A few weeks ago, I finished up a big article on Mac maintenance for an upcoming issue of Macworld. One of the things I recommend in that article is to keep your Mac clean. Whether it's avoiding getting crumbs stuck under your keyboard's keys or making sure your air vents aren't clogged, keeping your Mac gunk-free is just as important for its long-term survival as keeping an eye on its hard-drive health.

I bring this up because during the writing of that article, I realized that I hadn't followed my own advice. I'm usually pretty good about keeping my Macs clean, but for various reasons I'd neglected to thoroughly clean the inside of my Mac Pro for quite some time. I'd noticed it gradually getting louder over the previous months, generally an indication that the fans were having to work harder to keep it cool, so I'd cleared away dust from the case's vents. But I kept putting off the necessary take-it-outside-and-blast-away-all-the-dust-that-had-settled-on-the-components cleaning.

Around the same time--about two months before I turned in the article--I started noticing something else: problematic video behavior. I'd occasionally see odd lines across the screen, as well as onscreen artifacts that looked as if someone had grabbed a corner of a window and peeled it back. And every once in a while I would do something that taxed the video card--for example, playing a video or manipulating an image--and the entire machine would lock up, forcing me to restart.

The issue gradually got worse, leading me to do some Web searches; I discovered many similar reports, focusing on the Mac Pro's Radeon X1900XT video card. Many of these reports claimed the root of the problem was heat: The X1900XT simply didn't cool itself well enough, and once it got too hot, it exhibited the behavior I just described.

That's when I realized I hadn't been thorough enough with my monthly cleaning. I opened up the Mac Pro to get a closer look at the video card, and, sure enough, it was in dire need of dusting.

In case you've never seen a clean X1900XT, that area behind the silver heat sinks should be an unobstructed metal screen. Instead, as you can see, it was so caked with dust that it looked like it was covered by thick fabric. In other words, the video card's air-intake vent was almost completely blocked. The card's cooling fan was desperately trying to create some airflow--thus the extremely loud fan noise I was hearing--but it couldn't overcome the thick blanket of dust obstructing the opening.

For more Mac news, visit Macworld. Story copyright Mac Publishing, LLC.

Whitepapers

• Secure Wireless Printing Options
• Improve Virtual Storage TCO by Comparing Vendors
• Making IT Invisible
• Best Practices for VMware ESX Server
• Virtualizing Storage for VMware Success
• Configuration Assessment: Choosing the Right Solution

View more DATA CENTER whitepapers

Webcasts

• Branch Office Trends and Best Practices
• Best Practices for Deploying WAN Optimization for Disaster Recovery
• Tips and Techniques for Remote Data Backup and Delivery
• WAN Optimization Landscape
• Oracle Database 11g: Advances in Compression, Real Application Testing and Data Guard
• Solutions to the Toughest IT Challenges in Remote Offices

View more DATA CENTER webcasts

Special Reports

• Executive Guide: Storage Heats Up
• Data Centers: At the center of the action
• Executive Guide: Virtualization Reality Check
• Executive Guide: Data Center Decisions
• Get More From Your WAN
• Network World Executive Guide: Perfecting Application Performance Management

View more DATA CENTER special reports