Keep Your Computers Clean

[Cricket]

I get my compressed air from Costco.

Cricket

[David M]

Why pay for air?....go buy an air reservor for inflating tires at a car parts store and fill it up at the gas station. Make sure it has a petcock at the bottom for draining water condensation.

[rjfvillarosa]

Originally Posted by Panama Red Remember when I posted this gem? http://photobucket.com/albums/v396/P...6/Dust%20Boas/

How did you get hold of the pictures of my next door neighbours Compaq??
I did that exact same model about a month ago for the young girl next door and I swear there was as much dust in it as that one she must be missing some clean genes or is it clean jeans??
Must be a design fault PR.

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by rjfvillarosa How did you get hold of the pictures of my next door neighbours Compaq?? I did that exact same model about a month ago for the young girl next door and I swear there was as much dust in it as that one she must be missing some clean genes or is it clean jeans?? Must be a design fault PR.

Think the design flaw is in storage and environment of the user. Set in on the floor, have plenty of pets and let it run constantly for at least 5 years!

[Stryker]

This was just posted by an unamed member in an unamed forum, but it demonstrates quite well how vital it is to clean your components on a regular basis. Temps dropped by 20 - 30 degrees once cleaned!!

If you read this, sorry for swiping your image "Mr. X". Just thought others should see an example to help understand why cleaning is so important.

[jdturnbu]

"Mr. X" here.

30 C is an understatement. My AMD 3200+ was running at 70 C while downclocked to 1.1 GHz (with no programs running). It wouldn't run at all at a higher rate. Now I am running it at, what, 2.25 GHz (something in that range), and the temp is 40 C with no load.

So yeah, after 20 minutes of cleaning, my computer went from being basically unusable to being pwn again. Being lazy doesn't pay.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by jdturnbu "Mr. X" here. 30 C is an understatement. My AMD 3200+ was running at 70 C while downclocked to 1.1 GHz (with no programs running). It wouldn't run at all at a higher rate. Now I am running it at, what, 2.25 GHz (something in that range), and the temp is 40 C with no load. So yeah, after 20 minutes of cleaning, my computer went from being basically unusable to being pwn again. Being lazy doesn't pay.

I know you would find this eventually! Hope you don't mind me using your photo, but it's a great example that a clean PC is a happy PC.
Thanks

[thefultonhow]

If anybody has the Wave Master cases, they have a nice little "filter" in the front because the air intake is just a bunch of drilled holes and all the dust collects there. Unfortunately, the holes are behind another bezel. I thought I just didn't have avery dusty house bcause even after a year, there wasn't much dust in my case... When I took my case apart to route cables, I was amazed at how much dust had collected around those holes. I think this is a design flaw in the case.

Also, I did some work recently for somebody who had a Compaq P4 machine. She complained that after she worked on it for a little bit, it would get so loud that it sounded like a jet engine. Sure enough, I opened up the computer case and there was a solid mat of dust between the fan and the heatsink. I blew it out with compressed air and it ran nice and quietly. Additionally, the machine had some spyware, but I bet one of the reasons that it was running slowly was because the chip was throttling.

[Skywalker26]

Freefall, how does that 350W PSU handle your BFG 6800? I thought nVidia was requiring 480W PSU's or some such nonsense?

[Freefall]

It handles it just fine. I'm not exactly sure what Nvidia's recommendations are, but BFG says you must have a minimum 300W PSU.

[Ronbo]

I would not suggest using an air compressor for cleaning out the dust because they build up moisture in the tank and I don't think water and electronic components go well together. Just my two cents.
A good old fashioned fire stoker will do the trick and it cost nothing to run, lol

[netnamakan]

I have always used a compressor without any problems, and those cans seem more dangerous to me since if you tilt them wrong it will spray the liquid propellant.

namakan

[batiso]

dust is really a menace to Cyber society. But I have a dell optiflex 240 and a compaq evo P4. I want to check their CPU temps so that when i clean them and observe a difference i can put it in a report so that who ever takes up ma job in future can know the importance of cleaning these gadgets.
I had one occasion when a PC on a LAN i was lookin after couldnt boot. I checkd almost evrything cleaned the PC mobo but the thing couldnt boot and then i called ma friend an electrical technician guy he opened up the PSU blew it tried it and the it was up again and so stupid i looked.

[Siberian Bear]

OK I'm a new guy to the forums but this thread is pretty interesting to me. However I'm wondering why you use compressed air to blow the bust out the system, rather than a vaccum cleaner (and I'm not talking about a supercharged dual cyclone Dyson here!) to remove the dust from the system. I have heard the theory that the air can cause static electricity to be formed but surely this would be the same for both vaccum cleaner and compressed air.

Having said that I think I really ought to remove the CPU heatsink fan and clean the heatsink below......

[Marke522]

Here's a great utility for checking the temp of your pc, and also for making sure your fans are running at full performance. SpeedFan 4.22

I have my pc all the way down to 36C at idle.

Office Depot has good prices on cans of air. Wasn't able to find it on the website, but I know they have it in the store, I work there part time.

