Couple of questions about dust in pc.

Dcully

Just paranoid about keeping dust off my new gaming rig
Would normal amount of dust affect a machines performance?
Also im guessing a tin of compressed air is best way to keep compoments clean?

Apologies if they seem silly questions.

FRM

Female I guess ????? :):):):D:D:D:D

Dcully

Nope fully male
but wife is a clean freak yes

CSSource God

I have witnessed 2 Power supply's packing in due to excess dust. Not mine thankfully. Some people seem to have a lot of dust in their rooms. I use a fine cloth that i got with my case, and I have used my hoover on low power with a small attachment to clean my fans, but i wouldnt recommend that coz I was extremely careful:D

CSSource God

JUST TO SHOW THAT DUST IN YOUR pc IS NO JOKE. AND I CAN SAY THAT I HAVE SEEN THIS MYSELF IN MY MATES HOUSE:eek:

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1865/how-to-kill-your-pc-quickly/

white_falcon

yea buy a can of compressed air and turn off ur PC completely and give it a spray now and again about once a month or whenever u get a fair bit of dust in it. I've had my PC now for about 2months and theres a buttload of dust on the fans (iv 6 fans i think..) its a bit mad like.


can of compressed air is the correct way of doing it tho.

...or pull of the side of ur PC and get out the hoover and stick it in there...probably not a good idea tho...

TheThreeDegrees

Funny someone should bring up the subject of dust!

whilst waiting for my new parts to arrive today i decided to open the old box of mine and check the state of the fan on the ol Sempron.

The dust had clogged up the vents on the heatsink.
got the old hoover out and voila the freeking thing is running 6 degrees cooler!

pdebarra

Using a standard household hoover is a bad idea, as you can damage your PC. You can, however, use smaller, lower-power, hand-held ones.

Balfa

I'm not making any recommendations or anything, but just for the record, I've NEVER paid attention to dust in any of my PCs. Sure, if I take the cover off I'll give it a blast o' the ould lungs, but never put any real effort into keeping it dust free. Never had a problem with dust-related failures (or at least what I suspect to be dust-related failures), in 19 years of using and 12 years of building PCs

That said, my north bridge fan does look pretty nasty and I might consider grabbing a can of air someday...

dulpit

My PC at home is not a high end thing or anything, bog standard thing... Couple of months ago it started acting up, error messages about the processor being too hot or something, (may have been a diff. message) so I opened it up, was v.dusty, so cleaned it as best i could, and the problem went away...

I got one of those programs that measure heat inside, and there was a noticeable drop in temp after cleaning it...

Ginger

Also will mean it will run quieter with less dust, because the fans have to work less. I clean out the heatsinks on my cards and procs about every 3 to six months because it can become matted in there, and because there is a window in my case, you can see it.!!!

Also handy keeping it a wee bit clean because nothing worse than putting in new parts and looking like a chimney sweep after giving it a quick blast from the lungs