When you open the computer up, the fan for the power supply will be on a big aluminium block, just grip it and twist it gently, it should have almost no movement, if it moves a fair bit it may just need to have a screw tightened

Heh well I'm going to by cynical here and guess that dell used the cheapest power supply they could get away with so the chances of it being a power supply problem are failry high


Nah thats a good thought, it does make a lot of difference. Before using the can of compressed air that elisstar suggested, a paintbrush would be a simple way to get a fair bit of dust out.

One thing I can suggest, don't use a vaccuum cleaner on it whent he machine is on. I did that once thinking I'd brush the dust off the fan, the motion of the fan and the suction from the vaccuum would drag all the dust in and I'd actually get rid of it rather than just have it settle elsewhere in the room. Then I got the hard plastic hose of the vaccuum a wee bit too close to the surprisingly delicate fan blade on the cpu heatsink and one snapped off and the fan started to sound like an aircraft engine. It wasn't expensive to replace but did feel like a bit of a waste considering the computer died 6 months later

Hey, thanks everyone! I will open up the case tonight (while wearing a surgical mask, I think) and clean the thing out. If it happens again, I'll buy a new power supply. Since the computer is only 3 years old, I am HOPING that it isn't the CPU yet. If it doesn't happen again, I will put it down to just an electrical glitch on a hot June night.

It's a good question actually, yes on both accounts. Dust and hair can collect inside the machine so it's definitely something you should check into.

(I was a PC technician for a retailer years ago, and it was shocking how bad some people's computers were inside. Literally piles of dust and hair and junk.)

I seriously doubt it is a problem with the cpu overheating. They will shut the computer down but normally they will throttle themselves in order to keep heat down, if it were throttling then it would cause bad framerate in the game and probably result in angry quitting of the game followed by complaints in the forum.

PSU is the most likely cause. Never buy a cheap psu as they are garbage and a danger to the computer, they never survive stress tests and most can't even run at their own rating. If you have to buy another, an indication of quality is how heavy the device is. A PSU shouldn't be overly light otherwise they have gone cheap and don't have necessary components.

Not at all shocking really. Most people wont ever open up their case so they have no way of knowing how bad it gets inside. This reminds me that a couple of months ago I opened my case up and thought it needed a clean but never got around to getting some compressed air, gotta get onto that.

Smokers are the worst. Just seeing the inside of that will turn you off of smoking for life.....unfortunately that doesn't work for the owner of the computer. :(

I had a case with my computer about a month ago where it would shut down because something was overheating. Upon further investigation the problem was a CPU fan clogged up with dust, so these things do happen.

Actually, the machine that I changed the PSU on was a Dell, and the pins were the same, although I did have to rip a hole in the back of the case to fit the fan box now that I think of it. But thanks for reminding me - it probably would be best to buy it from them, just to be sure it will fit.

Perhaps they changed their design. I haven't owned or opened up a Dell in quite some time, but I know it used to be that you either had to get a new PSU from Dell or you had to change the pin-outs on a brand name PSU.

Ohh yeah. Everything...even the piles of dust get yellowish and kinda sticky. I had a few bad ones like that. Yuck!

If I'm recalling correctly, this was about 4 years ago. I had to upgrade my graphics card and therefore the power supply to play Oblivion on my old machine.

That was true many, many years ago, but has not been so for any generation of Dell since the 1990's. And the only thing those are good for is a doorstop or a space heater, anyway.

All Dells that are anywhere close to current, if they take an ATX form factor supply, use the standard pinout.

Some Dells, principally the big-box XPS and Precision units, have power supplies that are nothing like ATX style. You can recognize these instantly, because the power supply will be some big elaborate thing that is obviously not ATX.

Thanks for the heads up. As I noted, it's been a long time since I opened one up. Didn't think it had been that long, but thinking back on it now, I guess it was 10 or more years ago. Where does the time go?

I did say it could happen. A modern cpu under normal conditions should throttle itself at unsafe temperatures, throttling obviously means the cpu doesn't work as hard and therefore cools down quite quickly. If for some reason it didn't throttle or the heat was still building up then it will shut down (you hope, or very bad things will happen).

I had the cpu throttling on me a couple of years back and took me ages to figure out what was going on. One game just periodically went into a bad framerate for a minute or two, since it was only that game I thought it was an issue with it. Turns out that game really worked the cpu and the dust buildup was just a little much for long sessions of high cpu usage. When I figured that out I just used a paintbrush as a quickfix to clean the heatsink and fan, I was preparing to remove the heatsink, give it a complete clean and reapply thermal paste but it turned out I didn't need to do anything further.