1. Buy a can of air and spray out your fans and case at least every other month. This includes your heat sink, and if your video card has a fan, that as well.

2. Replace thermal glue at least 2 times a year (not completely necessary, but it helps)

3. Do not place your computer in any way that covers your air vents

4. If you still see temperatures that are higher than you like, invest in more PC fans. They are fairly cheap, and paying 10-20 dollars to keep your pc in good condition is worth it.

5. Make sure that your fans work. (duh) If your fan stops spinning when touched lightly, it is time to replace that fan because it's motor is dead. Either that, or get a larger power supply because the fan is not getting enough power.

6. Set up PC in a room with a lot of airflow. A room with air conditioning is preferable.

7. Power supply cords tied down and not just running everywhere inside your case. The cords can get into fans and cause A. electrical damage or B. the fans to stop spinning.

You may think that these steps are overkill, but I have been repairing and building pc's since I was 5 years old. I live in a place where the temperature gets to 120 degrees (f) during the summer. The only time I have ever lost a pc due to heat, is when I had one with 6 SCSI Raptor drives in it and there was not possible way for me to get enough ventilation into it. And ironically the reason that pc blew up is not because of the heat from the disks themselves, but a fly flew into the case and got stuck there while I was working on it and I did not notice until I fired up the pc and had it running for a couple minutes and the thing heated up so much, the fly caught on fire and damaged the mother board.

FYI: Do NOT use canned air to spin the fan blades!! If you hear the kazoo like sound from a fan being spun by a can of air, you're probably going to need to buy a new fan.

hold them down while spraying it...

you can use them to spray your fan, just don't do it for an extended time.

I think it messes with the bearings in your fans (or sleeve, or combination depending on the fan). I probably killed one CPU fan, two case fans, and one PSU fan before learning about this...

... when your PC starts sounding like a small lawn mower, yeah, the death screams of your fan(s).

what the hell did you do, spray the fan directly? You are supposed to spray it from a couple inches away.

Also I don't have a fan on my processor because of my case design. My main case fan has an airflow director on it that funnels air down through my 4 inch heatsink. Shit I could kill someone with that heatsink lol. That has to be the main reason why I like dell cases, good airflow design. Dell Optiplex cases rule.

LOL, I did spray it from a couple inches away, guess it was a really good can of compressed air.

Dell cases are nice. Dell seems to actually build a computer that is intended to be worked on, unlike some others out there.. Though, I still like working with Antec SOHO cases. Built a computer with an Antec Titan 650 case a little while ago, very easy and runs cool.

never had the money to pick up an antec case. Want to get a nice antec coolermax though.