So, have you been wondering lately why your PC has been humming
along under your desk for some time now? maybe it just started, or maybe it's
been a year or two!
Well chances are that if you were to look inside your computer
case, there would be dozens of dust bunnies having a party in there, and while
that's happening, your PC cannot recycle air properly and causes everything to
run HOT!
want to see what that looks like?
Dust particles can vary in size from as large as a few hundred
microns to just a few micrometers, the larger particles tend to fall and stick
to surfaces whilst the smaller ones tend to remain airborne. Dust Particles can
contain everything and anything, in various quantities from skin cells,
liquids, organic materials, minerals, metals and a multitude of chemicals. It
all depends on the environment that surrounds us.
Dust can have many effects inside our computers, for example,
dust can act as an insulator which can add to the heat build up inside your
computer's case. Dust can also clog up some of the computers moving parts such
as the disk drives and even block USB ports and interfaces, but mostly dust
likes to stick to the fans inside the computer and they look like this:
Fan dust is the most noticeable and that's because they are the
ones responsible for bringing all of that dust in!. however fans are
needed, because without them your computer would not be able to recycle air
properly, Below is a picture demonstrating how your computer's fans
recycle ambient air to cool your computer.
As you can see, cool air normally comes through the front and
the top, and exhausts off the back of the machine, If you have your
computer's back against something it is not properly releasing that hot air and
it could get sucked back into the computer causing the temperature inside to
run hotter.
I've seen this play a major role in Laptops that over heat.
If you look underneath your laptop you will notice where your fan is, and
directly on the side of the laptop is where the exhaust is, Over time
that fan underneath your laptop sucks in a lot of dust and therefore blocks the
exhaust. When this happens your laptop runs REALLY hot, and when laptop's
run hot you know it! sometimes they get so hot you can barely touch them!.
Dust also sticks to other internal parts of your computer like
your motherboard, dust will frequently settle on the motherboard and can make
it difficult for removable components to make good electrical contacts.
Depending on humidity and the composition of the dust, it can even short
out the motherboard!. Here's a picture of what dust looks like on a
motherboard:
So, want to see extreme cases where someone doesn't clean inside
their machine? here we go!
and last but certainly not LEAST!
Okay, this last one is a little bit not fair, because this
machine was being "stored" in a basement and not being used.
So now that we know what dust does and what it looks like inside
your machine, lets talk about how to clean it.
First, you're going to need tools, these include:
A can of compressed air.
A screwdriver (if you need to remove screws to open
your machine).
Paper
towels.
Isopropyl
alcohol & Cotton Swabs (for
cleaning in tight spaces).
Below is a video from HPCBDVD on YouTube showing you how to clean your machine using these tools.
So now that you are aware of what dust can do, and how to clean
it, you might want to do this every 5 to 6 months, this will prevent dust from
getting out of control, and mostly help keep your computer running smoothly and
cooler!
Thanks for stopping by and reading this article, if you have any
questions please contact me at William@Techsupportman.com
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