CPU - Burning Smell

[Nitrous]

Recently, I have been smelling something burning in my room. I smelt everything and have come to find out that it is my CPU. :roll:

I reckon its because my fan has been clogged up with dust and ****. I am going to attempt to clean it out before the whole CPU overheats and I gota buy a new one. :o

Can someone help me with this problem?

What should I do? And shouldn't do?
What equipment should I use? If any at all.

Please help

Thanks a lot.

[Maxi]

I wonder how many things you 'smelt' in your room before you found out it was your Pc. :P
You should indeed regularly clean out the insides of a pc - dust and especially the overheating it causes can be very nasty to your components. You can carefully vacuum in your case, preferably with some small vacuum 'headpiece'. Air spray dust cans or whatever they are called, are a good option but you'll have to buy them, which I personally find a bit overpriced (I mean come on, air in a can.. :roll: ). You can also use a dry cloth to carefully remove the dust from the fans. The less dust, the better!

[atsanjose]

you should put your vacuumcleaner piece on the fan

then it goes: VROOOOOOEEEEEEMMMMMMMM :turn-l:

which is fun :Fade-color :silly:

ps: vacuumcleaners can be used for more things, ask darryl

[Turnip2k]

Just watch out for static buildup if you use a vacum on your PC's internals - it can casue large buildup and may fry some components if it gets discharged across them. I suggest earthing your PC to a radiator or somthing first.

[BlackWolf]

Just grap hold of metal part of your box while vacuuming and it should ground you and your comp. This usually doesnt happen with plastic vacuum cleaners.. thats why there are those plastic nozles to be used...

[f0xx]

My advice: get a bucket full of water and throw it uppon your PC. That should do the trick I think :P

[BlackWolf]

F0xx your not even funny.

[Nitrous]

My advice: get a bucket full of water and throw it uppon your PC. That should do the trick I think :P

LOL!!! :lol:

[Nitrous]

I managed to get the burning smell away by using an external fan to cool the PSU which is meant to be cooled by the heatsink. But another problem has risen:

My CPU is off the following make:

Medion - PC MT 7.

Once I managed to my cover of my CPU off. I had noticed there was A LOT of dust that has been built up. I haven't cleaned my CPU (internally) , ever, since I bought it which was almost 5 years ago now.

But when I mean a lot of dust, I mean A LOT. In the heatsink alone, there was around 0.5 cm dust beneeath the blades, and the other components like the graphics card/RAM Memory thing and even on the wires linking on the shizzle.

So, I immediately thought to myself, I'll just wipe it all clean. Now usually, to get rid off dust I use a wet cloth - but as it is an internal side of a CPU I thought that may be a bit too risky. :lol:

Then I reverted to tissues, yes the stuff you use to blow your nose with, but turns out that isn't very good at wiping the dust off.

My hand held hoover isn't small enough to get in between the different pieces of the CPU to pick up the dust.

Now I need to clean it out properly, what do you lot suggest?

The next problem is:

How do I unclip my heatsink?

Someone told me earlier that it is unclippable and I had to take it off in order to remove the dust - which does sound logical. But once it came to to the practical side of things, I couldn't unclip it.

Is there a certain technique?

Thanks for the help
Much Love
Nitrous
xxxxx

[Turnip2k]

I wouldn't remove the heatsink unless you know have some thermal cement and know how to put it back on once your have cleaned it.

Try to find an adapter for a hoover that will get into that area, or failing that just buy the can of air (which are a ripoff, but if its your only way to get the dust out...meh).

Just be sure your PC is earthed to the radiator if you use a hoover, better not take risks with static and stuff. You can take the fan off the CPU (just unscrew it) and then hoover out the fan and the heatsink (with the heatsink still attached). That should get rid of most of the dust. Be sure to put the fan screws well out the way, I tried doing this when drunk and managed to hoover up my CPU fan screws. Yay.

[BlackWolf]

Thanks turnip of false info yet again.
Forget basicly everything turnip said.

I have no idea how your fan and heatsink are added to your PC. But those have been put there so those can be taken off. There are few methods. On old CPUs they used "lift" or lever that was put from one cide of heatsing and CPU over heatsink to other. Newer method is to use screws / plastick pins that goes in to motherboard from 4 sides.
As i bet your using old CPU and standard heatsink it most likely means such things as thermal cement are meaningless. Ofc you can go to comp shop and buy some silver etc cement for it, but i wouldnt bother.
Just open your box, get lots of light, think slowly, dont do anything unless you have thought it out, dont panic. Theres nothing you can break without enormeous force. So as long as you keep your head cool and think before you do, take 5 mins break and think it again. You will find a way to get heatsink out. Its not rocket science.

