A seemingly broken, overheating Alienware computer turns out to be simply dirty on a technician’s workbench.
What kind of computer is it? TikTok user 1969MAN posted a video in which he talked about a gaming PC that he received as a gift. The previous owners are said to have bought it in 2017, but now it is just overheating and is therefore probably “broken”.
At that time it was a top system from Alienware’s Aurora series. An Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 and an unspecified Intel I7 core processor are installed. This is probably a model from the 7700 series (via aw-community)
The approach to solving the problem is down-to-earth: The TikToker uses vacuum cleaners and cleaning utensils, as he shows and describes in a comment under his video.
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No passage for cooling air
What is the problem of the PC? Already at first glance, heavy contamination can be seen in the fans of the seven-year-old Alienware computer. In his video, the TikTok user begins to remove the dirt. It looks like a mixture of dust, hair, nicotine and other household dirt. Meanwhile, he describes the smell as typical of Mexican food.
The result: The heat generated during operation can no longer be dissipated. The system sometimes simply switches off after just a few minutes.
Why is dust harmful to a PC? Basically, every PC should be checked regularly for dirt. The fans and heatsinks should be free of extensive dust buildup or hair. In the short term, these only reduce the cooling performance, but over longer periods of time, damage can occur due to the additional load on the fans.
There is also a risk to the hardware. At first it just downclocks, but at some point, like the system above, a point is reached at which it is virtually unusable. And theoretically, damage to the CPU or graphics card can occur if they continually run too hot.
What does the community say? The numerous comments under the videos all express surprise, disgust or amusement:
Meanwhile, some people are surprised that he does the cleaning without gloves. There is also great curiosity to see whether Alienware’s former top system has a chance at a second gaming life.
Is the computer running again? We don’t yet know the end of the story. But 1969MAN describes the current status of his efforts in a second TikTok video that shows the pathetic condition of the CPU cooler. He ordered a replacement fan because at least one was probably destroyed by the dirt. But he wants to keep the community informed.
We will update the article once it has fulfilled the promise.
Speaking of overheated: When a user unscrewed his GPU, which was constantly running too hot, he also made a surprising discovery. But at least it was clear afterwards why his graphics card had such problems dissipating the excess heat: New GPU for almost 2,000 euros overheated for weeks: buyer unscrews it and finds that something important is missing