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Hardware Hacking

Making Your PC Dust Free? 89

Posted by Cliff from the clean-rooms-aren't-cheap dept.
Kranfer asks: "Recently, I cleaned out my PC to find not only dust... but also feathers from my from rather large parrots. I have struggled with keeping my PC dust free for years, but I have yet to find a workable solution that will keep the dust from stacking up every few months, inside my PCs at home. I was hoping that my peers on Slashdot might have thought up some innovative solutions to this common problem with any PC. How does one cut down on the dust entering a PC and sticking around? I run an Antec File Server Case with each and every fan slot taken blowing out, and even one of those Harddrive coolers and PCI slot coolers. What have you done to rid yourself of the dust and pet dander inside your PCs?"
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Making Your PC Dust Free? More

Making Your PC Dust Free?

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  • Easy! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by paulius_g ( 808556 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:04PM (#13680993) Homepage
    Put fan filters on all of your fans! They cost around $1 and do a good job.
    • A good job until they clog. Then your computer will overheat.

      Seems to me that cleaning the filters every couple months and cleaning the computer itself every couple months is about the same thing.

      And without filters it take a whole lot more dust to cause overheating problems.
      • Seems to me that cleaning the filters every couple months and cleaning the computer itself every couple months is about the same thing.

        No, not at all. If you've got a case with integrated filters, cleaning them takes about a minute, if that. I used to just remove the front bezel which just snaps off and on, take out the filters, blow the dust out of the window and I'm done. These days I've removed the filters for an increase in airflow - I'm not too worried about the dust - but it certainly worked fine. In
        • I dunno ... if all we're talking about is a minor dust buildup, a can of Dust-Off or an air compressor with an appropriate nozzle just takes a few seconds. I've I tend to agree with the GP: as someone who has put computers into a wide variety of industrial settings, I have to say that filters can be problematic. I would give them a year's supply of filters when the system was installed and a maintenance schedule, and still I would come back in two years with the complaint that "The system isn't working". Su
          • I agree there. For some reason the server room at work is pretty dust free. It's surprising since we have a drop ceiling which is bad for causing dust usually.

            It's probably the dedicated A/C unit pulling most of the dust out of the air.

  • Balance the fans (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ModernGeek ( 601932 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:08PM (#13681021)
    each and every fan slot taken blowing out

    That is your first problem, you need as many fans sucking in that you have blowing out. You might have three sucking in on the front of the case, and three blowing out. This will mean less load on the fans, less dirt coming in through crevasses since it needs a place to get air, and better cooling

    I think someone else said filters for your fans, and that would be a viable solution as long as you changed them out ever-so-often.
    • another trick is to keep a high pressure inside the case.
    • You can also buy metal grill "filters" for fans that don't need to be changed all the time, but still promote the collection of dust on the outside of the grill, not the inside of the PC. This strategy has worked well with one of my computers. I also would suggest sucking air in/out from different locations of the case. Multiple air pathways (with more going out than coming in) will help keep dust from accumulating in the majority of spots in the case.

  • tips following clean room standards (?) (Score:5, Informative)

    by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:09PM (#13681022)
    you need to keep a positive pressure inside the PC (so blow the fans IN, more than out), and then you can filter the air on the intake and not have dust getting in anywhere else... as for what filter material you use, i don't know, hopefully others can suggest something cheap and easily available in large rolls (i'm thinking of aquarium filter, probably not fine enough though for air). you want some fine mat material that you can replace or blow out every few weeks.
    i've been meaning to solve this problem myself because it cant be good for component life either.
    you have parrots in the same room as the PC?! :)

  • Air conditioner filters (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheCamper ( 827137 ) <SporkMasterSpork@@@gmail...com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:09PM (#13681030) Homepage
    My current frankenstein-box, before I gave in and bought a non-stock cpu cooler, was cooled by a 20" galaxy fan (about $11 from WalMart) bolted onto the side of the case in place of an actual case cover. After a few months, the entire case was a christmas wonderland of gray gunk. I had to take the whole thing apart and peel off sheets of lint that reminded me of cleaning out the lint trap on a dryer. So I bought an air conditioner filter, and duct taped it onto the galaxy fan. Changed it every few months, and not one bit of dust.

