Originally Posted By: bws48

For example, an IT tech friend told me (years ago) to make sure the inside and vents on the desktop unit are clean and free of dust to help keep them cool.

Dust acts as a thermal insulator. It's a heat blanket. Very bad.

Dust is also a mild conductor. A blanket of dust can cause cross-talk and other noise.

85F sure seems like a low temperature for the system to go into thermal shutdown. Is the CPU fan turning when power is turned on? Are there any motionless fans in the system?

I've heard of one case where a faulty sensor caused the CPU fan speed to be reported as 0 to firmware, and the system (unnecessarily) shut down to protect the CPU. That should be rare in a factory-built system.