Dust bunnies vs electronics

[Leo Nguyen]

As Dick pointed out, dust is one of the worst enemy to larger electronics, beside water/moisture. A slight static discharge from our hands, from a connected circuit path, or a capacitor that has a bit of charge to release, and *ZAP*! Hello more money down the drain:

If you're frugal like me, investing in a used toothbrush is a great tool to have. If you want to be electronics friendly, a small brush using horse hair. Yep. You got that right.

Look at Dick's component (not picking on you Dick, but you have a great photo):

** WARNING ** unplug the power cord and ground your hands on the frame of the PC before touching the internal components. Do yourself a favor and ground your hands every time you lift it away from the components, or move around to grab other things around the PC.

You may be able to suck the dust all around the fan, and the larger exposed component, but there's a problem. See that layer of dust bunnies below the fan? it's blocking the radiator. That radiator is the cooling system of your computer's brain, the CPU. Rather than removing the radiator, then clean up the CPU's and radiator's surface, and add thermal grease to establish heat transfer once again, you can simply take a small screw driver, remove just the fan, use the toothbrush to clean the fan's frame and the blades, and gently suck and scrub down the radiator to dislodge and remove the dust bunny.

Without the dust being remove, the radiator will not remove and dissipate the heat from the CPU effectively. It will cause your brain to go into an early grave. Same thing for your hard drives, memory sticks, etc., etc.. Do your best to remove as much of the dust bunnies as you can, EVERY 4 to 6 months. Not every 4 to 6 years.

[dick tabbert]

Leo your not picking on me that's why I put it out there for all to see. So people wouldn't let there computer get this bad. Fortunately I was lucky on this one we caught it in time before any damage occurred my other computer wasn't so lucky. The fan on the power supply was so full of dust is it quit cooling then on evening it went up in a pile of smoke. So I did learn a lesson I always kept the fans on the outside cleaned not knowing it was building up on the inside but I do know. Again I want to thank our computer guru for all his help and quality advice.