WAG = Wild Assed Guess
Basically the attempt is at logic minus any actual knowledge or facts to back it up.
I’ll have to defer to your experience, then. The several different brands of machines I’ve had experience with (DEC, Micron, HP, Compaq) all had cooling - either a heatsink with air forced over it or the conventional heatsink/fan combo for the P60 on up. Even the 486/33 machines I’ve disassembled over the years had heatsinks.
Sometimes a glued on heatsink can be removed (I have done
this) and be replaced with a heatsink/fan combo. It is also
usually possible to mount a fan in the computer’s case in
such a way that it will blow on the cpu.
as far as 75f for the room temp, a computer with
insufficient ventilation could overheat at that temp…
but it would also be very likly to also overheat at 70.
I personally doubt that the problem is with heat…I would
tend to think it may be your soundcard because you
mentioned that the errors pop up when using sound related
programs, try having your brother remove the card and run
the PC without it for a while.
One thing you could also do is let the PC run for an hour
or so. Then turn it off, open the case and feel the CPU…
if it is hot you need a fan for it. (make sure to discharge
any static electricity in yourself by touching a grounded
metal object before (and while) touching the CPU.
also could you post the exact text of some of the errors
you get? that may help someone here find the problem.
I personally would not reccommend running anything above
a 386 without at least a heatsink. I have fans on both my
486’s and my pentium. (I also have fans on top of my stereo
and monitors…but that’s because it can easly get well above 90 (or even 100) in the summer with everything on.)