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Making Your PC Dust Free?
Kranfer asks: "Recently, I cleaned out my PC to find not only dust... but also feathers from my from rather large parrots. I have struggled with keeping my PC dust free for years, but I have yet to find a workable solution that will keep the dust from stacking up every few months, inside my PCs at home. I was hoping that my peers on Slashdot might have thought up some innovative solutions to this common problem with any PC. How does one cut down on the dust entering a PC and sticking around? I run an Antec File Server Case with each and every fan slot taken blowing out, and even one of those Harddrive coolers and PCI slot coolers. What have you done to rid yourself of the dust and pet dander inside your PCs?"
you need to keep a positive pressure inside the PC (so blow the fans IN, more than out), and then you can filter the air on the intake and not have dust getting in anywhere else... as for what filter material you use, i don't know, hopefully others can suggest something cheap and easily available in large rolls (i'm thinking of aquarium filter, probably not fine enough though for air). you want some fine mat material that you can replace or blow out every few weeks. :)
i've been meaning to solve this problem myself because it cant be good for component life either.
you have parrots in the same room as the PC?!
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
My current frankenstein-box, before I gave in and bought a non-stock cpu cooler, was cooled by a 20" galaxy fan (about $11 from WalMart) bolted onto the side of the case in place of an actual case cover. After a few months, the entire case was a christmas wonderland of gray gunk. I had to take the whole thing apart and peel off sheets of lint that reminded me of cleaning out the lint trap on a dryer. So I bought an air conditioner filter, and duct taped it onto the galaxy fan. Changed it every few months, and not one bit of dust.
Of course, this still works with normal 80mm fans. Go to Walmart and buy an aircondioner filter, and cut out 80mm diameter circles. Just screw through them with the same screws that hold your fans onto your case. Change whenever they look really bad, or when you notice your temps going up.
every fan slot taken blowing out
BAD IDEA
Then all the air coming into your case will be sucked from the edges and between hte drive bays, places where dust is likley to collect anyway.
Its better to run them at a 50/50 (40/60 can work too) mix of in/out fans, and the sugestion about the filters is on the mark as well.
The more I learn about Windows the more I am surprised it runs at all
You said each and every fan slot was blowing out. That is your problem. The air that is going in to the box is coming from whatever cracks, vents, etc there are. Most, if not all, of these will be unfiltered so you are sucking up environmental dust.
In order to keep dust out of your PC, you need to control the air going *in* to the box. That means having more fans blowing in than out so that the case has a net positive air pressure. This way, air is blowing out of the miscellaneous cracks in the case. Once you do this, you add filters to the fans that are blowing in. No more dust in box.
The most important thing to remember if you use filters on your fans is to clean them often. Clogged intake fans will heat your case up like crazy.
I would also note that you need a balance of fans blowing in and out so that you get the best airflow through the case. Don't have them all going the same direction as that will rarely provide the best cooling.
You can really reduce the amount of dust in a case just by getting it up off the floor. Higher is better. Dust tends to settle near the floor, and especially if you have carpet, walking by the desk will kick up small amounts of dust every time.
60/40 on the in/out for fans (don't waste money & time with slot fans) and you can get cheap filter material from a motherboard box. You know, the spongy stuff inside the box? Cut it into 80mm squares. Works like a champ. Mount between fan & case.
Don't use the Troll mod just because you disagree with me.
The biggest reason to remove dust is because it insulates heat. Chips are designed around the idea of operating exposed to air. Most chips generate some heat, and if they're in a thick blanket of dust, they'll run hotter than they otherwise would. The more recent the equipment, the more pronounced the effect, because newer stuff runs much hotter than older-generation equipment. Heat eventually causes failures.
That 486-33 in the corner, in other words, might continue to work fine for 20 years in three feet of dust. It generates so little heat to begin with that insulating it isn't that big a deal. That machine you're talking about that's eight years old probably isn't a lot faster than that.
But if you bought a brand new Athlon 64 4800+ and put it into the same environment, it could potentially die within months.... particularly if the motherboard is passively cooled. The CPU itself might be fine (the spinning fan prevents the worst of the dust from building up), but the hot Northbridge could easily overheat.
Moving air brings dust. The obvious solution is to eliminate fans. Perhaps a move to water cooling is in order for you.