A lotta points there, your like me, a novelist :-). At work they’re constantly telling me to stop writing books in teams chat–I constantly refer them back to my original teams chat message (you know the novel 
) to get answers to ALL of their questions as that’s WHY it’s a novel, I answered all their questions in that novel. IS what it is–people today don’t want to read, they want to ask questions repeatedly? Instant communications is great for that I suppose.
Since your terrariums are not humid and you’ve a humidity monitor in your residence, I guess that rules out humidity for sure. %20-30% is unhealthy for sure. When I was doing a different job we always set it to 40% minimum and my wife likes it at about 50%. Even a cheap “Vicks” cold air humidifier from a local drug store would help you out in this situation or one of those scent aerosol distribution thingy’s ( diffuser’s?), some of them are real cheap to-just don’t put any “Vicks” or “Scent” in the water. They run about $10-$15 bucks where I live. You put cold water in them and nothing else just run it all night long, it’ll bring the humidity up in a room the size of my master bedroom (approx. 22 x 18 not including the bathroom). I know because in the winter it gets REAL dry in central Canada and if we don’t run that small humidifier each night our skin starts to itch and will eventually show dry wrinkles. NOT fun at all. AND, lets not forget about what low humidity does to your eyes, mouth, throat and lungs. see this if you are not aware of what damage that kind of low humidity can do to you: https://www.sensorpush.com/articles/the-effects-of-low-humidity-on-your-health-and-comfort
I don’t think 40-50 degrees is worry worthy for a GPU or CPU.
Depending n the age of your CPU you don’t want to see it go over 92 degrees.
If it is a 12th? 13th Gen or higher it can safely hit 100 degrees but not sustained.
So again not to worry about those temps to much if at all
Most motherboards will have fan control for their own hardware ( CPU/case FANS basically). SOME will do graphics cards and CPU cooling/case cooling by default. Some older boards might just do CPU/Case fans. BUT, if you have a PC within 10 years old I believe it should just do it by default.
Mine is a Z790 board so it will do CPU/Case/Graphics card.
Look at your motherboard’s manufacturer support site to find out.
“I guess having them faster most of the time keeps things cooler overall. I’m aware this is probably not a long-term solution”
I once ran one of those 2’ square Window fans, the really powerful ones, against the open case of a P120 Mhz, that my buddy over clocked to 133Mhz and didn’t tell me, he just said it was a 133Mhz CPU. SO, I get it and immediately over clock it to 166Mhz. It would boot, I’d log on and anywhere between 10-40 minutes later it’d lock up with a registry error and it was HOT, HOT, HOT. I stopped the locked ups and freezing by removing the CPU heat-sink and fan and wiping that useless thermal paste offa the CPU and then I put this monster fan right up against the case and turned it on full blast. This thing used to make my hair wave around like I was in the seat of a convertible going 100Kmh from 30 feet away. I got lucky I think, in hindsight, that the force of the air against the system board didn’t make some connectors fly off or something. BUT, it didn’t die as much when I did that. Maybe once a day or so. I used it like that for 2 years (?) give or take a month.
After that I could afford a new one.
Now, I am certainly not proposing you remove your cooling solution from a modern CPU or graphics card, that would be foolish and expensive., BUT the FAN…I dunno it MIGHT work? Either-way, your gonna have FAN noise but the big fan might do the trick, saving you wear and tear on the graphics card fans cause if they go your in different sort of mess.
IF, you’ve never done it before, there are a ton of videos on you-tube showing exactly how to remove old thermal paste and apply new stuff (for the CPU) and the dusting out part is easy, peasy, just make sure it is all turned off, unplugged and flea drained-then ground yerself and go to town.
Flea drained is unplugging everything and holding the power button down for 60 seconds to drain all the electricity out of the system. Before you start take a clear picture of the system board (the inside of the case) and as many wired connections as you can get in that picture.
If you have a BIG honking heat-sink and fan take a couple pictures around it to help you reinstall the heat-seat/fan assembly once you’re done cleaning. Then remove it.
Before touching anything else take another picture or five, as many as it takes to get every connection and cable in a picture.
From there it is probably better for you (or anybody) to see somebody doing it as it’s MUCH easier to watch someone doing it than explaining it.
Things like the thermal paste you’re going to use and how to apply it and stuff like that.
For example, for a gaming system like mine, on the CPU, I use Thermal Grizzly’s Kryonaut Extreme. I use a very, very thin layer (the thinner the better) and a 380mm AIO (liquid cooling)
Some people use Arctic Silver which is also fine. Many pastes are just fine. You might just apply them a bit differently.
For the OEM business PC’s and laptops at work, of which most are heat-sink and fan cooled, we use MX20 thermal compound. We put a thicker layer on. On laptops, business laptop there IS no thermal paste on the onboard GPU (s). I’ve seen both Intel and Nvidia graphics chip-sets with zero paste or PAD’s on them.
I always throw a blob in the middle of the GPU-no sense spreading it-all GPU chips are convex so the heat plate will never make full contact all around anyways. Mostly there is one corner of the chip that never comes near making contacted with the thermal plate but there is basically instances of this all over the GPU so a ticker paste/layer or even thermal pads are the best solution for the graphics chips. Whether they’re onboard or on the discrete card.
Once you clamp down the thermal plate it’ll spread it out filling all those gaps nicely where a thinner paste such as my Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste might not do as good of a job on that component.
You can also make a REALLY cheap, reusable, AIR blower if you have access to a large balloon. Just have someone near you to blow it up and you can do a pinch release in the direction of the FANS and that might get more forceful air than your lungs (depending on just how bad they are) especially if you push the opposite end of the balloon as you release to keep the pressure on
I have COPD myself so I feel you’re pain. Although mine is not to bad at all and is under control. SO far anyways.
Knock wood.
Cheers!
