![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqI don't think I got around to mentioning the ongoing problems I have been experiencing with my desktop computer at home. Over the past few weeks it has been sliding into a pattern of erratic and unreliable behaviour, mostly in the form of randomly freezing. The cause has been difficult to isolate, but my strongest hunch was that my video card had fried itself.
A friend at work has a spare X1300 card kicking around, so we arranged a swap yesterday. I brought my 6800GT card in to work with the intention of trading it off for his X1300 to see if that one worked any better (if perhaps a fair bit slower). I was sitting at my desk yesterday morning turning the card over in my hands, trying to spot anything obvious wrong with it (a charred component would be an obvious problem, for instance). I knew that the fan was working, and I occasionally use compressed air to clean out the dust and hair that might be giving it problems, yet the behaviour screamed "thermal distress".
I was just about to put the card back into its anti-static bag when something caught my eye. Under the fan's cover, at an angle where I would never have seen it while the card was mounted in the computer, a thin (about 2mm thick) layer of dust and hair had built up along the inside edge of the heat sink. I worked my fingertips between the fan blades and managed to pinch it enough to pull it out. It peeled away from the heat sink as a single unit, and had the consistency of felt.
The compressed air that I had used to keep the fan clear would not have removed this layer of "felt", in fact it would have done exactly the opposite and wedged it even more tightly into the heat sink. I had always assumed that the fan was designed to draw air across the heat sink and vent it into the computer, but it actually draws air in from the computer and pushes it across the heat sink. While either method would be effective at cooling the card, doing it this way almost seems designed to malfunction. The fan is pulling all manner of particulates into its casing, and having nowhere else to go, it is all collecting against the heat sink until it blocks it entirely.
It is still too early to determine if this has solved the problem -- it is possible that some of the RAM on the card has become permanently damaged. On the other hand my computer had not crashed yet when I checked it this morning, so I am hopeful.
I guess I'll just have to remember to clean my video card's lint trap every couple of months.
A friend at work has a spare X1300 card kicking around, so we arranged a swap yesterday. I brought my 6800GT card in to work with the intention of trading it off for his X1300 to see if that one worked any better (if perhaps a fair bit slower). I was sitting at my desk yesterday morning turning the card over in my hands, trying to spot anything obvious wrong with it (a charred component would be an obvious problem, for instance). I knew that the fan was working, and I occasionally use compressed air to clean out the dust and hair that might be giving it problems, yet the behaviour screamed "thermal distress".
I was just about to put the card back into its anti-static bag when something caught my eye. Under the fan's cover, at an angle where I would never have seen it while the card was mounted in the computer, a thin (about 2mm thick) layer of dust and hair had built up along the inside edge of the heat sink. I worked my fingertips between the fan blades and managed to pinch it enough to pull it out. It peeled away from the heat sink as a single unit, and had the consistency of felt.
The compressed air that I had used to keep the fan clear would not have removed this layer of "felt", in fact it would have done exactly the opposite and wedged it even more tightly into the heat sink. I had always assumed that the fan was designed to draw air across the heat sink and vent it into the computer, but it actually draws air in from the computer and pushes it across the heat sink. While either method would be effective at cooling the card, doing it this way almost seems designed to malfunction. The fan is pulling all manner of particulates into its casing, and having nowhere else to go, it is all collecting against the heat sink until it blocks it entirely.
It is still too early to determine if this has solved the problem -- it is possible that some of the RAM on the card has become permanently damaged. On the other hand my computer had not crashed yet when I checked it this morning, so I am hopeful.
I guess I'll just have to remember to clean my video card's lint trap every couple of months.
