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Walked into a client's server room last week and found a box fan propped up against an open case
I do IT support on the side for some local dental offices. Last Thursday I got a call about a practice server that kept shutting down randomly. When I got there the owner had a regular house fan just blowing directly into the open side panel. He said it helped but the noise was driving everyone crazy. I pulled up the temperature logs and saw the CPU was hitting 95 degrees before the fan even helped. Turns out the thermal paste had turned into basically dust and the heatsink was completely clogged with 4 years of lint. I cleaned it out, repasted it, and closed the case back up. Now it idles at 40 degrees with no fan needed. Has anyone else seen some truly wild cooling setups in their clients' offices?
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kelly.daniel23d ago
Man that's a classic. I read about a guy who found a client using a wet towel draped over the case to "cool it down" - almost caused a short.
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angela4323d ago
Honestly, doesn't it feel like everyone is always looking for some quick, cheap fix instead of just doing things the right way? I see it all the time with people trying to save a buck on appliances or electronics. They'll stuff a fridge too full so it runs nonstop, or block the vents on a laptop thinking it helps. It's like nobody thinks about how the stuff actually works, they just want a magic trick. That wet towel story is just another version of that same short-sighted thinking. It's always a gamble with fire or damage, and people never see it coming.
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