Fig. 1 - Dust accumulated behind the front bezel.

While there have been tons of media reports out there on the dangers of viruses, worms, spyware, 'hackers', identity theives, phishing, trojan horse programs, etc... Nobody bothers to mention the single largest threat to your PC's health and speed.... Dust.

Why dust?  

Fig. 2: Dust Caking the CPU Heatsink

Herein lies the problem...  Just like a car radiator can become clogged with bugs, your computer can become clogged by dust, hair and pet dander.  On older PCs this usually caused systems to lock-up and shut down randomly to prevent damage to their CPU's and other components.

Somewhere along the line, CPU makers finally realized that this was giving their products a bad name, not to mention too many processors were getting fried, so they created a technology that gave the CPU the luxury of slowing itself down (sometimes drastically) until it is running at a temperature that is safe and would prevent damage and data loss.  Unfortunately, most of the other equipment in your computer doesn't have the ability to do this.    This leads to not only a noisy computer, as the system discovers it is running hot and cranks the fans into high gear to compensate, but also to early fan, video card, hard drive, CD-ROM drive, and even motherboard failure (capacitors on the motherboard are known to blow if the system gets too hot.)

Fig. 3: Photo of the rear air intake that cools the expansion cards

The five pictures here illustrate exactly how bad the problem can get.  This 3.0 GHz Dell® computer with an Intel® "Prescott" model processor has just 6 months of dust build-up. It was slowing itself down to 1/3 of its normal speed and the CPU fan was running constantly at high speed. (The racket it made can only be described as a freight train running through your office until Dell replaced the fan with a design that made a fraction of the noise.

• Fig. 1:  The front air intakes are almost fully clogged, just enough air was getting in to keep the hard drives cool.
  
  
• Fig. 2:  The processor heat sink is completely caked in dust.  No air was able to get through, causing the processor to enter a lower performance mode to reduce the heat it was producing and causing the temperature management firmware to kick the fan into high gear constantly.

Fig. 4a. Power Supply Fan Outlet

• Fig 3:  The Rear intake is clogged, causing the expansion cards to overheat


• Fig. 4:  Both the power supply and rear CPU fans are caked with dust. (Figures  4a, & 4b, respectively.)

Fig. 4b: Rear CPU Fan Grill

Okay, Dust is bad.... What should I do?

Since most of the items included in a PM (Preventive Maintenance) call are basic housekeeping chores that should be done every month anyway, we'll stick to the guidelines for cleaning the internal system components and air intakes:

• If you have a pet that sheds, the computer is in a room with carpet, you smoke around the computer, the environment is dusty, or you frequently have your doors and/or windows open, you should clean the internal components every month.  Otherwise the system can be cleaned every other month or even once per quarter.


• NEVER - Vacuum your computer on the inside... there is too much static generated by the moving air, and the high suction is likely to pull parts off the computer.  A "Data Vac®" or "Dust Buster®" low-speed battery powered vacuum may be used, but can still generate amounts of static electricity strong enough to present a danger to your processor or RAM.  (Riccar makes a canister vacuum which has a vented computer vacuum attachment that allows most of the suction to come from somewhere away from the computer and only expose the components to a much slower moving airstream.)

• You should also never use an air compressor.  This air is discharged at a rate far too high for a computer and will damage the internal components.  It is also often high in static.  Of course, there are pressure regulator/humidifiers you can purchase that will allow you to perform this task, but the cost is prohibitive.  For the same amount of money you could buy a dozen cases of dust-off spray.


• Compressed Inert Gas (Computer Dust-off Spray) available at most stores these days with computer supplies works nicely.