If you can get your fan unscred from heatsink, and then just hoover what you can out of heatsink it should be enought. Then clean that fan and screw it back to its place. Hoover what dust you can get out of your system and your system should be some 10 times better than it was before. You dont need to clean your system bit to bit, just take most of the dust you can away. If you want to be more presise you can buy like maxi said air in can and use that to burst rest of the dust out.

Most likely the harm is allready done. The dust has allready got to bearings of your fans, so those are so to say useless. You should take one and walk to comp shop and buy new one like that, replace it and be set. Basicly save what you can and use as long as you can, some day your comp will broke up anyways. All you can do now is to give it some artificial respiration... it may last year or 10 years depending on how hard you will work on it. But its time will eventually come. Just try to lengthen it as far as possible.

Forget what people scare you about static electricity. I built my first comp form the cratch when i was 12 years old and had never heard of such thing, I have built numerous of comps since that and never been worried. Its just lots of bollocks. Theres no need to worry about such. Just remember to take power cable off every time you touch inside of your comp and thats it. If you want to be carefull, after taking power cable off touch anything metallic struckture of your casing inside your computer. If you wanna be extra extra carefull keep touching something metallic inside your computer while you touch other parts. And if you want to be insanely carefull get some discharge bracelet. My advices are from person(s) whom work as computer engineer and as army communications officer so i bet they have something real behind of em. (one knows how to build radios and stuff from scratch and one has been working with computers for some 20 years.)

Electric disharge means simply that your directing electricity from one source to another, humans cant carry that much electricity and comps are not that sensitive to it honestly, so as long as you remember not to bring more electricity to your comp (power cable) you should be fine in 10000000000000 cases of 100000000000001.

[Souls]

Emmmmm

Just go get a can of compressed air. Keep it simple; the less things you move around and touch, the less chance you have of breaking something. :P

Oh, and I highly don't advise vacuuming out the guts of your computer with a metal vacuum tube. Go plastic, if you go that way. :P

EDIT -- BW, just because you've never experienced it, it doesn't mean it can't happen. ;)

[atsanjose]

because nitrious has been helped enough now i think, its save to go offtopic.

Thanks turnip of false info yet again.
Forget basicly everything turnip said.


thats why people dont like you BlackWolf.

[Cheese]

Pff all these fancy methods.
Just breathe in and blow really really hard.

[Nitrous]

Pff all these fancy methods.
Just breathe in and blow really really hard.

LMAO!!!! I already tried it lol :lol:
along with my brother, but then my room got dusty so we decided to stop :P

[Charlie_B]

Blackwolf, are you telling us you've never given yourself a static shock? The potential for a buildup of static electricity is a fact, I'd have thought everyone knew that. Your suggestion that 'humans cant carry enough electricity' is irrelevant if it's even true - as people's clothes certainly can, and that's where the problem comes from. It's disturbing that you'd advise a relative novice not to worry about basic safety precautions that aren't even a hassle to watch out for. It's great that you've been lucky all these years, but static discharge certainly does happen.

As far as removing hte heatsink goes Nitrous, I see no reason why you'd go to the hassle. Depending onthe make it can be a real bugger to get on/off, and i doubt you'd have dust in the tightly-sealed gap between it and the CPU.

When I last cleaned out my case, I used a small paintbrush and it worked well. You might also be able to switch your vacuum onto 'blow' and hold your breath :P

[Nightmare]

EDIT; nvm :) - delete post please :) <3 x

[Nitrous]

I finally sorted the dust issue out!!!

Wheepee, the hoover didn't work as I couldn't find an attach-on small enough to fit in the gaps and it wasn't powerful enough to get 90% of the dust yet alone 100%.

So guess what I done!!!

I walked around my house, looking for something that could potentially catch dust really well. Couldn't find anything 'cept from stuff in my mummy's room :o. Her make up shizz does come useful! I used cotton pads, cotton ear buds. THEY WORK WONDERS I TELL YOU!!!

:D :D :D :D :D

Thanks everyone that helped.

[Maxi]

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

:P

[Hippie]

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

:P

I second that

[Cheese]

Pff all these fancy methods.
Just breathe in and blow really really hard.

LMAO!!!! I already tried it lol :lol:
along with my brother, but then my room got dusty so we decided to stop :P

I don't even remember putting that must have been wrecked lol.

I still find the idea of vacuuming your pc slightly odd but go with the majority lol... you could get one of those things billows I believe you know what you use with coal fires to blow air into them :P