Take an air compressor to the inside of your computers!
 

I just cleaned mine after a several months and it never ceases to amaze me just how dusty is can get inside of these things. My cooling fan was particurally clogged up and i'm now running 10 degrees C cooler then before :eek:

Or you can install filters so you never have to do this.... ;)

Nah, sounds expensive by comparison to walking out to the garage once every few months ;)

I invested in a nice computer case like 5 years ago, and continue to use it.. It has filters for my intake fans, and they do an excellent job of filtering in the dust.


Here are some add on filters for the fans.


http://www.xoxide.com/lascutfangri.html

Oh yeah, you should clean out your GFX card while your at it too. They do not like to be ran hot. :)

Still have to unclog the filter from time to time ;)

Should have mentioned that my cooling fan is like this one and the fan itself was clear but the dust was covering some of the spines and preventing airflow.

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/357...0aled01b0a.jpg

I have the zalman 9700 in my desktop. i dont have problems with needing to opent he computer and clean the fan.... ;) no downtime, as i open the front flap of my case, and remove the filter.... :)

Filters help, but you still need to clean them out good periodically still.

I usually use a vacuum, it's a pain dragging it out to the garage.

We just had the geeks who maintain and service our mainframe come in and double the memory on our desktops. Needless to say, but given the dusty, warehouse-ish conditions, a significant amount of dust builds up over the course of two years since my case was last opened up. :D

Heck, the de-dusting alone would have probably drastically increased the speed.

Im running on a mac that is older that some of the members here. ;)

Impossible. I doubt you're running the forum on an Apple II. All that thing was good for was Oregon Trail and learning how to type.. ha!

Wow that takes me back......

http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/6267/oregontrail.jpg

You should see the layers of dust that collect in all the computers at my office. A stone yard is about as nasty of a dust environment as they come. Iv'e opened up units & seen literally a 1/2" layer of accumulated crud in the bottom, and the motherboard completely monotone brown/gray.
And, they were still working!

If you smoke near your computer you will find black goo caked onto the components too :)

be careful with your pressure if you use a compressor, better option is the deionized air spray cans from the computer store. Compressed air contains, water and oil and will end up causing the inside to be even more of a dust magnet after you spray it out. Too much pressure can spin fans too high and damage them, definitely if you have a centrifical blower type fan, it wont survive even a moment of high speed air before the blade explodes

Agree, i would avoid the big garage compressor. They make smaller ones for purposes such as these.

I agree, don't get carried away with the air pressure. You also don't want to blow dust into anything, like your optical drives. I prefer to open them and clean Them with gentle air flow.

Of course. I treat it like a pressure washer cleaning a painted surface, you sure don't want to get close.....

Maybe if some of the members are only 8 or 10 years old. My oldest functioning Mac is a G3 running panther, and it is almost completely useless at this point.

antec 300 case and coolmaster v8 hsf. i dont have any filters :eek:

i think ive had it for about a year now i should clean it

Worked at a school last year that had new computers installed back in 1999-2000era GX series, they had not been touch nor moved until we had to overhaul them. our District required them to be stripped of the HDD and the body to be shipped back out to the main Network office for Deinventory. It was not uncommon for us to find the entire case PACKED with dust. It's amazing some of them were still running. the more interesting things we found were several rats nests, Several Dead Rats, and an oddity of a dead Squirrel. btw. Never take a air compressor to a computer unless you have a good air dryer...

Vacuuming them out is better, blasting just makes a mess and then you end up inhaling half of it.

The rest of the black goo will be found during the autopsy of said smoker. :D

I took my phone apart to find lots of dust in there (Nokia 6300). Are MacBooks just as easy to clean?

True, but usually the attachments on the vacuum are too bulky to be used in some tight spaces, so compressed air becomes necessary. Vacuum before and after though.

This is necessary on video game consoles as well! Especially the Xbox360 which is already prone to overheating.

Menards here has a vacuum attachment set that adapts doen to a 1/2 inch hose with attachments sized accordingly. for the 10 or 15 bucks they ask for it nowadays, well worth it for many vacuuming tasks, like detailing the interior !!!

I did that for roughly 80 machines for work once. With a 20mph crosswind in the middle of winter it was like ripping open a bag of flour. Gross, but it worked.

A macbook is extremely difficult to take apart properly. I'm pretty sure they don't even have any fans though, so why would you want to take it apart?

Depends on the MacBook, some are easier than others. At least some of the newer ones do have fans. I've taken a few apart, I wouldn't do it for just a cleaning.

At the BIG oil company we had computers everywhere and they all had air filters installed on them. The clean-up crew would pull the filters and run the vac hose over them while they were cleaning the carpet. This took place five days a week.

The head of our communications dept had the title of Wire Chief. The Wire Chief would hold a small class now and then on the care and feeding of communication equipment, and he pointed out that dust will not really hurt radios or computers. BUT... dust will attract water vapor and that would have a terrible effect on the equipment. The only way to keep the water vapor to a minimum was to keep the dust to a minimum.

This is also a reason not to use unfiltered compressed air. It is easy to attach an air filter with a water knock-out on the outlet of your compressor. Cheap, too. All air has water vapor in it unless you live in the middle of the Gobi, so if you are spraying your computer with untreated air you are also spraying it with small amount of water vapor.

That's why the cans of compressed air are really the best thing to use.

By the way, many of the cans of 'air' are really cans of compressed Ethane, so don't smoke when you use one of these.

All Macbooks have at least 1 fan. My MBP has two fans.

I use an air compressor at work to blow my computers out. Just disconnect it and blow away shaking the nozzle back and forth. A little water won't hurt the board. Slap it back on and say Merry Christmas.

I guess it was my old PowerBook that didn't have a fan, it's been a while.

It must have gotten miserably hot. My Macbook Pro has been doing a good job at keeping me sterile with even with two fans :eek:

I noticed that since I cleaned it out my room has been noticeably cooler today. When I play games however it can actually heat up my entire room.

I've just completed blowing out the innards of about 500+ computers spread around our school district. It was my second summer project. What a PIA. We do this every couple of years. The dust accumulation inside them is mindblowing. I use a portable vacuum with the long gooseneck hose and different sized fittings. I don't vacuum them out of course I reverse the fittings an simply blown them out. It can go surprisingly fast once you get into the rythm of the operation.

- Peter.

It was about the same as my current MBP, too hot to keep on my lap for very long. Those AL cases can get warm.

Computers and cats have some things in common, both like to ingest hairballs. However, computers don't hack them up on the bedroom floor at 3:00 AM.

Even the newest ones? We had a brand new one (Macbook Pro) come through at my work that I had to set up software on for someone. It had 0 vents of any sort anywhere on the case. So a fan would not do much good with no intake or output for the air!

Mine has a fan, I hear it (them?) when it's running quite a lot of programs at the same time and I place the laptop on a foldable surface like the sitting surface of a sofa. On hard solid surfaces I don't hear them.

They're much quieter fans compared to my wife's Acer laptop, or the desktop PC.

You should see the insides of computers in a SOILS LAB!

My mom has a 13" MacBook Pro and i dont think it has any fans.. at least I never hear them. It does have a vent in the back though.

You might be hearing the hard drive.....I am 99% sure the newest ones use the casing as a heatsink, and have no actual fans.

I am 99% sure the 13" MacBook Pro has one....





Well, at least mine did when I took it apart...



The larger models with a discreet video card have dual fans.