When that fan starts spinning faster and louder

[Suff]

It's time to go and check whether the heatsink is filling up with fluff. Clearly the cooling is not working properly.

Sadly my Laptop was doing this. I was not at home, travelling and then came to work and was sick for 3 days. Finally, last night, the primary graphics card on my Laptop failed with an ominous repeat of 8 very loud beeping noises.

Tonight I stripped the thing down and found the CPU and primary graphics card (didn't know it at the time), heatsink vents were more than 80% blocked with fluff. It's not the first time I've hovered them out, but I don't have a hoover here and I was mainly in bed sick.

So now my machine is running on the Intel integrated graphics until I decide to take the thing apart again and swap the secondary graphics card over.

What a pain. But it's always a good yardstick. If your PC is normally quiet and it is becoming more and more noisy, it's time to go in and have a look...

[Workingman]

A spring clean... and always done... is good advice.

The fist layer of dust seems to burn onto the fins and then become a magnet for all that follows. I have made a flexi pipe out of an old vac attachment and some siphon tube to get in all the nooks and crannies, and I keep a basting brush with stiff bristles specifically for the purpose of dust sweeping.

A few minites and a few pence can save a fortune.

As I now use the laptop as my main machine I have it sat on its own cooler plate with in-line filters on the fans. That helps a lot.

Shame about the graphics card... they can be a bit expensive and fiddly to replace. At least the whole thing has not gone TU.

[Suff]

Yeah, it was a real PITA.

I can swap the secondary card over to Primary and I don't really need the Crossfire. It's clear from the clean fins on the second heatsink that the second card was idling and not working.

Saving Grace of the Intel onboard graphics.

I have to replace the mouse buttons and take out the BD re-writer and replace it with a HDD bay, when I bring them from home next weekend. So I'll work on the integrated for now and then do the whole swap when I have to strip the system again.

Main issue is the damage it does trying to split the cases over and over again.

A cooler plate was something I looked at a long time ago. The main issues being that the Laptop tends to travel too much and secondly they don't make them for absolute Monster laptops.... It is a very good idea though.

On the + side it's clear that Alienware intended for the fans/fins should be cleaned regularly. Drop the removable battery, remove 4 very accessible screws and the whole bottom plate slides off to reveal 3 large fans easily removed and the fins are there, directly accessible, for you to clean...