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Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Electrostatic Contamination?
interval1066 writes "I've generally made it a practice to blow the dust out of my devices 1) when I remember to do so 2) after about 3 or so years of use 3) when I can get inside the case. My monitor is very thin and difficult to open. When I did finally crack it open I didn't really notice a whole lot of dust, but I blew the thing out anyway and put it back together, and it's doing ok, as far as I can tell. I'd be interested in knowing other Slashdotters' experiences with maintaining their devices in this way and where possible. And I actually extending the life of my devices, or am I just wasting my time?"
For the most part I find that only devices that have forced air cooling, aka fans, have issues with dust. And in those cases it is defiantly a good idea to clean them out regularly as overheating is defiantly an issue with enough dust accumulation. You would be amazed the amount of dust that will accumulate in a PC, even after a few years. In the case of computer cases you can get filters that help a lot however you need to make sure you clean the filters out or you will just be making the situation worse.
About how often you should be cleaning out your fridge, too. Don't tell me you only do it once a year!
You, and the Slashdot editors that posted this, are wasting everyone's time with this question. What's next, an Ask Slashdot for shaking crumbs and pubes out of your keyboard?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Wrap all your connectors with Teflon tape commonly used in plumbing.
It is thin and an excellent isolator easy to apply to to most electrical connectors.
See comment subject.
And yes, I clean out my computer equipment roughly every 6 months, but it will depend on your specific enviroment on how often you should clean it.
I have found even non-moving electronic parts collect dust such as keyboards. Once a month cleaning seems about right.
Computers are like dust magnets. CPU fans are the worst for dust getting caked on.
Anything that helps keep your machine from working harder then it should be, should be done.
To use a car analogy: Would you run a car without oil and grease? Or do you want your engine and wheels (ball bearings) to keep functioning smoothly just by doing a quick maintenance?
Seriously, do we _really_ an question/article on preventive maintenance? You brush your teeth everyday, right? Likewise electronic components should be looked after and taken care of as well. A dust cover wouldn't hurt either.
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Dear Slashdot, I heard you should regularly take breaths so you don't die. Is this true?
I was having problems with my system crashing under "load" (i.e. games) last year. I replaced the drivers, the video card and the power supply before I noticed that the CPU heart sink was stuffed with dust. One blast of canned air later and I haven't had a problem since. It had probably been two years since I installed that processor. So yes, there are times when it really does make a difference.
Grammar fail in the OP. The last sentence should start with "Am I" not "And I"
yes.
if you're cracking your monitors open to dust them then you have plenty of time. if you don't want dust then get some dust free cleanroom to keep 'em. if you're cracking monitors open on standard basis then you got some really crappy monitors or you're just gasping for straws to do.. it's more likely you'll damage them by accident when doing it than it actually helping anything.
if you're that bored go look some teardown / repair videos on youtube. dust is not going to be the thing that kills your caps, unless it's some special iron dust or some shit like that. which in a factory it might be.
depends on the equipment a bit of course, some cpu coolers and fan ventilated machines gather a lot of dust that makes a thermal barrier(on a part that has high heat production) and that's useful to get rid of every now and then.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
As a tech, I find people with clean homes generally have their devices last longer, and those with filthy homes often have premature device failures.
Short and Sweet: YES, do take the time to clean your electronics. Below is my own subjective experience. YMMV
When I was 17 I owned what was arguably the best laptop available to consumers in the whole world. It had the first edition of Pentium 4 mobile processors, a dvd burner and a 32 MEG (!) GeForce 4 mobile video card. I was the envy of all my friends. (I got it from the make a wish foundation after having cancer, they envied the laptop, not the cancer)
A year later the CD drive seemed to stop reading any media that I put in. It was intermittent for a long time but eventually it wasn't able to read anything. This made was a pain because bios' back then didn't support booting from USB and when I wanted to re ghost the thing the CD's were useless. I tried booting it over the network but that was a huge pain in the ass and didn't go well. I continued to use the laptop for another year or two.
I got a new desktop computer and the laptop went to collect dust in my desk drawer. A few years later I was cleaning out my desk and brought out the old laptop, wondering if I could get the OS reinstalled somehow. CD ROM drive still didn't work. I took a Q-tip and swabbed the little laser lens thingymabob just for shits (it didn't look dusty or dirty) Magically, Every CD I put in suddenly worked. The lens was just a little smudged I guess. I didn't use a perfectly good computer for years because of some stupid dust. (I forgot to mention, the computer was at a point where I reformatted but hadn't put any os on it so it was useless even for simple tasks)
I also had a desktop computer that use to freeze occasionally during times of intense rendering / cpu usage. It was pretty old and when I opened the case there was a lot of dust collected in the proc's cooling fan. I just blew on it (no canned air) and got most of the dust out. No more over heating problems.
