Thanks to everyone thats helped to date ive learnt alot as well as fixed my hdd!! Ive now checked the fins and they are clean which I presume means its one of the 4 fans, I have pictures now as well. With the case half off and lots of things running it got to 71 degrees c rather than the 100 degrees it reached with the case on. There appear to be 4 fans, an exhaust fan one over a silver heat sink a smaller one over a smaller black heat sink and one underneath the DVD rewriter. The program I am using shows that the CPU fan reaches a maximum of 1750 rpm but seems erratic, which fan(s) do I replace and what do I replace them with?
You have to upload them to another website that will store them for you, and then post a link there to the picture. There are many such sites around. I've used photobucket.com in the past.
Christ! Looking at the pics I'm not surprised it's overheating.
If I were you I'd just go out and buy a standard atx case, rip it all out and stick it in that.
^^^
I agree with rojash.
Very constricted area inside case, not allowing a nice clean airflow through. Cable management not too good. I think the case exhaust fan is quite small at 80mm.
Other than taking a chance and fitting upgraded high capacity fans of the same size and hoping they will improve airflow within the case the only option is a refit into an ATX case.
If you do try changing the fans only there is a possibility of increased noise, which could be an issue.
I dont feel I have the expertise to change the case over, however, the fans are pretty noisy as they are which was one of the main negative points about this machine. It's also worked fine for 3 years and ive never had a problem with overheating. If I do just change the fans which ones would you recommend?
"If I do just change the fans which ones would you recommend?"
Impossible to tell from looking at the pics.
You can buy a case with PSU and adequate fan for around 30 quid. I would have thought you could have found someone locally who could sell you the case and swap the internals for around 50-60 quid all in. This could work out cheaper than replacing the fans one at a time, with no guarantee of solving the problem. And you'll certainly end up with a quieter machine. There's nothing particularly high spec in what you've got. In a normal case a single fan would be more than adequate.
It's that simple, plus obviously, you will need to disconnect/reconnect the case leads (power supply, power switch, LEDs, etc) but they are all just plugs and sockets.