My Dell Inspiron 8600 is nearly 3,5 years old. It's running very smoothly, but in the last couple of months it has started to run very hot, up to about 80-85 C.

Since I'm a computer tech-guy myself, I cleaned both fans for dust (CPU-fan and the internal fan), but there was very little dust to find. Heat sinks also cleaned. New cooling paste applied to CPU.

There has been no change to the CPU temperature whatsoever. When running the CPU fan at full blast, the CPU goes down to 62-65 C. If I set the fan to automatic control, it creeps slowly up to 70-75-80-85, where the fan kicks in at full speed, and it slowly drops.

I did a clean install this easter, and I have checked for viruses, spyware and trojans. CPU-load could be like 2% (running only MSN or nothing...).

What I have noticed is that I can't feel any air coming out of the vents, although the fan runs like hell. Is my CPU fan broken?

/Dag

What I have noticed is that I can't feel any air coming out of the vents, although the fan runs like hell. Is my CPU fan broken?

Air flow generally goes in, it's doubful that you'd feel any coming out although it does. Dust, etc. also accumulates inside the PSU. Be careful, you might void PSU warranty. Other causes of increase temp. is the general location of server (surrounding ambient temp. etc.) and how much, if any, new hdwr. you've added recently. Broken fan? possible but unlikely.