Not long ago a young gentleman brought a PC in to install a new DVD writer that he'd purchased. I installed the drive and the software right there and then and pointed out to him that the innards of his computer tower were extremely dusty and the cooling fans were making more noise than they should. I suggested he leave the unit for a while to be serviced. He declined and off he went.
A few weeks later he came in with the same unit. "It's dead" says he.
I booked it in and looked at it later that day. Here's what was wrong:
The cooling fan on the high-powered graphics card had seized from dust and lack of lubrication. The lack of cooling burnt out the graphics processor which in turn burnt out some of the surrounding electronic components and shorted out some circuits. The shorted circuits damaged the motherboard too.
The moral of the story? Our friend could have serviced the machine for a song, replacing or lubricating any suspect cooling fans. It would probably still be running today and he'd have all that money to spend on something more exciting...
