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It's possible because the heat sink is clogged up and made the CPU run hot so it throttled down to prevent burning up.
The CPU I have is 3.2ghz, it will go up to 3.8ghz (if I remember correctly) as long as the temps, fan speeds etc will allow it to that safely. No mention of it throttling down though.
Oh boy, I wasn't expecting this to turn into a real discussion, but I'm happy it did. The picture was posted on Reddit, under the "WTF" section. I'm not sure if this was really a customer asking this or not, or what was actually said. I'll have to check in a bit if the OP responded or not. The second thought (after the what the?) that entered my head was the high potential of a fire hazard and how it didn't start on fire already. I don't know if it could even boot with that thick of dust on it. Every desktop I've owned never even got close to that bad! a light dusting, maybe.
Just imagine the health of the person who had the pleasant experience of sitting next to it or being in the same room while it was running. Yuck.
It's definitely the dust. I recommend you tell the person to buy a can of the pressurized air at your local radio shack that is made particularly for blowing the dust out of computers. Disassemble the computer tower and blow out the dust, I'm more than positive you will be shocked when you see the amount of dust in the computer. Not only does PC's suffer from dust but even game systems. You should tell the person to always clean your PC out regularly to avoid overheating. Not cleaning it out could result in damage to your CPU and GPU. If you have a heat sink of the CPU, the bond between the CPU and heat sink could melt from overheating and you will have to manually fix it using polysynthetic silver. This is a time consuming task and sometimes it doesn't work. Avoid that hassle and just keep the PC's guts clean!
If you think DUST caused the customer's system to run slower, then please for the benefit of humanity GET OUT of the computer repair business because you're doing yourself and everybody a disservice.
If you think DUST caused the customer's system to run slower, then please for the benefit of humanity GET OUT of the computer repair business because you're doing yourself and everybody a disservice.
You're welcome from the Geek Max.
Dust would most certainly have a negative impact on system performance. Silicon works much less efficiently as the temperature rises; excess dust not only clogs the computer's fans, it acts as a great, big thermal blanket.
At the very least, the customer would have experienced random crashes. Frankly, I'm surprised the pictured system could even make it through its POST.
A consumer grade user that never opens the case isn't going to special order a Compaq PC with a floppy drive, and no modern PC (especially a brand name) is going to come with one out of the box. If the interior of the PC is that dusty, I guarantee that the heads of the FDD is equally coated in grime, and the floppy isn't working anymore. If they had a specific need for it, they would have had it replaced, in which case the interior of the system would have been cleaned and wouldn't be that dirty. There's also the fact that in the vast majority of situations, it would take years for that amount of dust to build up.
We're also looking at a 40 wire IDE cable in there...
It's simple deductive reasoning, Tek. I'm actually kind of surprised that you disagreed with me. As a tech type, I would have expected you to be a bit more analytical than using yourself - someone that would never let a system get into that condition in the first place - as a basis for comparison. Don't confuse the brevity of my post with my making "silly assumptions." That in itself actually is a "silly assumption."
Long argument that means little. Especially since it nothing to do with my statement. You should try using some of that deductive reasoning you're so concerned about.
I've worked on computers that looked worse that the one in the OP and the floppy drives (yes drives - 5 1/4 and 3 1/2) both worked fine. So, no I wasn't really using myself. I was using a quarter century of working on computers.
I was just making the point that because the computer had a floppy drive was in no way connected to it running slow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by swagger
I see a floppy cable in there.
Time to upgrade. No amount of cleaning is going to speed that thing up appreciably.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tek_Freek
That has nothing to do with the speed of a computer. My very fast computers both have floppy cables in them because they both have floppy drives. Silly assumption.
The fact that there is a floppy drive in that computer has no bearing on the speed of the computer.
It's still a silly assumption. Put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig.
Edit: There is a time when it would affect the speed of the PC. If the OS is running on it, or a program is.
Im surprised people are even discussing this. I most certainly HAVE cleaned out computers and fixed slowness and reliability issues. Computers less filthy than that. What you probably cant see in that picture, is the heat sink is most likely loaded up too, and the chip isnt being cooled properly. That computer has to be many years old, so would it be blazing fast from cleaning it, nope, but it should make a difference. It would take many cans of air to fix that!
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