In the name of Turing, hoping.

[joshksingh]

I did go back to Canada Computers. I bought a big 284g can of gas duster (I'll have to dust regularly, I think) and an 80mm case fan. I had another Homestyle Chicken-chili-Coke at Wendy's before walking up to Ellesmere station to buy some more tokens and head home. Once I got back here, I busted the case open, used up about half the can dusting the CPU fan and heatsink as well as some general dusting here and there and vacuumed the excess dust out. The Zalman case fan came in a very plain package, without instructions or tips of any kind, so I determined the direction the fan would blow, got on my mother's laptop, and Wikipedia'd for more info to decide whether it would be better to make it an intake or an outtake fan. There was really only one place on the case to put a new fan, though, and the grille suggests it's designed to be an intake. There's another grille on the front panel of the case itself, but in front of that is the front USB ports (in front of which is a big decorative plastic panel). That grille is clearly an outtake, but at the moment I can't do anything with it; if I take the decorative panel off, I'll have to find a new place to put the USB ports, since that unit is technically outside the case proper. And I'm not so sure my technical prowess lends itself well to that kind of activity.

I screwed the fan on the back panel as an intake. Basically, I'm hoping that it doesn't suck in too much dust, that it keeps the air moving so the dust doesn't settle so much, and that the noisy-ass PSU fan manages to expel enough warm air to keep the case relatively cool. If and when I replace the PSU, I'll look for one with two fans to suck a lot more hot air out of the case.

Right now I've got iTunes firing off the Red Album. I'm gonna load up a few more windows in a moment to see if the CPU shuts itself off again. If not, then I'll have solved the problem. (For now.)

So... yeah. Success pending.