Lemmi wrote:my first computer which is still running doesnt even look that bad and i only cleaned it out maybe 10 times in the 3 years i used it, but now my step dad uses it for his trucking company for making maps and stuff, he used to do taxes on it but the new turbotax doesnt support win 98 anymore
Sounds like you've been very good at cleaning out the PC. You've provided a great jumping off point to a quick PC care lesson. People need to take cleaning/cooling more seriously, especially with the newer Pentium 4 processors and similar generation CPUs. The operating thresholds (and the heat generated by these 3+ Ghz processors) blows away what we've been doing for the past 10 years with everything from the 386 to the Pentium 3. Pentium 4s are totally different beasts, but unfortunately, even the most expert of PC hobbyists go about their business as usual not realizing they could be destroying their PC, because they've never developed a habit of routinely cleaning it.
Pentium 4 processors have built-in overheat protection, which includes throttling to consume less power and to reduce heat, as well as auto power off if the temperature exceeds a critical safe level. Older processors generally have nothing like these technologies.
The end effect, though, is that an older computer could (and they usually did) seemingly run fine for years and years without a single cleaning, where a Pentium 4 PC, on the other hand, will really get flaky with even a slight buildup of dust and debris inside. A major contributor to the problem with the P4 is that most modern cases include extra fans that pull air across the heatsink/fan, and therefore loose dust and hair too, and also the Intel design heatsink traps dust quite easily.
P4s run very close to their high-temp threshold already, right out of the box, so there is less margin for error. A CPU running at 40C might be fine, if it gets up to 50C it'll only run at 50% capacity though. At 65-70C the PC will shut itself off completely. You'd be amazed at how little dust inside the case is required to raise the temperature by 10-20%.
I've experienced first hand what dust, hair (especially pet hair/dander), can do to P4s. I've cleaned more than my fair share. The performance loss is astounding when the heatsink starts getting dirty, and the worst part of it is that Windows XP has no dialog to pass the CPU throttling/error messages back to the user, so people go about their merry way with a PC running at 50% speed or even less -- completely oblivious to the fact that their processor is melting it's millions of transistors away. Linux, on the other hand, does actually pass these throttle messages to the console.
Do I win? lol
