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[crowebird]

So I finally got fed up with my idle temps on my i7 being a little higher than I expected... pulled out the case.  Man o man was it dust city, lol.

After removing the fan and cleaning it out and re-installing, I booted on up only to see temps soar to 100C :X Panic mode to realize I didn't seat the heat sink properly.  Problem fixed and I am seeing about 7C drop in idle... amazing what a little dust will do.

Probably time to get some new thermal paste too and even a better heatsink fan and start some long over do OC :D

TL;DR - never a bad idea to clean out the PC, it can do some wonders.

[City Builder]

Yup it's that time again.  Since buying my last PC box, it's got a huge dish sized fan on the side door that just sucks in all the dust, and has no filter so it blows it all over 'everything' inside the case.  I have to get out the air compressor from the garage to blow it all clean as those 'air in a bottle' stuff takes too many bottles and is too expensive at something like $7 to $10 a bottle.

I'm likely to find a new heatsink and fan for my AMD 965 the next time that I clean out the case as I'd really like to see it run cooler than it currently does, even though it doesn't run all that hot, I know with a more efficient fan and heatsink it will run much cooler than it does when the CPU is fully ramped up.

[wizaerd]

I don't know how accurate this is, I'm a software developer and absolutely despise messing with hardware, but my IT guys here at work told me using compressed air to clean out all the dust bunnies within a PC chasis was one of the worst things to do... Of course, they couldn't offer any other alternatives, but there it is... just sayin.

[crowebird]

Not sure... I guess in general you should not use any compressed air as it can lead to other problems.
With an air compressor I would think the main concern would come down to using it on too high of a setting.  Obviously you should not be cranking out air with a ton of PSI, probably trying to keep that to as low as possible.

[City Builder]

In general the only area that I concern myself with is the fans.  I hold on to them so that they don't overspin with the air compressors blast of air.  But other than that, it's either going to be the vacumn and trying to suck the dust out, or blow it out with some form of compressed air.

I really don't see any other choices on how one would get all the dust out of the nooks and crannies in a PC case.

[MaxKos]

  Just a thought as we are entering Summer (In Britain we call any day without rain Summer) and temps in the USA are rising.

The other day I opened the side of of one of my computers and it was as clean as the day it was assembled, I was amazed, not a dust bunny in sight. Years ago after doing quite a lot of research I plumped for CoolerMaster cases, aesthetically clean design and well thought out features with toolless clips and they don't rip your hands to shreds when fiddling about inside. The thing I liked was the air flow and the dust filters they really keep things cool and I stand them on white boards so they don't suck up grunge from the carpets, and being cool the fans don't need to speed up so keeping the noise down. I've found the Dominator Mk11 and Storm Sniper suit my purposes, they're big but not enormous, they've got room to spare and will easily accommodate the largest graphic cards. I'm not on commission - Honest!

I've found that for CPU HSF that Arctic Cooler 7 and Akasa make efficient,quiet, budget coolers and the Titan Fenrir at twice the price is well worth it.

Keep Cool

Regards Mac