Temperature, fan curves, and disk longevity
Heat accelerates chemical wear in NAND and exaggerates mechanical tolerances in HDDs.
Peaks beat averages
Summer rooms shift case airflow; laptops ingest dust. Log peaks during sustained reads/writes — games, exports — not idle chrome tabs.
Fix cooling before SMART punishes you
Re-paste GPU/CPU if adjacent M.2 bakes; add a bottom intake fan for GPU-heated cages; relocate scratch disks away from radiators.
SMART temperature vs IR thermometer sanity
Sensor placement varies; cross-check ambient deltas when retrofitting cases — sudden +8 °C ambient jumps deserve investigation.