Dell Optiplex GX1 thermal faliure

[wstevens]

I went to check out my friends dell optiplex it boots up for about ten seconds then turns off! after that it says alert! Previous thermal faliure. can anyone help as to what should i do?

 

[Tmagic650]

This is a mini-tower desktop PC... Pentium II or III? It's getting rather old, and it may need through cleaning and new thermal paste applied to the CPU. Can you do this? If not, have a computer savvy friend help you with this

 

[wstevens]

I cleaned the computer out and it worked without any thermal faliure...the next morning it wont boot up... nothing appears on the screen but fan and everything else is functioning! could it be the board gone bad or the processor??

 

[EXCellR8]

Did you reapply a thermal compound or did you just clean all the dust out of the cooler? Like TM said, the thermal compound can go bad and may need to be replaced. The process is not difficult but a good thermal bond is crucial to the normal operation of the computer. There are plenty of online sources if you have not performed a thermal application. The actual process varies by CPU type but is similar across the board. Arctic Silver has a good guide on how to perform the application. You can use the same procedure for most thermal compound:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/instructions.htm