Fan makes noise, RAM is 128, CPU is couple of years old... what should i do?

Question

So like my CPU is more than a couple of years old... n it makes quite a lot of Noise n heats up.....
Is it advisable PRACTICALLY speaking to get a new one or just chnage the fan and increase the RAM?
Do CPUs have like a life limit, or shud i just rework this one and continue using it?

Answer 1

A computer is made up of parts. You can replace these parts, but when you say its heating up this usually means you have either dust built up or your cpu has been overclocked and is wearing out or its just wearing out cuz its old. You can replace the cpu, but you will have to determine the size that is available for your board.

Answer 2

Hello,
Could you describe you computer further? With just what
you've said I can only recommend a new fan (larger?). But
to really help (and yes 128 meg of ram is not enough) I need
to know:

1: What generation of processor it is and who made it (AMD,
Intel, Pentium 2-3 or 4, AMD opteron / Athlon ect.....

2: It would be nice to know what motherboard you have.
Depending on the board a simple CPU replacement
can do wonders. And of course more ram.

3: What kind of video? On board or separate card.

4: Noisy fans are a good sign that the bearings are going.
If the CPU fan has a lot of dust and whatever in it you
can bet the power supply fan will too. This will increase
the heating overall and cause degradations in speed.
and in the case of AMD processors they can really
overheat fast and completely destroy the CPU and
in some cases the motherboard itself, a lot faster than
you can hit the off switch believe me. I've seen them
catch fire.

5: Since the CPU is only a couple of years old it still should
have a lot of useful life left in it. By replacing the fan on
the CPU cooler (ie: the fan and heatsink combo) with a
larger unit you can in some cases actually adjust the
CPU / Bus speeds to get even better performance
without spending a lot of money.

6: And finally, what operating system do you use. A lot of
junk can accumulate in the operating system from
poorly written drivers and programs even after they have
been uninstalled. Let me know what you are using in
hardware and software and I'll see what I can advise
you to do to get it running at top speed again.

Answer 3

On that old a computer it doesn't make much sense to start pouring money into it. You probably just need to take the existing CPU cooler off, clean it up and put some new heat sink grease on it. More ram might help if you can find the old stuff. A lot of people have old sdram sitting in drawers.
It might make sense to haunt the Best Buys and such for a while. You can find new computers that will be ten times as power full as yours for $300 on occasion.

Answer 4

The fan noise could be as simple as a piece of trash. New fans are $3 to $10 new. If you replace the processor fan be sure to clean the heatsink and apply fresh thermal paste between the heatsink and the processor.

Answer 5

Replacing the fan and increasing the ram are both feasible, and probably quite a bit cheaper than a new PC. OTOH, if you can afford it, a new PC would be a good idea.

Answer 6

if it is just the fan making noise you will no doubt find that it is full of dust so just take it of/out and clean it