Attack of the Killer Dust Bunnies

[Styx]

Attack of the Killer Dust Bunnies

 

[Hero999]

Actually smoking is one of the worst things you can do when your computer is turned on. The tar can condense on the fan and stop is working or worse still condense in the hard drive and trash your data.

 

[futz]

Actually smoking is one of the worst things you can do when your computer is turned on. The tar can condense on the fan and stop is working or worse still condense in the hard drive and trash your data.

Get serious! It's just not going to get inside the hard drive. Not gonna happen.

I have a friend that smokes like a chimney. Whenever he brings his computer over for me to fix it stinks my whole house up. The thing reeks! Inside is all brown and sticky. You can't blow the dust out with compressor like usual. It's stuck on with brown tarry glue. The fan blades have to be scraped clean. It's absolutely gross! Wonder what his lungs look like inside...

But his hard drives are fine.

 

[futz]

Attack of the Killer Dust Bunnies

I've serviced machines that look like every one of those pics. People have no idea how much air goes through those boxes. That air carries dust and pet/human dander. What a mess! They should be opened up at least once a year and blown out with compressor and vacuumed.

 

[audioguru]

My computer revs up its fans when it is turned on. I think they run in reverse for 5 seconds to blow out the dust.

 

[futz]

My computer revs up its fans when it is turned on. I think they run in reverse for 5 seconds to blow out the dust.

Hahahaha! That's hilarious! Not true, but a good joke.

What's actually happening is that the fans start up at 100% until the BIOS code or whatever code it is gets bootstrapped up and turns on the PWM or whatever method your mainboard uses to control fan speed.

 

[Sceadwian]

God damn, you could knit some of those PC's into sweaters! I just cleaned out the power supply to my sisters computer because it looked like that, I must have missed a glob or jammed it into the wrong place when cleaning though because when I powered the PSU up it went up in smoke =-O Took out the motherboard too, I think the 12 volt line was carrying line voltage for a second or two. I religiously clean out any PC I'm near at least once a year minimum. We have air filters and base board electric heating so that's fine for me, if you have open windows all the time or forced air heating I'd do it every 6 months. I lived with a family of smokers and was a smoker myself for many years and I've never seen any negative effects on the inside of a PC case, got some nasty tar stains on a couple monitors from an ashtray being near it and it doesn't do much for keeping the monitor glass clear, but it's not very likely to get into the machine unless you're venting your butt smoke right into it, even then the worst dust I've seen is just from people that have their machine in a house with forced air heating near the machine. It leads to very fluffy nests of dust, and humidity will make it denser over time.

 

[Krumlink]

As dusty as any house is, when I clean out my computer usually every 6 months, I hardly get any dust bunnies. It is rather surprising how often it is used and as dusty as my room can get. I get a tiny bit of dust in the fans and heatsinks but that's it really.

 

[audioguru]

My old 486 pc didn't have a fan and the 100MHz processor didn't have a heatsink.
It was pretty fast unless Norton Antivirus was running.

 

[Sceadwian]

Dust builds up exponentially, if you clean your machines on a regular basis all you will ever clean off is a thin layer. The initial layer increases dust collection because there's more surface area there for dust to get caught on, works just like an air filter. Once you get a nice fluffy layer it becomes even a more serious air filter and builds up that much faster. My sisters machine had NEVER been cleaned out in 7 years.

 

[davidbball13]

I've serviced machines that look like every one of those pics. People have no idea how much air goes through those boxes. That air carries dust and pet/human dander. What a mess! They should be opened up at least once a year and blown out with compressor and vacuumed.

i just serviced a windows '95 P1 with 32 megs of ram. it has never been own in all of its 13 years of working. there was a lot of dust