[Dweebgal]

i am such a yutz sometimes, over the last few months my very stable computer has been getting more and more and more unstable, and today was the last straw, with it crashing/rebooting every 5 minutes, even when i was only doing something simple.

i had tried everything i could possibly think of to fix the problem, and i have had some very odd error messages, ranging from it being the fault of drivers, to my memory being corrupt, to there being 7gb of my drive lost to corruptions (which stangely enough was not corrupted again after a reboot!!)

as a last desperate mesaure today, i thought i'd move my sound card to another pci slot to see if that helped, and as i was opening up the case i had a look around and went "**** me that's a lotta dust!!!!"

i'd never looked properly before but the heatsink and fan were completley blocked up with dust, no wonder it was crashing a lot.

so, after spending about an hour dusting out the inside of my case, and removing almost 3 years worth of dust from my heatsink and fan, my computer is running a little bit faster, a lot quieter, and when running the same programs that made it crash before....it doesn't.

hurrah!!!

i'm not quite sure how it got so dusty in the first place....never mind...

 

[Music Fanatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dweebgal i'm not quite sure how it got so dusty in the first place....never mind...

This certainly raises all sorts of imaginative possibilities.

 

[aerius]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dweebgal i'm not quite sure how it got so dusty in the first place....never mind...

With all the air that a computer sucks through while it's running, it's not surprising that it'll get dusty pretty quick. The computer kinda becomes a $1000 air filter, with the insides being the filter part.

I pull my computers apart at least once a year to blow all the dust out. In my case it's the power supply in the case that collects the most dust, when I blew that out with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse it filled the entire work room with a dense dust cloud.

 

[D-EJ915]

My computer rip-roars the air and dust through it, there's no stopping, with my 7 80mm fans, 1 of which puts out 84cfm, it's madness,...it heats my room, literally

, it circulates all the air in my room in 40 minutes.

 

[Dweebgal]

even though i only have the one fan in my pc, it does tend to heat my room, becuase i keep my door closed and have my pc on all the time, so my room is one fo the warmest in the house

 

[mbriant]

I'm surprised that computer cases don't come with filters covering the air intake areas. I guess with the added drag, the fans would have to be considerably stronger and therefore noisier and more expensive.

 

[D-EJ915]

If you clean the filters it really doesn't detract from cooling capability, Metal ones are supposed to be better, but I don't use any, I should.

Another easy fix for the dust thing is just to put a shirt or towel over the back of your pc, it's what I did, and it makes my Tornado (literally) quieter.

 

[raymondlin]

The side panels in my pc comes off with these 2 levers, and every now and then i clean it with a paint brush (clean one), will get some compress air soon to get the small parts.

And shouldn't clean it with a vacuum cleaner, and not a brush too really as they create static, and static kill Pc components.

 

[Dweebgal]

well, the things i sued to get rid of my dust was a set of make up brushes.

i figure if they're soft enough for skin, they shouldn;t damage pc parts!!!

 

[Music Fanatic]

If there is a sudden run on makeup brushes by audio geeks, we'll know the post that started it all.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Good fans filters + positive case pressure (i.e. more airflow in than out) = little to no dust inside your PC

With a little calculation and planning dustless operation is just one part of a good PC. However, most OEM computers try to get away with as few fans as possible, generally resulting in negative case rpessure, which sucks in air (and dust, consequentially) through every hole and crack (no pun intended) in the PC case. One computer I seviced had two inches thick dust covering nearly all the insides, it was unbelieveable!

 

[minya]

Speaking of dust...

My computer's fans were making godawful noises recently, so I turned it off, turned it on its side, and used a can of compressed air to clean it out. Got dust out of everywhere -- but turned the can over a little too far and sprayed some of that cold liquid all over the place. Didn't think anything of it. Turned it back upright, turned it on...

... poof. Black screen. No boot. I press reset; same thing. Turn the computer off by hand, then turn it on, and it boots, this time, into BIOS, where I'm greeted by an error that claims "Improper CPU Settings." The settings are proper. I reset to defaults just in case, and then I save/exit... and poof, black screen again. The cycle repeats, even after I attempt various fixes...

..so I just broke down and ordered a new motherboard, a new CPU, and a new power supply and RAM, to boot.

Oh well. At least I get to upgrade...

- Chris

 

[fewtch]

I wonder if some types of compressed gas are conductive in solid or liquid form... I doubt the cold would have any effect, but if it's conductive and you turned it on with some of the stuff still unevaporated that could do it.

 

[D-EJ915]

If you turn the can upside down and spray it at people, you can give them frostbite.

 

[wallijonn]

you mean you don't open your case up and blow out the dust on the first of every month? for shame.