    Of course, this still works with normal 80mm fans. Go to Walmart and buy an aircondioner filter, and cut out 80mm diameter circles. Just screw through them with the same screws that hold your fans onto your case. Change whenever they look really bad, or when you notice your temps going up.
    • This is a off topic, but I thought that I'd share. When I was a PC tech, I had a customer come in because his hard drive went bad. It turns out that this customer ran a dry-cleaning business. This machine was the one that he used to do his books etc. When I opened the case, I could not see *any* components at all. It was a solid wall of lint. Thank God that this was around the time that 286's ruled, so there were no fans inside the case, just heatsinks. I was suprized that the power supply didnt catch fire

  • Stockings (Score:5, Insightful)

    by repvik ( 96666 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:10PM (#13681035)
    Yes. Stockings. From the significant other that you wish you had. They make excellent, cheap dust filters.

  • all blowing out? (Score:4, Informative)

    by maroonhat ( 845773 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:13PM (#13681050)
    every fan slot taken blowing out


    BAD IDEA
    Then all the air coming into your case will be sucked from the edges and between hte drive bays, places where dust is likley to collect anyway.
    Its better to run them at a 50/50 (40/60 can work too) mix of in/out fans, and the sugestion about the filters is on the mark as well.
  • 1) Get rid of the pets or do a better job of cleaning (oops, sorry - I forgot we're all geeks, here)

    2) See story just following yours (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09 /29/2224204&tid=222&tid=137 [slashdot.org]). No fans, no dust.
  • Get a full room air purifier. If your pc is getting all that crap building up inside it why would you want that in your lungs. Once the air itself is cleaned the pc won't be so apt to get contaminated.
    • That's a good point. Has anyone had any experience with those Ionic Breeze ones I see 20 times a day on TV? Placing one of those near your computer, and hence you'll benefit from it as well when you're using computer would be a good idea. A clean room will make for a clean computer.

  • What I use... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Kraeloc ( 869412 )
    Open-cell foam is what's commonly used in cases that have filters. It seems to work pretty well. You could also use a metal screen, like those used in windows. That way, it'd be reausable and easier to clean. Of course, dust filtering in my case is near impossible. I've got a Cooler Master Centurion 5 [newegg.com]; the whole damn thing is covered in ventilation holes.

  • 'Blowing out' not good (Score:4, Informative)

    by AdiBean ( 653963 ) <bean AT advanceddecisions DOT com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:30PM (#13681121)
    You said each and every fan slot was blowing out. That is your problem. The air that is going in to the box is coming from whatever cracks, vents, etc there are. Most, if not all, of these will be unfiltered so you are sucking up environmental dust.

    In order to keep dust out of your PC, you need to control the air going *in* to the box. That means having more fans blowing in than out so that the case has a net positive air pressure. This way, air is blowing out of the miscellaneous cracks in the case. Once you do this, you add filters to the fans that are blowing in. No more dust in box.

    The most important thing to remember if you use filters on your fans is to clean them often. Clogged intake fans will heat your case up like crazy.

    I would also note that you need a balance of fans blowing in and out so that you get the best airflow through the case. Don't have them all going the same direction as that will rarely provide the best cooling.
  • Make sure you have more air being forced in that being sucked out. Filter all the intake fans. Reduces dust by over 90% from my personal experience. My monthly cleanings are now annual.
  • Put the water cooler and pump outside.
    Then you can seal the box. The water cooler
    might get dusty, but the PC wont. Which do you
    care more about?
  • As others have said, make sure you've got positive pressure in your case. Turn around some of your fans so they're sucking air in.

    As for filtering the intake, your cheapest bet is to use some used dryer sheets. You know, like Bounce sheets. Tape one over each fan grille and you'll be good to go. They're cheap, you probably have them anyhow, and you don't need any fancy contraption to hold them on.
    • I'll second that. Fuck those "cheap" $1 fan filters. Grab a dryer sheet, fold it in half, slap it on. Change them every three months or so and you're golden. Plus, if you use the scented kind, the whole room smells like fresh laundry! ;)

      Anyways, I use a bounce sheet on my side intake port (bonus: because it has a bolt-on grill, I just punch holes in the sheet with a pen and thread the screws through em) because it was horrible for blowing dust all over my video card. No filters on my front ports yet thou
  • Clean the CPU heatsink when it gets fluffy, or your CPU temp goes up to the point where you feel uncomfortable. Otherwise, don't bother. And unless you have *serious* temperature issues, turn off a few of those fans. Your computer doesn't *have* to double as a wind tunnel, ya know.