Yes, you should clean it. Personally, I would just submerge it in mineral oil and never vacuum again
Ask Slashdot used to be so much more technical...this is getting ridiculous.
There's a tradeoff between lifespan and maintenance requirements. For fun, I restore old Teletype machines from the 1920s and 1930s. I have four of them running.
A normal maintenance operation on early Teletypes is to remove the two electrical parts (the motor and the selector magnet) and soak the entire machine in cleaning solution to get rid of dust and dead oil. For machines in heavy use, Western Union did that annually. Then they had to be oiled again (there are several hundred oiling points and six pages of lubrication instructions), gears and sliding joints greased, the electrical parts re-installed, adjustment procedures performed, and the machines re-tested.
Because of this design for maintainability, I've been able to take 80 year old machines that were covered with rust and dirt, and restore them to full operation. But who would put up with something today which required that kind of maintenance? Getting people to clean or change the filters on their desktop computers is difficult.
...and I've never had any problems. There's nothing wrong with just removing the case, pushing a few peripherals away from the hard to reach spots and th
I manage a computer service department. We get a few computers every month suffering from nothing more than the thermal effects of dust build-up inside. Almost all of them come back fine after cleaning. However, we get a greater number of computers damaged by inept cleaning (though most of that is liquid damage). I personally have several pet parrots, and the dander spreads enough that I clean out my computers every six months.
Take them apart, clean them, but ONLY if you are sure you can safely do so.
That's a golden rule.
Most consumer equipment does not need or tolerate frequent maintenance. Cracking open an LCD monitor is not going to make it last longer, on the contrary, you are putting stress on plastic tabs (specially if it doesn't have screws), and on marginal quality harnesses and connectors that are meant to be assembled once.
My other signature is a car
I use desktop a lot and i feel you have to blow them out (canned air) and check on them when you hear the fan whine a certain way. My machine runs quiet and it should but if you don't hear anything and you get a Blue/black screen then the fan is dead.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
Had a dell XPS and after 6months load of trouble due to overheating....new M/B video cards at much cost to Dell :)
Finally they relaced it with an Alienware m17x twin nvidia gtx285M after 3 month same overheating - dell guy came out replaced video cards and say I should clean out the dust regular so I now do a dismantle and clean around the video cards and cpu heat sink every couple of months....if only they made it easy to do...need to remove back keyboard etc lol
Pitty the non techies who buy super powerful laptops only for them to slowly melt :)
Firstly, the capacitive, inductive and thermal blanket effect of the dust can become part of the overall workings of the dusty component. And therefore cleaning it off disrupts this and may cause the device to fail sooner.
On the other hand, dust can contain small conductive particle and the build up of these particle to cause premature failure of the device.
Not much help other than, if your going to clean, always clean, if your not going to clean, then don't.
Perhaps the ones with filthy homes mishandle their devices?
This has been my observation. People willing to live in filth don't care about themselves. If they don't care about themselves, why would they care about consumer electronics.
Filthy hardware.
Massive dust build up inside their fan aspirated devices.
Tattered cables.
Cracked LCD screens...
Some people are just pigs.
If you're cleaning them correctly and carefully, you'll extend their lives. Dust buildup is a leading cause of overheating in PCs, and heat is a real problem.
But if you're cleaning them incorrectly, you'll shorten their lives. Any time you open the case, you're exposing sensitive components to risk, especially static damage. Not grounding yourself to the case when you're touching internal components will allow any static buildup on your body to discharge through a component. Vacuum cleaners draw so much air through them that they generate static electricity, particularly on the tip of a plastic nozzle. Static discharges at lower voltages are invisible and can cause latent damage that you may not immediately discover, but those weaknesses enable other normal stresses to destroy the chip.
When you take it apart to clean it, you're exposing it to non-zero risk. You might make a mechanical mistake in assembly that impacts proper cooling. You might put the CPU heatsink on cockeyed, fail to equally tension all the heat sink mounting screws, or drape a stray cable across a fan and prevent it from turning. Failing to put airflow devices back in their correct place, or failing to reconnect the fans to the power cables, could reduce needed airflow. When you carry it to the workbench, you risk dropping it. I've seen people reuse old thermal paste or glob on a thick layer of new paste when replacing the CPU fan (the fan maker's pre-paste is usually horribly thick.) A bad thermal paste layer will insulate the CPU from the heat sink and cause overheating. Lots of the aftermarket CPU fans have really weird mounting hardware, and you need to be sure they're correctly mounted so they effectively transfer the heat. All these risks can be reduced by learning how to do it right, reading the directions, and taking appropriate precautions.
