Silent Killer of the PC
N8 August 1st, 2008View/Print PDF Version
Well this one should be obvious, but some folks just don’t know. They equate their PC with all their other maintenance free appliances like their TV or Stereo, but there is a keen difference.
Fans. High rpm, airflow moving fans.
With fans you get air intake and with air intake you get dust buildup.
Dust has killed more PC’s power supplies than lightning from my working experience. Almost every PC I work on needs dusted badly…and not just on the outside.
Now if it voids your warranty, don’t take the side off of your PC and blow it out…but if you are out of warranty and care at all about the life of your computer then you need to finish reading this and do just that.
Viruses are bad, spyware is annoying but the known threat of these are widespread and most folks who have been driving a mouse for a while have something in place to remove and or prevent them, but almost everyone is susceptible to dust and don’t even know it.
Even if your Computer has a filter on it, tiny particles of dust still make it through and land on fans and heatsinks lessening their efficiency. If you are a smoker you double your risk of a dusty PC. Now don’t think “everybody picks on the smokers” but from my experience of smoker’s PCs the dust is “stickier” and “clumps” which means that there is usually more found in a smoker’s computer…and yes it is easy to tell a smoker’s computer.
Now if you’re a clean freak the next few images may be shocking. I will let you know ahead of time that the outside of the case, other than the intake areas, looked normal.
Oh and I apologize for the quality of the images, they were made by a cell phone.
Dust Clogged Exhaust Fan. 120mm with large exhaust holes but the Dust still clumps.
Dust Clogged Powersupply Intake - Will take years from it's life...
Dusty CPU...there um should be a heatsink under that fan.
So with all that being said – if you haven’t done it in a month or so – now is a good time to do the Spring Cleaning on your PC.
If you are wondering where to get the compressed air, most retail stores sell it for about $6.00 usd or less and it is usually found in the electronics or office supply areas.
Oh and the computer above had symptoms of instability and random shutdowns…yah, wonder why…