EDIT--- DO NOT USE A VACUUM CLEANER. You are correct, it will create a static charge, and damage the computer even if it is off. But it also possible that it could suck something lose.

[Siberian Bear]

Surely the compessed air also creates a static charge. When I say I use a vacuum cleaner I mean I use one that is on VERY low suction, and so something couldn't be sucked up.

[Designer]

Well, compressed air makes a very powerful cleaning tool, much better than a vacuum cleaner, I just take mine into work, remove the sides of the case and the fan from the heatsink and (probably highly dangerous way to do it) attach a small piece of 6mm O/D pneumatic hose to a compressed air gun and use the hose to get all the hard to reach places. It's great for getting all the muck out from in between the fins of the heatsink where a vacuum cleaner would never get.

[Marke522]

I know they make tiny vacuums for keyboards and stuff, but I still wouldn't do it. The canned air is much better, just make sure the pc is off, and don't hold the can crooked.

[Siberian Bear]

Any flow of air will create a static charge (unless it is de-ionised air), presumably the amount of charge generated depends on the flow rate of the air. I would thinkt that the aircan delivers a large flow of air to a small area, while a vacuum cleaner on low suction delivers a smaller flow of air but to a larger area. This of course depends on the aircan and the vacuum cleaner. Naturally this would have to be tested....perhaps with some turbines attacked to electric motors to measure power or something......

[Designer]

That's actually made me think of something quite intelligent to say (unusual ), I don't think it'd result in damage but be careful if you blow your computers out with compressed air as if you spin a motor then it will generate a voltage and may even cause damage especially if you use high pressure compressed air when cleaning your fans. So putting a screwdriver there to stop the fan spinning while cleaning it may be a good idea

[Jaggannath]

LOL True Designer..... an aspect I never considered. I don't know how many times someone in my campus's computer hasn't been working, and I wander in, open their case and have a go with a paintbrush, cleaning all the dust out. Suddenly their computer works and I'm a genius (until I have to reveal how I fixed it )

[shadowbreaker513]

Originally Posted by netnamakan I have always used a compressor without any problems, and those cans seem more dangerous to me since if you tilt them wrong it will spray the liquid propellant. namakan

Not always a bad thing. I had to used the freeze stuff to cool off the heatsink of a 2200+ Sempron. The fan had died on it and it was running at 73C. I was going in to put on a new fan.

[icallmedan]

Originally Posted by shadowbreaker513 Not always a bad thing. I had to used the freeze stuff to cool off the heatsink of a 2200+ Sempron. The fan had died on it and it was running at 73C. I was going in to put on a new fan.

One wrong move though, and you could mess something up.

And I just had to comment on that AMD heatsink above. That is just nasty.

[shadowbreaker513]

Originally Posted by icallmedan One wrong move though, and you could mess something up. And I just had to comment on that AMD heatsink above. That is just nasty.

One reason I didn't spray straight down. I sprayed a little bit horizontally on the outside fins. Other than that I just stuck the fan on and spun it up.

[inflames988]

Originally Posted by trulad If you have pets it helps to keep the tower off of the floor because they will really suck up cat/dog hair. I took one apart to repair for a teenage girl that looked like something was living in there. trulad

i got a free comp from people a year back (pentium...no numbers) and it had a fake mouse (cat toy) in it and full of fur i keep my build clean tho...39 C usually. the compressed air can never works great for me though. doesnt do much.

[Tophinator]

the compressed air method doesnt really work well until you get up to around 90 PSI. I clean my case at 120 with my air compressor. Gets it pretty clean, although I usually have to remove my VGA cooler to clean it. And also air compressors dont shoot out humid air. Its acutally kind of impossible to do so unless you add water to your tank. The air coming out of them is usually drier than the ambient air so you shouldnt worry about moisture at all.

[4deucer]

Originally Posted by Freefall Mine was pretty bad a couple of weeks ago. I took a pic of my pc and after viewing it, I knew it was time to clean it. Doesn't help that my cat sheds like none other. Here's a pic: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...Picture013.jpg

What the heck are all those black tubes with the oval Thermaltake logos on the end of each one? Are you "piping in" air?

I'm just learning about the importance of cooling on new high performance machines. I've been running an AMD Athlon 600 Mhz, so (as far as I know), never before has this been an issue (bought Presario in 2000).

[thefultonhow]

Originally Posted by 4deucer What the heck are all those black tubes with the oval Thermaltake logos on the end of each one? Are you "piping in" air?

Those are rounded IDE cables.

[Designer]

Originally Posted by Tophinator the compressed air method doesnt really work well until you get up to around 90 PSI. I clean my case at 120 with my air compressor. Gets it pretty clean, although I usually have to remove my VGA cooler to clean it. And also air compressors dont shoot out humid air. Its acutally kind of impossible to do so unless you add water to your tank. The air coming out of them is usually drier than the ambient air so you shouldnt worry about moisture at all.

Just had to work out PSI - BAR, that's 8 Bar, about the same as I use on mine, one of the great things about work is they let me bring my PC's in and pull em apart in there so i can use their compressors.