"Dad, my 'puter's screwed up...."

[Dr Mordrid]

Middle son reported that his system was shutting down and the temp gauge read 170F

Yes, he's been told to clean his system regularly

[Tjalfe]

cool.. a heatsink with shag carpet

[Marshmallowman]

I am big fan of having a large intake fan with easily replaceable/cleanbale filter

saves a lot of hassles

[TransformX]

Looks like a fossil

[Mehen]

I had the same problem recently - someone at work was telling me that their home computer would only stay on for so long and then shut off.
Me, "How old is it?"
Them, "About 4 years"
Me, "It is probably full of dust and overheating"

So they bring it in, and sure enough, the heatsink was so clogged with dust you could not even see a single fin. Disgusting. Zero airflow.

And its always the smokers.

[Evildead666]

Thats why I won't smoke in the same room as my PC.
i don't even really smoke in the house...can't stand the smell of old smoke...

I Did have a small "behind the monitor" PC at my last job, that came from a bar, where it was used to transfer photos from cards to the HDD or a CD or to the FTP site for printing.
The client was complaining of it being slow....
The PC stank, literally, of old smoke, and when we opened the PC up, all of the PCB's were covered in smoke oil and tar...and when we fired it up, it got hot inside, and the smell was awful..

[Dr Mordrid]

Had a friend once who lived in an apartment that had a through-wall air conditioner. He (stupidly, IMO) parked his computer desk under it thinking it would keep it cooler. Problem was small amounts of water were dripping un-noticed onto back of its case and had infiltrated inside.

A few months later he's on my doorstep asking for help, won't even post, so into the shop we go. On opening the case the cause was easy to find: a thick mat of green mold covering the mainboard - top and bottom - and some of the cards.

Never could revive it.

[Claymonkey]

I helped a friend once who system was shutting down all the time. He was a smoker, and smoked inside. I ended up having to replace his power supply and cleaning out the tar encased dust in his heatsink still gives me nightmares.

[Kooldino]

I've fixed machines with similar issues. I could have knit a sweater with the dust I found in this thing.

[Technoid]

I could post tons of pics of Computers with "Fuzzy" innards

I'm currently wondering if I'll ever see any dead rodents inside a computer, that be the logical next step

[Tjalfe]

while not finding a dead rodent inside, I did have a computer with a mouse nest on top of the video card.. mouse poops everywhere and urin staining .. amazingly the video card survived after being washed.. I "think" it was an original Matrox Millennium . The mouse had gotten inside through a missing slot cover.