I had been having occasional BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) crashes on my computer that is running Windows 7. The error codes (some were 0x000000C2 and some were 0x00000124) indicated a driver problem, but updating the drivers didn't solve the problem. I ended up discovering that the fan on my video card was froze up when I had it open because I had a hard drive fail.
Overheating components cause very wired things to occur ranging from slowdowns to complete system crashes.
Keep an aye on all your fans, especially your CPU fan, Video card fan, and Chipset (northbridge) fans.
The biggest enemy of fans in my experience is dust. Keep the dust blown out of your computer. in low-dust environments clean it about once a year, in high dust environments (such as if you are a smoker* and if you have the computer on a carpeted floor) you may want to do it once a month.
*If you smoke and put your ash tray by your case you not only have to worry about dust from the smoke, but a tar buildup. There is little that can be done for the tar problem, and it makes clearing the dust out really difficult. Eventually it will cause components to fail. I have experienced it first hand and several members of my family smoke.
Fans can be replaced, though sometimes if it is a highly proprietary setup (like the case of my video card) you might need to get a new heat sink along with it.
Component fans aren't the only ones that can have problems. Case fans and power supply fans can fail too. Cheap sleeve-bearing case fans can sometimes be brought back by a good cleaning, and oiling the bearings with some 3-in-1 oil (WD-40 will work, but will drain out faster and attract dust, so it isn't recommended). I revived an LED case fan I have about 3 or 4 times. In the case of power supply fans, it is generally recommended to replace the whole unit as there are dangerous voltages inside of it, and the capacitors will store a charge even if it is unplugged. If you decide to replace your PSU fan to cut costs, BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL!!!. If you don't know what a capacitor is or looks like, DON'T DO IT! just replace the whole PSU.
You can get good priced replacements at www.newegg.com, Rosewill has some decent fans, and so does Rexus, look at the ratings. For power supplies I have good luck with Rosewill, Logisys and Sunbeam, however they are cheap ones and are known to have some bad ones here and here and there. If you want a high-end power supply, go with Antec. Make sure to get one with identical wattage or higher.
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