So, today I had a few minutes to have a bit of a spring-clean of one of my PCs.
Took it apart, and got the hoover out and gave it a good vacuuming - saw lots of dust around the GTX580 GPU so thought I'd take it apart and see what's inside the plastic casework, surrounding the fan.
Just as well I did as the area where cool air is driven into the internal heatsink "slots" was literally carpeted in dust....I took a piccy which I'll upload in due course.
Got it all clean and lovely and put the PC back together again. Rebooted and surprise surprise: GPU is now running MUCH cooler and much quieter too - Afterburner reports around 59-60 deg C whilst crunching some Collatz tasks, instead around mid-80s'
![Sad :-(](./images/smilies/icon/sad.gif)
Lesson learned methinks
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon/wink.gif)
regards
Tim