One way to greatly reduce the risk of damage due to improper handling is to clean the machines only as often as necessary. Dust buildup is dependent on your particular environment. Fabrics, pets, dirt, open windows, flowering plants, carpeting, low humidity, high humidity, smoke, grease, cooking oils, hair sprays, colognes, all are factors that contribute to the build up of dust. So clean it after a year, and figure out what the cleaning schedule should be based on what you discover. It might be that annual cleanings are appropriate, or maybe you can wait two or three years.
All heat is a problem. Direct thermal damage from too much heat is possible, of course, but temperature changes can cause problems too. Thermal expansion causes the mechanical motion of parts. Every material has a different coefficient of expansion, (e.g. aluminum expands more per degree than steel, plastic expands more than aluminum,) so as parts heat and cool, they tug at solder connections, screw mountings, and other interface points inside the case. Repeated heating and cooling cycles increase the possibility of damage. Keeping it clean will keep it cooler, reducing the amount of expansion and motion, and extending the life.
Note that I'm not saying you'll ever drop your computer or ever reassemble it incorrectly, I'm pointing out that the act of cleaning it creates a risk greater than zero, and that the risk is zero when you are not cleaning it. And bigger risks lead to shorter lifespans.
John
of course. What else?
I'm completely torn by what this guy is saying.
I clean out my equipment monthly, but only the equipment that I can easily open. Screws and threaded posts are so cheap and fragile these days a lot of equipment won't survive being opened and closed many times. Most consumer grade equipment just uses self-tapping screws that go straight into the plastic. This kind of equipment almost never appreciates being opened and closed, the screws become loose and every time you undo them you have to tighten them up just a little bit more then before to get them tight, right up to the point the threads totally strip out.
My monitor doesn't get dusty at all. After five years of use, the inside is basically dust free. Sure, I dust it off weekly with a swiffer but that's about it. I never blast it with compressed air because this can push hairs and dust into the LCD diffuser assembly (which will then appear as a "spec" inside the screen where you can't get it). I've never even remotely considered dismantling my monitor since there are a lot of stupidly ESD-sensitive components in there where just touching the wrong part (even if you think you're not electrically charged) will fry entire regions of pixels (these parts are usually marked with big bold "DO NOT TOUCH" markings- and they really mean it).
So I'm not sure what to say.
I guess the moral of my situation is that if you dust often, you don't need to dust as deep. If you have to take out more then four screws to get it open, then you're totally doing it wrong. Stop being so lazy and actually bother to clean stuff on a reasonable schedule and you won't have to resort to that kind of insanity.
If you can't get those, might I suggest aiming in another direction.
So, to quote Steve Jobs, "You're holding it wrong."
Mix 1/4 liquid fabric softener (unscented if you do not want all your stuff to smell like laundry) to 3/4 water in a spray bottle.
Lightly spray surfaces and wipe dry with a clean rag. The fabric softener conducts enough that it prevents static build up. (Proof by experiment: try on TV screen/enclosure of old tube TV, or spray floor where you used to get a shock to touch a door knob, or the seats of your car.)
I've used this technique for my house's carpets (have to re-apply after each time we got the carpets shampoo'd), car seats and car carpets, TV, PC monitor(s), and PC enclosures.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
If there is nothing mechanical going on in the device, you are probably causing more harm than anything. I've electrostatically killed functional (well... kinda) computers blasting them out with air. Doesn't always happen, and those computers were caked with welding soot so the periodic blasting was the only thing keeping the parts turning. Normally in an office or home environment I wouldn't bother, since sealed devices without fans tend not to accumulate anything significant. For example, I wouldn't bother opening a monitor from that same manufacturing environment, I'd just clean the casing as you would find they typically break from a fist-through-the-screen rather than old-age.
.... all the internals of your printers, on the other hand, do require constant cleaning and care to avoid damaging any of their multiple friggin sensor points. Also, iPhones and mechanical buttons there-in don't mind a spirit clean.
AKA: Fan Filters
They cost you about $5 each for good ones. mount them on the intake part of your fans, or the exhaust portion if the fan is tricky to get out without tearing the case apart. I run 2 fan filters on my PC for the intakes, and my case has a built in filter on the front for its two in take fans (so its a total of "3" in my case). The blades on my GPU fans are slightly dusty and my PC usually runs 6 hours a day 7 days a week and the GPU was purchased in October. /end testimonial
I use the Silverstone "hex" pattern filters (I don't know a specific name). They have a fine mesh (I don't like foam, too many reports and studies show they reduce airflow).