    My mythtv box runs at 40 to 60 degrees C for it's CPU and 45-55 degrees for it's drives, 24/7, with no failures yet. As a guide to it's lifetime, it's main drive is over 17000 power on hours.

    A few years back, I used to work for a

    • Re:Don't bother. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Malor ( 3658 )
      The biggest reason to remove dust is because it insulates heat. Chips are designed around the idea of operating exposed to air. Most chips generate some heat, and if they're in a thick blanket of dust, they'll run hotter than they otherwise would. The more recent the equipment, the more pronounced the effect, because newer stuff runs much hotter than older-generation equipment. Heat eventually causes failures.

      That 486-33 in the corner, in other words, might continue to work fine for 20 years in three fe
    • ..Couldn't resist, forgive me.

      I have a photo somewhere of a i386 desktop

      Then that's why! Generally, the only moving parts in a computer are drives and fans, and guess what is more affected by dust. Dusty fans will still spin if they've been kept in use, but they'll lose a lot of efficiency. Heatsinks fill full of dust too, and will cause your cooling abilities to fail - and for a 386, that isn't a huge deal. Most can run with a bare amount of heatsink and fanless, unlike today's genital scorching PC's.

    • "So, if coal (being 70-80% carbon) has little effect, then I fail to see how a bit of dust can."
      Coal is already mostly carbon by your own admission, and has a reasonably high ignitation point, but it also explosive when the atmospheric dust concentration
      Dust on the other hand catches fire a lot easier - I've had a case fire from not cleaning out before, and it's not a pretty sight to see your home fileserver have (but my uptime was 700+ days at the time) - now I clean my boxes a lot more reguarlly, incl. cl

  • Get your case off the floor. (Score:5, Informative)

    by redheaded_stepchild ( 629363 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @08:50PM (#13681228)
    You can really reduce the amount of dust in a case just by getting it up off the floor. Higher is better. Dust tends to settle near the floor, and especially if you have carpet, walking by the desk will kick up small amounts of dust every time.

    60/40 on the in/out for fans (don't waste money & time with slot fans) and you can get cheap filter material from a motherboard box. You know, the spongy stuff inside the box? Cut it into 80mm squares. Works like a champ. Mount between fan & case.
    • I agree with that piece of advice. My box is only about 3" above the carpet on the lower shelf of the desk here, and there's no shortage of dust bunnies _under_ that shelf. But after running continually for over a year, I found very little crud inside when I installed a new drive earlier this week.

      Contrary to what other posters have said, I have more fans blowing out than in. I've got a 3" fan on the side, and one in the back - they're both blowing out. Then the PS has a larger diameter fan blowing in (
    • You can really reduce the amount of dust in a case just by getting it up off the floor. Higher is better. Dust tends to settle near the floor, and especially if you have carpet, walking by the desk will kick up small amounts of dust every time.

      While this seems pretty logical, I'm not entirely sure that it's true. The reason being is that I noticed that items on my desk seem to collect a lot more dust than my tower case. I thought this was a little strange, so I decided a few weeks ago to conduct a littl

      • Hmm. Uh. Hmm.

        Oh! Maybe you have a cat that likes to secretly...lick dust. No, cat's can jump. Ok a really fat cat or perhaps a little wiener dog?
      • There is a very simple explanation for this effect. Your room/office is part of the twilight zone. And besides, everyone knows the gnomes do shoes, not phones. That's the job of the dust bunnies!

        :)

        All kidding aside, my post reflects my personal experiences in my native environments. Your results may vary, especially if you don't ward off the shoe gnomes and dust bunnies with electric fencing. God, let me go home already.
  • A long time ago I did a study of 41 computer case manufacturers. NONE of them made cases that were well-designed in every way.

    Only one of those manufacturers sold cases with built-in fan filters that were removable from the front. If a case doesn't have a fan filter, it is necessary to take it apart perhaps every 6 months to clean the dust. That's far more expensive than just cleaning a filter.

