why fluff is evil

[marsey99]

as some of you may know i have been doing the f@h thing on my gpu, well over the past week i have sat and noticed my temps go up abit. now the thing that struck me the most was the fact that the ambients are lowwer so i decided to find out why.

now this is the point i wish i had taken some pics as the ammount of **** that i pulled out of the fins on my gcard shocked me. its an easy job on the stock duak slot blowers as you only need to remove the 3 end screws on the rear of the card and the 4 smaller ones from the front. once of i used a qtip, but a can of air would of been ideal, to remove the offending fluff and dust.

now the results have all but amazed me as its now sat with my core 53c vmem 44c and the gpu pcb 39c with my fan spinning 65% which is a drop of 15c(on the core) for the same fanspeed compared to just 24hours earlier. the knock on effect is mt mobo is reporting being about 4c cooler and the thermal probe i have at the base of my nb heatsink is reporting being 7c cooler too :)

after this i am now thinking about modding a fan of some size to blow over the fins to replace the stock fan as its noisey once it gets upto speed. this i will take pics of tho :D

[alexnifty]

Fluff and dust is my nemesis!

Cleaning the fins of my freezer 7 is annoying, you cant get anything in there to clean properly, last time I resorted to taking it out and washing it under the tap!

Dried it thoroughly afterwards of course!

[marsey99]

i use an old credit card on my freezer pro but i take the fan off first to make it easier.

i am sat here atm thinking what i can pull a fan from to strap to the fins on this to ee if it improves any. i think i have another stock intel fan somwhere but im not sure if it will be too small.

[O.G.C.]

u can buy one of those air sprays for claning inside pc
presured air inside can when realased take away the dust the goods alo have chemicals to make sure it stays that way for some time

[Audigex]

Does your case have filters? If not, they might be a worthwhile investment. Even just over the intake fans (but preferably on the exhaust)

I found some nice PCI-slot filters which look pretty handy... use them to fill in gaps left if you lose facing plates, or just for extra ventilation.

If you have a lot of fans running both intake and exhaust, consider covering up some of the non-fan vants. On my desktop I have an exhaust fan with a filter, but right next to it is a grille. Not only did it let dust in, but I'm sure it was reducing the effectiveness of my cooling (reducing the nice "wind-tunnel" effect of intaking at the frunt and exhausting at the back). One backing plate (bit of metal and a quick solder) later and my temperatures actually dropped by a degree, and the amount of dust in the case has dropped enough to notice.

[alexnifty]

Does your case have filters? If not, they might be a worthwhile investment. Even just over the intake fans (but preferably on the exhaust)

Eh? You mean to filter out the dust that hasn't already been deposited on your hardware?

Surely you want clean air going over your chips, so filter the intakes, who cares about the exhaust?

[Audigex]

Because if you have a fan on the roof, it's not necessarily on 100% of the time. When the fan's off, there's no airflow to push the dust up, so dust can fall down into the case (Ever checked how much dust the top of a case can collect in a few days?)

The same applies to the back to a lesser extent, but enough to be worth a fiver for a set if filters.

[alexnifty]

There's very little dust on the top of my case, the vast majority of it is over the front grills, suggesting that way more dust is coming in the front than is simply landing on it.

[Audigex]

Then at the very least ensure the front have filters... but you may aswell put them on the other fans: what do you have to lose but a few quid and 5 minutes to clean them at the same time as the others.

[alexnifty]

Reduced airflow as resistance builds up.
I would have the front ones covered but my supply of tights to put over them has gone walkabout.

[marsey99]

lol i have filters on my induction fans and none on my exhausts but tbh im thinking about taking them off and just cleaning the insides of the case every month as they must hinder the airflow.

[alexnifty]

Yeah I've taken all my improvised filters off now and dust when it looks like it needs it. I sort of enjoy dusting my pride and joy anyway.