Your Maintence to Prevent Heating - failure

Been having a heated discussion with local computer builder. He feels the current quality of hardware demands a complete "tear down" approach to computer cleaning. This involves pulling cards, separate fans / heat sinks, throughly cleanly the fins along with the normal blowing out with a vacuum. He states without doing this pratice on a 6 to 9 month schedule, you WILL (not maybe) cause the mother board, power supply and or memory chips to "Over - Heat and Burn Out ".... and require replacement.
My question..... in normal household enviroments ...
Kids, cats, dogs, smoke (food and tobacco), occasional get togethers... do systems get that dirty. Is the current quality of components that inferior to agree with his comments.
My comment was... many of my friends don't even know how to clean a mouse and would not dream of taking the cover off of there computer. His remark, not with todays computer quality, they will fry without very timely cleaning.

 

Bless his Obsessive Compulsive heart. Is this guy for hire to clean MY house?!

Does he truly dole out helpful advice such as this?:

Perhaps he meant canned air?

Surely while trying to educate the masses about dust build up, he's not trying to have people stick their vaccuums inside their cases?

Yes, computers do need to be routinely blown out with canned air. More so in harsher environments, where more than average dust and grime is about. But most owners will see that it needs cleaning the first time the case is taken off to replace or upgrade their ram. For the rest of them, I agree, many never do it. I would guess that the ones that are overly "dusty" would experience freezing etc, and the culprit would be easily tacked down.



*edit*
PeteC...we gotta stop meeting like this!

 

Yours of course!
Didn't you read my post? MINE'S dusty!

 

I must confess folks, this thread is the outcome between my local computer builder and myself. My computer is currently in the shop, the MOBO is being replaced. This will be the 3rd MOBO put in computer since purchased new September 2002. This is a time span of 17 months. In addition, CD burner, floppy drive and PS have been replaced. All of this has and will continue to be repaired "free of charge" until August of 2005... warranty repair has never been an issue. I'm pressing the the builder for "reasonable explanation" for this continued failure. As stated in my beginning thread , "tear down cleaning" is his response. When equipment fails within 8 months, there is not a lot of cleaning that could be performed. We live in a clean house, no where near immaculate.. (pipe dream with a house full of kids). Computer is 20 inches off the floor, north wall of house. In Wisconsin, we have cool / cold weather 9 months out of a year. I've worked around computers before PC's (large IBM Iron), kepted (15x) 386 / 486's going in industrial conditions... put together, did not have a failure record of my current computer. My patience wore VERY THIN when I was notified last night.. all the new parts are in, but were having a problem with the HD. The following statement... the drive is good .. but ... it will not boot up. He went to slave it, is not reconized. Now he is running a 8 hour plus "data rescue ". Will know Monday how successful. All the expense problems are "his" , since he does honor his warranty. But now with the drive corrupted due to the excessive heating ... causing MOBO failure (builders take on the problem) ... is now MY problem if a lot of data is lost. All of my critical data is backed up, but the bulky meda data is not... to many GB's when all you have is a CD burner. Your above responses are where my feelings are.. cleaning is required, but it's not a death sentence every 8 months if not performed to the "tear down approach ".

 

Dennis L,

He's looking for excuses! I have ALOT of kids running in and out, and with them comes a lot of dirt, which creates dust. Plus me and the Mrs. smoke. And we live next to a dirt alley, which in the summer produces a lot of dust that finds it's way inside. Vacuum runs at least three times a day, everyday. Ceiling fans have to get 1/4" dust wiped off about every three weeks. We had our computer for a year and a half before the case was even opened. It's been a bit over 3 years now, not 1 physical component failure. (knocks on wood) And this case didn't even have a fan. CPU fan only. I did add one with new hard drive though. I open the case regularly now, at least every couple months, but more just to see whats there than anything.

Offer to let him clean it out every 6 months, free of charge of course, till it's warranty is up. If it keeps him from replacing MOBO's, it will cost him less to do that.

There has to be another cause. I think it would be worth his time and yours to look at using a different brand of MOBO, assuming the replacements have been the same.

 

Yes, I'm with noahdfear on this one. Excuses.
Any idea what brand of motherboard? What computer are we talking about here?

I've had to replace an obscene amount of boards over the past couple of years for clients because of bad capacitors that blew. Many of them not more than 2 years old. At first, I too, thought it was a heat issue, until I started reading about more that had these same problems.

 

Hi all,

I'm amazed! I've been building the boxes for 20+ years, and I've never heard such !@#$%%^&*()! Dennis should take charge and do his own repair. My advice is to buy quality in a retail box (at least the mobo and cpu), put it into a quality case with name brand power supply and sit back, expecting it to behave itself for years.

BTW, I do use a vacuum, but it's a small portable that blows the dust out and I'm VERY CAREFUl. I do it outside (in Minnesota).

mike

 

Sorry all, I just remembered to say that anytime I have seen multiple areas failing I replace the power supply, and that has usually fixed the problem; can't off hand think of a time it hasn't. Doesn't happen a lot, though.
mike

 

I'm not referring to the failures - don't want to play armchair quarterback with that one but I do agree, you NEED to take the cover off at least[B} every six months and blow the whole thing out with compressed air. And take it outside before you do it.

If you don't, your machine is "waiting" to fail. Now I don't break down the box at all. I just get into every spot I can with the compressed air. I have a machine at work that I know is going to die from dust build-up. I think the scenario will be that dust will choke the cpu fan and fail causing the cpu to overheat, etc., etc. - sort of a scenario of cascading failures.

I even think there's a little bit of pride involved too. I've worked on PCs from people who've never blown out their machine - it's kind of the same concept where your mother always told you to put on clean underwear in case you're in an accident.

