 100 degrees from the room temperature alone! Any more time running, and I could have fried the chip if the temp was over 120 or more. The strange part is that I had a heavy duty cooling tower built directly over the main chip. It didn't seem to matter in a room soaring to 90+ degrees or more...
If I didn't pay attention to the overheating of my old Windows XP tower, the heat would cause the computer to freeze up, crash or simply reboot itself. It was something that could ruin the computer.
The thing that is critical to keeping the computer cool, is to make sure the vent holes of ALL the fans on your Desktop or Laptop computer is kept clean and clear of dust, cobwebs, cat or dog hair...
You may laugh, but you'd be surprised what I found inside most desktop computers that I have opened up! I saw inches of dust all over the inside of the computer! I've seen spider webs inside some computers. I've even seen Cat and Dog hair clogging up the main cooling fan over the main chip! I've even watched as the techs opened up an Apple computer at a company I used to work for many years ago as a graphic designer... I was shocked to see that the computer had never been cleaned of dust in so long, that the dust was clogging up the internal fans and all the inside computer components! It explained why the computer kept crashing and having issues. This was in the mid 1990s, during the troubled years at Apple Co, with computers that were not always reliable back then.
Today, when I open first up a computer for cleaning, I would carefully use an anti static strap to keep from harming the chips with static electricity. I would then use a can of compressed air to blow the dust gently out of the fan blades, and the cooling fins of the heat sink. What the air can cannot get, I would use a fine tip paintbrush to gently dust out the cracks and corners. I was very gentle, just like an archaeologist gently uncovering ancient artifacts with a brush (Such as Indiana Jones). I am always being very careful not to break anything inside the computer.
Word of caution, all you power tool users and mechanics, if you use an air compressor to blow the air and dust out of the tower, put it on the lowest gentlest setting possible, and be very careful. Too much air presssure inside will damage the delicate parts inside the computer. End result is you could end up with a damaged or dead computer.
I usually prefer to use more gentler air cans and fine paintbrushes to dry clean the inside of the computer.
I make sure that all the vent holes are clear of the dust or any debris. Air flow is very critical to cooling off the computers internals...
If you have a laptop, you can always keep it cool by using a cooling pad underneath the computer. A cooling pad has one or two fans and helps to cool the underside of the computer. Many of today's newer laptops run very hot, and you can almost burn your lap with the heat they generate. I've felt some laptops running so hot, that even hands were very warm on the cover from all the heat...
It is very critical to keep the vents of either a desktop or a laptop not blocked by anything, and have plenty of room for air to flow in and out of them. It is important to keep the air flow at its maximum efficiency to cool off a computer...
Heat is something that computers have a hard time dealing with, so give your computer the greatest of care to stay cool. It is an expensive tool that you rely on for all your internet, gaming and personal needs.
Apple hit a roadblock with trying to build G5 laptops, as the G5 chips ran way too hot. The G4s were already running very hot in the Macbook Pro laptops. Which is why Apple switched to Intel to make the next generation of chips, since they could make a cooler chip to run in the latest laptops. Even so, even the Intel chips run hotter than the IBM/Motorola chips...
I've even noticed Pentium 4 laptops running hot too, including an old obsolete PIII laptop that I still use today, that runs Ubuntu Linux instead of the crappy Windows ME it used to come with.
The day has not come yet, where a computer chip can run very cool. Until then, we have to rely on fans, A/C cooled rooms and plenty of air flow.
Next stop..... the other enemies of computers that can ruin your PC, whether it is a Mac, Linux or Windows machine.
Until next time, take good care of your machine, and it will take care of your needs...
Eric
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