You Can Pay Me Now, Or You Can Pay Me Later

How-To adapt an Fram air filter to computer use – Brian Anderson

Dust! I hate it!

Have you seen how much dust accumulates in your PC?

I live off a dirt road in the country and dust is really bad; even in the house. As you can see from this picture, taken after I blew away dust in my PC.

This can’t be good for my machine. On the other hand, cleaning it out is a pain, too.

I had read at Overclockers.com that it is a good idea to have positive air pressure in your PC case because it prevents
dust build-up in all the cracks where air is pulled through with fans.

So, I took the fans from inside my case and mounted them on the side blowing in. I mounted two fans in the side of my case; one
blowing right on my cpu and memory sticks, with the other blowing right across my GeForce3 ti200 video card.

For cooling, this worked like a champ! My CPU ran 3 degrees Celsius cooler, so I used a hand-held thermometer to test case temperature, and as you can see, the case temperature is only 1/2 degree above room
temperature.

That dust was determined, though. . . . {mospagebreak}

Brian Anderson

I thought about it and came up with an idea. Why not filter the air that goes into my PC first?

With what? Hmmm, where else do I need an air filter?

Hey, if it’s good enough for my truck, why not my PC?

I found an old chrome air breather, cleaned it up, and got a new filter from Fram.

I needed a lot of air, but the chrome breather has a hole right in the middle of it. That ruled out one big fan, so I used four small
ones instead.

I already had the two fans I mentioned earlier, and one inside my case, blowing out the front.

I took the
front fan out and got a new 3.5″ fan, which gave me three 3″ fans and one 3.5″ fan. This left enough room to drill a hole
for the bolt that holds the breather cover. I don’t think this is sucking out too much more from my 350W.

Here’s how I got it that way:

I already had two fans in the side of my case. I used a marker to
mark the inside radius of each additional fan. Then I drilled a starter hole and started cutting with a trusty old
jigsaw with a fine metal cutting blade.

Not too bad! I moved the old ones to the outside and mounted the new ones.

Next, fitting the filter. . . .

Brian Anderson

I began fitting the filter.

I drilled a hole for the mounting bolt, which was too short, so a little welding was needed.

I wired it all up, using the wiring harness from an old CPU fan.

I tested the air flow and it was great. As you can see from the match, it is moving a lot of air.

Well, now it’s time to cleen the desk 🙂

I hope everybody gets a little enjoyment, or even a silly idea, out of my
clean air rig.

Brian Anderson