 

Being a bit of a car nut, I read this as being a "Maintainance thing ".
The same way you change the oil, check all fluid levels, tire pressures, ect....ect...

Newer machines do get hotter than in the old days, so my question would be...

Why not clean it out??

Can't hurt, can only help if done properly of course.

Electrical components do seem to last longer when at temperatures that are good for them!!


Dale

 

Hi.

Some interesting points.

When dust settles on the printed circuit boards and it gets extremely humid around the computer then water can actually settle on the dust on the boards and dump some of the signals between components. Not really a dead short but it will mess up some things. Not common but happens.

When blowing with a vacuum never blow directly on the fan blades unless you have a tooth pick or something slipped in to stop the blades from turning. A blowing vacuum can turn those blades so fast the surfaces inside the blade mounts can fail or run badly.

There is always a cloud of dust from the floor up to about 20 or 30 inches due to normal walking. It's best not to have a computer near the floor. The amount of dust there is hundreds of times more than up higher.

The first maintenance I would do (and check every 6 months or so) is to get q-tips or pipe-cleaners and clean the dust off the blades of all the fans including the power supply fan. That dust makes a lot of noise and inhibits air flow. Most important is that it makes the blades wobble and cause friction on the inside of the fan and causes it to fail much earlier. I use rubbing alcohol to clean them.

As for normal dust in normal temperatures and normal humidity there usually isn't any problems. I have an installation in an auto repair shop and (against strong advice) the computer is sitting near the floor with no filters. There is usually between 1/4 and 1/2 inch of brake dust (contains much metal) sitting on all the boards, etc. This brake dust gets in the printer, monitor, etc. The darn thing just keeps on running. It's been 2 or 3 years and it just keeps on running fine. No way I'm going to try and clean it out. I don't think it can be done.

Giles

 

Don't agree that you have to be "super" clean with them. My system has not been regularly cleaned in the 3 years I've had it. It has not had any any hardware failures. It is sitting on the carpet and I smoke cigarettes and cigars next to it (although when I open someone else's case, I inspect it for dust and clean it out).

The modern narrow heatsink fins tend to collect dust readily.

I would watch out for systems that belong to heavy smokers. I am yet to prove it, but if you are are removing and replacing cards (RAM, PCI, AGP, etc) I'm sure the tarry dust that can get pushed into the slots will effect the machine. Suggest cleaning out these machines (and those that are near a kitchen) before working on them.

Tend to agree with sparrow about the power supply as the likely cause. Might also check temperatures in case it is running hot inside the box and needs more fans.

Matt

 

Computers collect dust and need to be cleaned periodically ... no argument there, but I think that too little attention is paid to heat buildup in the computer case.

I was concerned about overheating in my system so, when I upgraded my AMD Athlon XP 2000+ CPU to a 2400+ a year ago, I also performed a major overhaul of my computer's "cooling system ":

• 1. Replaced the 300W single-fan power supply (which was marginal, at best) with an ultra-quiet, dual-fan 460W PS.
  
  2. Installed a quiet, high-performance CPU heatsink/fan combination designed for the Athlon XP series.
  
  3. Replaced the noisy side-mounted case fan, which blew air into the case, with a quiet, rear-mounted, 80mm exhaust fan.
  
  4. Replaced the five ribbon cables (four IDE, 1 floppy) with round cables.
  
  5. Last, but not least, I cut out a section of the back of my computer desk directly behind the computer bay, so that the exhaust airflow would be unrestricted.

I know there's a lot of controversy about the best way to air-cool a computer (forget about refrigeration or water-cooling), and you'll find lots of ads for front or side mounted case fans. My personal feeling is that "pusher" fans can defeat their intended purpose by disrupting the desired airflow through the case.

I came to that conclusion on my own, but subsequently discovered an AMD white paper on cooling which, in the "Chassis Cooling Guidelines" section states "A front cooling fan is not essential. In some extreme situations, testing has actually shown that these fans can recirculate hot air rather than introducing cool air ".

My system is enclosed in a mid-tower case, running on a GigaByte GA-7DXR+ mainboard, with 1024MB of RAM. I have four 100GB WD HDDs, a floppy drive, a Toshiba CD/DVD drive, and a Plextor DVD±R/RW CD-R/RW drive. My video card is an ATI A-I-W Radeon 8500DV, and every PCI slot is full. A system like this should be in flames, but I've managed to keep keep my mainboard temp at or below 35° C (95° F) and my CPU temp at or below 48° C (118° F), as measured by Aida32. This is approximately 10° - 15° (F) cooler than the system ran before I made the changes.

 

I leave the side off and blow it out with compressed air now and then. I have dog hairs, kids, smokers, and Mobo Monitor which tells me that the proc is at a steady 114 and the case is a comfy 95.

Motherboard Monitor sits in your notification area and allows you to keep an eye on heat issues.

Johanna

 

I wish to thank all of you for sharing your comments. Heating / cleaning / failure is a concern we all share... and must address. Premature failure can be prevented by exceptional measures. Increasing air flow moves the heat out, but also pulls environmental dirt in. Any "simple" solutions to provide filtered intake? Some day will replace my 6 year old unit (failure history is 1 PS) with another "hot running" current type model. It may be a strange question, but are there "clean boxes" in which one could just drop computer(s) into to provide prefiltered, "clean air" ?

UPDATE FROM BUILDER
This pass weekend, two of his "data recovering" programs failed. One just would not work, the other locked up after a fair amount of recovery. Now he is doing recovery via "Linux ", which he says looks quite well. Once done, will "clean install' XP and put the capture data in a folder for me. Any EXE's will be downloaded and reinstalled. Have a massive "Media" list, can only hope MP3's and DVD movies survived the trip.