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Heatsinks and Dust

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walkitiki

walkitiki

Member
​
Joined
May 16, 2003
Location
Blacksburg, VA
My heatsink has in a few weeks gathered small particles of dust on the fins. I think a dustridden HSF and Fan killed my old processor (80°C+), I was wondering what's the best way to get rid of this accumulation of dust?
 
Keeping your computer off the floor also helps alot. The front intake fans are usually at the bottom and will pull in dust from the floor.
 
you can also clean your case regularly, and make sure the room it is in gets cleaned often too :)
 
Ravsitar said:
Keeping your computer off the floor also helps alot. The front intake fans are usually at the bottom and will pull in dust from the floor.
Click to expand...
How true! That can save a ton of dust. At work the worst computers I open are the ones they sat on the floor, the dust bunnies are huge! Scary thing is I work in a hospital :eek:
I have a big Lian Li pc75 that sits on the floor and the entire lower front will get covered in dog hair from the front fans. I have to clean the face plate then the filters.
 
80° +. yeah . I 'd say that's a bit hot. You have stock set up?. What else as far as specs do you have and what is your currents set up that makes it that hot.

I good can of air once a month works wonders. Blow out everthing and I mean everthing, heatsinks, fans, flat spots, everthing. Filters on the intakes is a very good idea as well. There's tons of things that you can use for them too. You can go out to the store and get some or make your own out of stockings, dryer sheets that have bin an through the dryer alot, a loose fabric, and so on.

80° is extremmly hot and you need to bring that down an aful lot.
 
I have a wooden floor and I can see the dust, every 2 months I open the case and vac the dust filters on my Lian-Li PC60 and use compressed air to blow any dust out from between cards and memory.

Only tonight I tool my CPU heatsink off as I could notice a buildup of stiky black dust. I soaked the heatsink (took the fan off) in boiling hot soapy water and dreid it with a hair dryer.

By cleaning the heatsink my temps have gone down 10c.
 
Camacho111 said:
Pipe cleaners work real well.
Click to expand...

That's a great idea! :clap: I never would have thought of that. Using pipe cleaners to clean something. Have a vaccume running and use a pipe cleaner to sweep the buildup off the heatsink.
 
Ravsitar said:
That's a great idea! :clap: I never would have thought of that. Using pipe cleaners to clean something. Have a vaccume running and use a pipe cleaner to sweep the buildup off the heatsink.
Click to expand...


Compressed Air can.
Why poke wire-framed fuzzy things around your CPU and heatsink? Go touchless.
IMHO
 
I recently removed my CPU heatsink to do some lapping. While I had it off I used Castrol Super Clean to clean the fins. I did NOT let the base where the CPU makes contact get in the cleaner though. I just put it in a bowl upside down. After a minute or two the dust and stuff just fell off.

If I don't want to remove the heatsink, I use compressed air, from a big air compressor, and the attachment for inflating basketballs. It works very well.

Later

:D :D :D :D
 
Super clean WILL desolve aluminium if you let it sit long enough. Be carefull and rinse it good.
 
I clean my case once a week. 20 minutes, once a week is a worth while investment.

At that interval compressed air is all you need the numerous HS's and memory cleaning.

And of course, vacuum the bottom and clean intake filters.
 
Camacho111 said:
Super clean WILL desolve aluminium if you let it sit long enough. Be carefull and rinse it good.
Click to expand...


VERY true. If you have a aluminum heat sink, I would not recommend doing that. Mine is solid copper is why I did that. Even then, I did not get the cleaner on the part the CPU comes in contact with, just to make sure.

Why doesn't the smilies thing work? I click 'More" and nothing happens. It also, according to the little spinning thing, never completes the page load. My modem shows no data. What the heck is going on?

Later

:D :D :D
I hope manual entry works.
 
Lan_Of_Malkier said:
I clean my case once a week. 20 minutes, once a week is a worth while investment.

At that interval compressed air is all you need the numerous HS's and memory cleaning.

And of course, vacuum the bottom and clean intake filters.
Click to expand...

Holy cow!!! If it takes you 20min every time you clean your computer, and you do it every week, then you must live in one dirty house ;)
 
These are all great comments, thanks guys! I think I'll just buy some canned air and clean it out bi-weekly or so, seems the easiest. I recently removed 2 fans that were pulling air into the case from the floor, so that should reduce the amount of dust, however there is still one intake on the side of the case left. The inside of the case temp right now is about 34°C, not too bad I suppose. Thanks again for the help. BTW I have an ALX-800 heatsink (*aluminum*) and I'm reading 27°C on the CPU (but its probaly more like 37°C) so all seems okay on the heating side, I have no idea what caused the other CPU to overheat other than just the dust. Thanks again.

-tiki
 
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