    The computer parts market has been corrupted by the presence of buyers with no education and little maturity.
    • The computer parts market is no different from the rest. Ten years ago when we were proudly flaunting our Compaq dual-486 rigs on Usenet, when you looked outside there were no neon-lit coffee-can-exhaust Hondas with 2000 watts of Walmart bass. The computer industry is being Hondafied just the same.

      The problem is that the dumb kids have more disposable income (since everyone's a dope fiend); or more precisely, the average maturity and wisdom of young adults has fallen sharply, thus the "Bling Bling" phenom
    • I've seen proper case and fan/filter designs on industrial rack-mount PCs. They aren't cheap.
  • Submerge PC in large vat (well large enough for the PC, small vat for micro PC) of non-conductive liquid of choice. I'd choose something pH neutral and otherwise inert that is unlikey to ionise. Perhaps mineral oil.

    Voila, no dust.

    Oh and you can swith off your fans too, you might need a stiring mechanism though (quite low frequency should do).

    Google it, it's out there ...

  • Easy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke ( 850482 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @09:37PM (#13681489)
    Train the parrots to clean the PC.

  • Case mod time... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GrpA ( 691294 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @09:47PM (#13681539)
    Heh, this question is not as difficult as it seems. All off the shelf stuff.

    Sure, you need positive pressure in the case, but think Auto Shop!

    They sell high volume paper/oil air filters. The oil traps the airborne dust particles quite effectively, and they are easy to replace.

    So, just find an old turbo, install a brushless motor from a RC plane and controller with a servo activator PCB (many hobby places sell these) so you can adjust the speed - or even control it straight from the PC.

    Use this as the impellor, with the Turbo attached to the case (mock up the back end, or even use it as the exhaust) and just attach an Auto Pod Filter...

    Don't forget to add "Phulli Sik" stickers to the side of the case, and maybe a few logo's on the front.... AMD, Nvidia, etc. Attached to the drive bay door at a slight angle. (With an Intel sticker cut in half, upside down, on the spoiler .... You gotta have a spoiler).

    Bonus points if the Turbo spools when you use a pedal accelerator on driving games.

    Oh, and wear your cap on backwards at Lan parties.

    Well, it might sound funny, but this would actually work. Of course, you can buy car air filters as flat panels also, and the oil comes in a spray can, but that's just cheating now!.

    GrpA
    • Don't forget to add "Phulli Sik" stickers to the side of the case, and maybe a few logo's on the front.... AMD, Nvidia, etc. Attached to the drive bay door at a slight angle. (With an Intel sticker cut in half, upside down, on the spoiler .... You gotta have a spoiler).
      Totally right on, but you forgot one of the most important case mods that all hardcore geeks know about. The CD drive must be stickered "Type CD-R" for maximum efficiency.

  • Dust free (Score:3, Funny)

    by slashflood ( 697891 ) <flow@NoSPaM.howflow.com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @10:03PM (#13681623) Homepage Journal
    Perfect solution [markusleonhardt.de]!
  • I foudn that if you keep your computer off the floor it cuts down on the amount of dust collected. Dust still collects, but there is better circulation on my shelve than when it's on the floor.

    • Not really.
      I get more dust on my ceiling-fan (mounted to a vaulted ceiling) than anywhere else in the house. Dust is everywhere, the only location moving it will help would be somewhere where humans (source of dust) aren't - like a rarely-used closet. There's no dust on anything in my computer-room closet, and I haven't moved hardly anything in there in 4 years.

  • Be very careful when it comes to Filters... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stvangel ( 638594 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @11:06PM (#13681962)
    I started working on computers back in the 80's when everybody had their own custom case, style, and philosophy. I worked for a well known mom-and-pop computer shop in our city that had a reputation for low prices so I was working on pretty much everything. Many of the higher-end PC's were built with the large-computer mentality of the mainframe / minicomputer era of over-engineering. Besides being overpriced, many included filters over the fan because "real computers" had them. Most of the time the filters were more trouble than they were worth.

