Dust Busting

[brcastle]

Thought others might find this interesting, if not sorry for wasting your time

Just thought id give the inside of my computer a clean out, so i downloaded Speedfan first just to get an idea of the temperature my computer was running at before cleaning, here are the results:

Before cleaning:

#1: 32c
#2: 55c
#3: 126c
#4: 126c
#5: 64c
#6: 33c
#7: 59c

After Cleaning:

#1: 31c
#2: 44c
#3: 126c
#4: 126c
#5: 64c
#6: 29c
#7: 51c

Took about 15 minutes

[TechPro]

O yes dust busting is really good preventive maintenance.

Nice experiment you did there!!

My old PC was just shutdown everynow again got a can of air and gave it a good old clean, works fine now....took 2 minutes.

The Tech Guys which are part of PC World in the UK charge £9.99 for this two minute job.

Techpro

[iladelf]

Somewhere else on this forum, I believe, this was discussed, about whether to use canned compressed air or an air compressor. I have a somewhat cheaper suggestion; a hair dryer! Yes, you wouldn't necessarily want to leave it on high heat to blast dust away from a computer, but I've used this several times at customer's homes. They almost always have a hair dryer; not so much a compressor or compressed air cans.

For my money, a hair dryer does as good a job as a compressor. Just do it outside, of course!

[breadtrk]

I know this is overkill but at the Sheriff's Office we have a wool blanket problem, they are dust factories. We have a 2 shelf plastic cart rigged up with a vac and compressor on the bottom and a sandblast type cabinet on top. We put the tower, printer, fax, phone, whatever in the top and blow it out with the compressed air while the vac sucks the dust out into a filter. when you are taking care of 635 machines in a jail environment it just makes things a bit quicker for the quarterly clean we have to do.

We also have our tools, spare parts, and a laptop that serves as a ghost-cast server for on the spot re-ghosting if someone has messed anything up. We also keep all the updates for that round on disks so we can be updating one and cleaning the other in each control room.

For my home and small business clients I use a Honda powered compressor that is truck mounted, left over from my construction days. Again I know it is overkill but a 24' box step-van sure does make a nice mobile Office and is my workshop when at home, complete with Internet, Cable digital TV and XM.

[gunslinger]

I open my case up about every 3-4 months and blow it out. I think it will depend on the environment you are in. I once cleaned out a system from an auto body shop that was packed with bondo dust. It took me about 2 hours with a brush and compressed air to clean it out.

[alivitari]

I am usually doing so much work and the guts of my old PC that the case is usually just left open. I have found that I get less dust and that it is easy to just grab the can of air and blow it out every few days.

[Blues]

Im bad about not doing this but canned air doesn't work that great atleast not so when its all gotten really caked on dust. Work has a auto shop and a body shop those PCs are filthly how ever they do have an air compressor and blow thiers out from time to time. The office PCs are only about half as bad but we don't have a good setup so we don't clean thier PCs. The other factor here is we use crappy PCs.

[tkrabec]

I'd love to see a picture of that cart.

Originally Posted by breadtrk

I know this is overkill but at the Sheriff's Office we have a wool blanket problem, they are dust factories. We have a 2 shelf plastic cart rigged up with a vac and compressor on the bottom and a sandblast type cabinet on top. We put the tower, printer, fax, phone, whatever in the top and blow it out with the compressed air while the vac sucks the dust out into a filter. when you are taking care of 635 machines in a jail environment it just makes things a bit quicker for the quarterly clean we have to do.

We also have our tools, spare parts, and a laptop that serves as a ghost-cast server for on the spot re-ghosting if someone has messed anything up. We also keep all the updates for that round on disks so we can be updating one and cleaning the other in each control room.

For my home and small business clients I use a Honda powered compressor that is truck mounted, left over from my construction days. Again I know it is overkill but a 24' box step-van sure does make a nice mobile Office and is my workshop when at home, complete with Internet, Cable digital TV and XM.

[greggh]

Originally Posted by tkrabec

I'd love to see a picture of that cart.

I second that.

[gsp]

Originally Posted by iladelf

For my money, a hair dryer does as good a job as a compressor. Just do it outside, of course!

Except the potential for static buildup with a hairdryer is much greater... I'd be careful, especially with cheaper and untested hairdryers.