New computers are chock full of great technology that allows you to do more than you ever have with a computer while spending less. This functionality comes at a price though....and its a hefty one. The price shows up as heat.
Nowadays, the standard PC you would purchase for browsing the internet, checking your email and watching movies is a dual core architecture (CPU ) and it may or may not have a separate video card (GPU). there are also a whole host of other electronics inside your computer that use energy to operate. the byproduct of all this energy these electronics use is heat. If you were to open up your computer, you would see the manufacturer has gone to great lengths to make sure that the heat that is generated inside the case, exits the case immediately with a few strategically placed fans.
I build my own PC's because I like to play online games so I'm very concerned with making sure the electronics in my case run as cool as possible. I use what I would consider cutting edge architecture with quad core CPU ( that's right, 4 CPU's ) and a very expensive Video card that has its own fan system. On average, my computer uses about 200 watts of energy just idling..waiting for me to do something with it. For comparison, think about walking in front of a 100 watt light bulb. Remember how surprised you were when you noticed how much heat was radiating from the bulb? Now multiply it by 2! An off the shelf computer most likely doesn't create that much heat, but my point is, there is a cost associated with "using" your computer.
One problem with using fans to suck cool air from the outside of the computer case is that along with the air, a lot of household dust is sucked right along with it. This dust accumulates INSIDE your computers case on surfaces called heatsinks which work like the radiator in your car. If you accumulate enough of this dust, you essentially cripple the cooling system from moving heat away from the electronics. Hot electronics are unhappy electronics, so the computer is designed to increase the fan speed to get more air into and out of the computer. if your computer is much noisier now than it was when you first bought your computer, its probably because you need to arrange a good internal cleaning.
You can do it yourself...or...if you are nervous about tinkering with your computer call in a Pro. the good places will come right to your house and give your PC a thorough cleaning for somewhere around $50. It should only take about an hour and if you have it done once a year, you will prolong the life of your computer saving you money all around.