    The primary problem was that people were not cleaning the filters. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Putting filters over your fans means that somebody has to regularily check and change them. I've had PC's on shop floors that had the filters so clogged with oil and gunk that the fans they were covering burned out from overload. After I replaced them and explained everything to them I might have to go back 6 months later to do the exact same thing because "they hadn't got around to changing them". I've burned my fingers on parts inside some of those machines, and that was the days before heat sinks in the first place.

    Filters are good as long as you're going to religiously inspect them every month or so and clean or replace them.

    As a passing curiosity, does anybody know exactly how much heat the load resistor on one of the old original 63.5 watt PC's put out when you had it hooked up in place of the 2nd floppy drive? I remember one particular system that was in a dusty factory. Somebody had jury-rigged a filter across the front of the system using window screen and medical gauze. The gauze had gunked up so much the fan in the power supply was basically worthless. A coworker managed to get a second degree burn off the load-resistor and I never could figure out how that managed to happen with something that only had 63.5 watts in the first place.
    • for what it's worth, my soldering iron is 15 watts, and it does an excellent job of burning appendages
  • At least the pc- 30 and pc-60 series have 2 80mm intake fans at the front, covered by a loose filter. This is enough to keep my pc relatively dust free for a few years now, despite myself being a fairly heavy smoker.

    linky [anandtech.com]
    That's the Lian-Li pc-60 plus and has only a 120mm fan in the front. Older pc-60 models also lack the blower at the top.
  • had similar problems so here's a run-down:

    positive pressure: point all rear fans out and all front fans in, or vice-versa if you can duct your PS exhaust away from the intakes. 1, positive pressure means higher air density and greater thermal conductivity of... air. 2, put some light foam mesh filters on the fans and you have less sound and filter dust as long as you clean them.

    do not put them on carpet or hardwood: i recommend a sheet metal base for the cases, which can be dusted often. tends to accumulate

  • Water cooling (Score:3, Informative)

    by _iris ( 92554 ) on Friday September 30, 2005 @08:55AM (#13683572) Homepage
    Moving air brings dust. The obvious solution is to eliminate fans. Perhaps a move to water cooling is in order for you.
  • 1. the dust in your computer is coming from the air in your computer room. the dust in the air of your computer room comes from you, your animals and the outside world. so moving the animals to another room would be a good place to start, and you might want to think about cleaning that room and yourself once in a while (bird owners are always the dirtiest people). and by the way smoking contributes alot to the dust in the air. get your tower off the floor, there is more dust in the air by the floor than the
  • I've found negative ion generators are good for reducing the amount of airborne dust. Obviously not a solution by themselves, but they could substantially increase the time between changing/cleaning filters.

    Disclaimer: I'm not going to insist negative ion generators have any other benefits, but I have seen dust and cigarette smoke drop like a stone with one switched on, and I've serviced equipment run for nearly ten years in a room with one that looked almost pristine inside. And no, it wasn't because the r
    • I have no experience with the ion air cleaners, but had heard they can be bad for the life of rubber components. Anyone have any knowledge if this is true or false?
      • My experience with ion generators comes from use in recording studios with large 24 track two-inch tape machines, which have rubber pinch rollers exposed to the air. After a decade there was no tangible degradation (the playback head had been re-lapped twice in the same period due to wear), though admittedly the rubber formulation may be superior in those machines to the average 5 cent grommet.

        I've never heard anything that suggests an electrically inert material like rubber would be affected by ionized air
  • When I was living with a friend of mine (he's married now and this was about three years or more ago) he had two Ionic Breeze filters. I can personally vouch that these things are totally useless. It was a two bedroom apartment and there was always dust, even with these things running 24/7. We would clean them and sure enough the blades inside were black with filth, but neither of us ever noticed a signifigant reduction in the dust in the apartment. Later after he got married and I got my own place (the on
  • Oh yeah, wanted to add this....I have an Antec case with one fan in front sucking air in and two in back sucking air out (a case fan and the PSU). The case has a grille on the door side and flanges in the front. There is a cool little plastic cage for the front fan to snap into. The back fan is mounted on the case. I am seriously considering replacing my stock Intel heatsink/fan with one of these Zalman products - the CNPS9500 LED or the CNPS7000B-ALCU. The CNPS9500 LED is pretty amazing, for the fan sits h

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