I feel like such a fool! Got the system 2 years ago. For a few months now my CPU temp has been about 50-55 C at idle, and if I do anything like video encoding in Handbrake it would try for 100 C unless I throttled by running Tthrottle with a rule "Throttle when CPU is over 80", and set the minimum CPU to 20%. That way I got a temp GRAPH like a sideways view of a saw blade, with the temp cycling between around 70 and 90. I read around the web "these CPUs run hot" and "stock cooler is junk" etc. Well, today I took the side off my case and wouldn't you know it, the heatsink was caked with dust. I got the vacuum cleaner out, and holding the fan stopped with my finger, sucked it all out. Now it's idling at 37 and when I encode, it flattens out at around 68. Like I said, I feel like a fool. Even running Prime95 it doesn't go over 80.
We've been doin this so long many times we forget the basics...i for 1 am guilty...Today I was rearranging a bunch of stuff and DISCOVERED that my home server rack (because of course all normal people have those!) was getting a bit hot. I then noticed a bunch of almost clumps of dust sitting on top of various bits of kit which looked strange. I have a fan in the top of the rack to extract hot air, turns out that the grille that the fan blows air through had been totally clogged up with dust and what seems to have happened is that the dust that was collecting was DROPPING off and landing on other kit. I then took my server out to find a ridiculous amount of dust bunnies sitting all around the inside, it MUST have been sucking in all the dust that was collecting around the rack (probably not helped by the fact the machine has a pair of 120mm intake fans but no exhaust so any dust that got sucked in would get trapped).

Thankfully there were no thermal/overheating issues other than "hmm, feels a bit hotter in here than it used to" and since cleaning it out everything seems fine. What probably doesn't help is that the front and rear of the rack are completely enclosed (metal at the rear, glass on the front) so the only air intake is a grille on the bottom that sucks directly off of the carpet, should probably look into getting some sort of filter to cover that.

I should probably set a calendar reminder for every few months to remind me to clean stuff like this, it's all to easy to just forget about it, in particular my servers and stuff which just sit in a corner running (and probably gather more dust than my desktop since they run 24/7 whereas my desktop runs for far less time.

On the same topic, I recently bought one of those mains powered air blowers, makes such a difference. Cleaning the whole server out took literally 30 second to make it look good as new.Quote from: camerongray on June 04, 2017, 09:55:05 AM

the only air intake is a grille on the bottom that sucks directly off of the carpet, should probably look into getting some sort of filter to cover that.

Ouch....how were you able to get rid of the plastic ? ?