HP Parts & Overheating

[CKPGirl]

Computer: HP Pavilion
Issue: Dead Fan, CPU Overheating

Okay, so the backstory to this one is that one of my computer fans shut off/died during 90-degree plus weather, and as a result the computer overheated, bluescreened and shut off. It's been doing this since anytime the weather goes above 70 degrees. The fan did start working again, but failed to turn back on when I restarted the PC, giving me the 'System Fan has failed' message again. (This is the case fan, not the CPU fan, although I'm pretty sure it's the CPU overheating since it regularly hits 50 - 65 Celsius doing nothing but browsing the web)

When we took it to get the fan replaced, the man claimed HP has parts specially built for all their computers, and the only way we could get a replacement was to call them up and have them send a new one, but I don't see why I can't just head over to Newegg, especially since I know the fan brand is Cooler Master, not some specially made HP thing.

Should I just ignore his advice, and replace it myself? They pretty much refused to look at it until we bought a fan from HP, but I'd rather not spend 20+ minutes with customer service trying to find fan replacements for a 5-year old computer.

Second question: After looking at the computer myself, I see that there is a lot of dust within the CPU fan, and using compressed air doesn't seem to be getting it out. I'd like to take off the fan to get at the dust, but something tells me this might be a bad idea. Should I bother?

 

[Chipeater]

If it is a desktop computer and you are talking about the case fan, there is no reason you can't replace it with a standard computer fan. As far as the CPU heatsink and fan, be careful of static electricity. You might be better off just blowing it out with canned air. Keep one hand on the metal case while doing so to prevent static discharge problems.

The whole static electricity thing is simply that if you build up a charge, such as walking across a carpet with sneakers on and touch a door knob you can get a spark. If you do the same think with your computer you can zap components in your computer. So, by touching the metal case first, if you are statically charged, you will discharge to the case and not something inside the computer.