PS: Fan Filters are a great way to reduce noise from a fan too!
First of all, I do not understand how static build-up and clogged dust are immediately related to each other. Whatever...
Anyway, dust cleaning is something that is surprisingly still not well handled in computers! Surely some desktops have dust filters, and that's good, but the problem is not dealt in most laptops in a proper way.
Best way is to stop the dust in the 1st place.
Be sure to set up all your computer gear inside plastic sealable bags & just have to cords coming out.
You might find clear plastic works a little better than opaque.
Dear Slashdot,
Whenever I take my clothes out of the dryer they are static-y and cling to each other.
I cleaned out the lint from the filter, but I didn't notice any difference.
How do you deal with this problem, or am I wasting my time?
I work in a semiconductor clean-room. There are modern desktop systems, old 486 systems, and lots of industrial logic boards, cabinets chock full of arrays of huge computer fans...some of this stuff has been going since the early '90s and there isn't a spec of dust on them. It's pretty weird to see old computer equipment, including fans, that DOESN'T have even a trace of dust on it. Very strange.
You are wasting your time.
Same could be said for those who defrag their hard drives weekly, etc.
Over on the Vintage Computer forum, people do in fact run old circuit boards such as PDP-11 modules through the dishwasher, and clean contacts with fine abrasive. Blasting core memory stacks with compressed air however is a definate no-no as this destroys the fine wiring.
I believe that you sir have won teh interwebs.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
If you are having problems with fanless devices getting too dirty inside, you might want to think about improving your indoor air quality, if for no better reason, your own health.
Cpus and other devices with fans stay much cleaner inside if they are not placed on the floor.
Here is what I have done with excellent results:
My NAS had a small fan, blowing warm air outside it. I remount the fan so that it blows fresh air inside the NAS and I added a custom external filter on the intake. The filter doesn't limit the flow (big accordion shape and stockings-like fabric). I plugged some holes to optimize the flow.
The NAS is sitting on the floor under the stairs, a rather dusty environnement...
After two years I inspected the NAS, here are the results:
- No dust soots the NAS, on some parts there is only a very thin grey layer of the finest particles that goes through the filter. It is much thinner than a coat of paint, nothing to worry about for the years to come.
- Filter is easy to clean, no need to open anything.
Also the NAS is actualy cooler, the hard drives report 35C instead of 37C, this is a side effect of the reverse flow which is more turbulent and effective for going everywhere to cool the parts.
I've heard you can get all the dust out safely with MyCleanPC.
I can't distinguish. Reminds me of the labels on Dr. Bronner's soap...
Phone cameras are so shiity that you can't tell. They're so bad that instagram makes their photos better.
Anecdotal: my hardware firewall (old Pentium II desktop) is on top of a box in the basement a few feet from the furnace. Last time I was in there checking a cable, I noticed maybe 1/16" worth of dust all over it. I haven't had it open since I built it.
Electrostatic contamination probably shouldn't concern you.
I'm all for vacuuming out the computer case once in a while, but that's about it. Electronics have a good lifespan (5+ years) and even for thrifty me by the time they wear out I'm ready for something cheaper and better.
1.) Keep your computer at least 1-inch up off the floor. There are a number of computer stands that can do this, or you could just put the computer on a piece of wood.
2.) Buy a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and connect your computer to that so you have less to worry about with power fluctuations.
3.) Upgrade your computer every 3-5 years depending on your computing power needs, utilize this opportunity to clear dust off of re-used components.
There is no need to clean out the inside of your computer multiple times a year, or annually for that matter. The only exception would be if the computer is in a bad environment where dust accumulation will be greater (living near a highway, computer located in or near a wood/metal workshop, cats, etc...).
A number of comments here have mentioned it, but nobody has flat out said it. The big problem from dust is that it acts as an insulator, trapping heat in the components. It also inhibits airflow, which makes the insulation that much worse. I've not heard of any dusty PC components suffering from electrostatic problems, but there are tons of PCs and components that run hotter than they need to due to tons of dust clogging up fans and heatsink fins.
This is what enthusiasts refer to as using positive pressure. Fans force air into the case, creating slightly higher than atmospheric pressure inside. The excess air then escapes out whatever holes and cracks it can find in the case. With negative pressure, the fan sucks warm air out of the case and creates lower pressure inside. Air comes in through the tiny holes and cracks in the case.
There's not a whole lot of performance difference between the two overall, but with positive pressure you have a small number of obvious entry points for air, which are easy to filter. With negative pressure, the air enters from a bunch of random spots that are nearly impossible to filter. While there's not much performance difference, one way makes it a whole lot easier to keep dust out of your system.