Dust the new danger to PC users

PCs are getting hotter, they need more air to cool them - This has become a big problem in my home not because of the heat, I did have that under control but recently dust is my major concern.

Has anybody resolved the dust problem cos this could be worse than the heat problem. For example. More dust means fans are less efficient due to excessive dust on the heatsink, so unless you open your PC frequently and suck it clean with a vacumn cleaner your CPU is gonna get progressively hotter over the months.

I now have put filters on the front of my case but this now means I need more powerful fans to suck through the filters which means they are louder, and still they don't pull as much air through as when I didn't use filters which means the CPU is now hotter than it was before and my PC is also louder too.

I feel I'm like a dog chasing my tail, With three problems now rather than just one!

Dust, Heat and now fan noise and I don't actually mean fan noise I mean the noise of the air being sucked into the case !

Now don't try and convince me of water cooling, or peltiers or even prometia cooling because I'm not even going to consider putting water within two feet of my PC, and peltier can cause condensation which is hazardous too and dont even consider going down that prometia road!

One last and final note, I'm now forever cleaning the bloody filters.

Martin Taylor
Email address supplied

Dust? We've got it covered. I am trying to develop a career as a musician and spend a lot of time in our music studio. It's not the dustiest room in the world, but there's a fair amount, and we smoke a lot in there.

The computer case I used in there was an ACM480 from www.acme-technology.co.uk.

It's a 19" rackmount unit, with two doors. Both of the doors contain air filters which are easily removed & cleaned. The airflow in the case is as standard, air in at the front, out at the back. I opened up the case yesterday, after about eight months closed to give the PC a service (counteracting the dust problem - i usually go at it hammer and tongs with a pack of cotton buds). I was shocked to see that there was actually hardly *any* dust at all in there. In fact, everything looked pretty pristine.

Obviously, not everyone should consider rackmount casings, but if people choose a case that has an external filter that is easily removed/cleaned, then there shouldn't be a problem. In this case, as well, the filter could be replaced for one with a finer catchment if needs be.

Just my two cents...

Matt W
Email address supplied

I don´t quite agree that dust is a "new" danger, after all it´s been around forever...

But your puzzled reader may want to solve his terrible dilemma by vacuuming his computer every six months, and just wiping the case clean with some tissue once a week. Nothing more than the usual routine for any household object, I am afraid.

Every two years, he can consider a CPU upgrade, too. All in all, he would be expected to open the CPU´s case three times in two years, each time spending about thirty seconds vacuuming the "guts" of his machine. Not really a terrible ordeal, if you ask me.

Would dust build up during those six months intervals? Sure it would, but that wouldn´t cause a failure due to heat buildup. Computers are built with some safety margins, and 1-2 degrees centigrades more due to dust accumulation is well within acceptable margins.

Name, email address supplied

Ozone generators will precipitate dust, viruses, bacteria out of the air and probably reduce or eliminate clogged filters. Of course, you will have to wash and/or paint your walls more often since the charged particles collect on the walls.

Dave F
Email address supplied

Aaack!

In the letters piece on dustworthy computing, Dave F appears to suggest the use of Ozone generators to remove dust from the air. It's probably worth pointing out that since electrostatic precipitators work by creating a circulating field of charged particles, they create a magnetic field (Faraday's law of induction). Now, if you've migrated fully to optical (CDRW and DVD???) media, USB/Firewire harddrives, or flashmedia for your data storage, that's fine; but if you still keep floppies, Zip, Jaz, tape backup, or other magnetic media in that room, this could be a problem. Most people aren't fond of Write-Only media. =)

Also, using a vaccum cleaner on the inside of a computer is a piss-poor plan, as they can build up a charge, which can fry motherboards, hard drives, CPUS, memory chips-- pretty much anything except the metal computer case itself. Canned compressed air is fairly cheap and common these days,and should be used instead.

Arthur Byrne
Email address supplied