A word of warning re fans just in case you have never had the experience.

If you are using canned compressed air, its no problem, BUT if (as I did) you are using an “proper” air compressor, there can be a problem.

The first time I struck this I was doing an onsite investigate of a desktop that would start acting up after 30+ mins running.

Suspecting overheating, I checked and found the case full of dust, and moreover, the CPU fins were clogged.

I used the clients workshop compressor to blow it all out, BUT got a bit exuberant and allowed the CPU fan to spin too fast and literally blew the blades off.

I quick trip back to my workshop and found an old CPU fan… fitted it and all was OK.

Since that day, I always blocked the fan in some way.

With P/S fans, a strip of folded paper works a treat.

CPU and case fans are easy as a finger is all that is needed.

However a couple of years later, I had a blocked HP laptop.

I was doing the same and somehow did the same thing, but didn’t realise it until I restarted it and got this nasty vibration.

Luckily I managed to get a dead laptop from a colleague and apart from a couple of hours unpaid time, got it sorted 2 days later.

Again I learned, and after that I always tried to “winkle” a long piece of thin plastic sleeving into the fan

Sometimes this is not possible and in those cases I just used very short bursts of compressed air.