OK... I was wrong... it's not the cooling fan of the tower... it's the fan over the CPU that's doing it. Crap.

The power supply fan doesn't appear to be working at all.

When's the last time your system got blown out for dust?

If the psu fan died then that could be causing high temperatures and the other cooling fan to kick into high gear.

You could try test running the computer with the side panel off for a bit to see if the fans slow down.

Some psu fans don't kick on until they pull a certain amount of power / generate a certain amount of heat.

I'm gonna see what I can find on your computer but I'm one of the least qualified around here as far as that goes..

I keep coming up empty on the HP site when I search for the computer.

Any computer shop will have replacement fans. they are easy to change except for the one in the powersupply..
Don't wait, worst problems will occure if it keeps overheating..

Thanks guys...I blew it out with some compressed air and it stopped. :)

LOL had a ton of Dust bunnies in mine too .....!!!

Lol DonnyThompson told ya so :). It's one of the biggest things users neglect.

I know this is a bit old, but this is great emphasis...

We used to clean a place that built/repaired computers, called S&M Computers (not a joke, but it is funny lol. They were Brazilian, and didn't know S&M means something different here) The owner told me that about 30% of the time they get a non-working or problematic computer, it just needs to be dusted out really well, and it's "fixed." 30% of the time!!!! He also just uses plain compressed air from an inside compressor. He said the air is plenty dry enough if the compressor is inside a normal human environment. He doesn't use those dusting cans is what I'm saying. Jut a regular compressor, hose and nozzle. If your compressor is outdoors like mine, I wouldn't use that air in the summer time. Winter time would be plenty dry enough.

My Macbook Pro (2011) will stop charging if I don't take of the bottom plate and dust it out once a year or so. The charging port is external and magnetic. You don't plug anything in per se, you just stick the magnet to the computer. Which is brilliant cuz when you kick the charging cord, it just detaches, instead of dragging your computer to the floor. But my point is, the dust inside, stops the path of current to the battery.

Dust not only can, but will, stop things from working. It doesn't seem possible, so most people don't even think of it. But as @Makzimia noted, the dust needs to be evacuated periodically.

DonnyThompson, post: 443675, member: 46114 wrote: Thanks guys...I blew it out with some compressed air and it stopped. :)

The dust probably caused your cpu cooling fan to lose efficiency, so the cpu get's hot, and tells the cooling fan to work harder. Personally, I never use the stock cooling fans for the cpu, but it's just bc I like my stuff to run extra cool.

PSU fans, depending on the mfr, don't necessarily run all the time. They will kick on and off. If you need to test it, when you boot up (if you are windows) usually tapping f12 while it boots will bring you to the bios (your motherboard settings) What your bios looks like will depend on the motherboard. Some of them are large menus with tons of options, some are rather small. But if the computer was not bottom tier, it probably has a menu where you can look at your cooling and test your fans, change their speed, what temp they kick on etc.