🚀 go-pugleaf

Garry Wiegand schrieb in Nachricht ...

>Does dust inside a computer make any earthly difference?**


Yes.

>Has there ever been a computer which died of dust?


Yes.

That was the short answer.
The long one is that dust is deadly -- for all sorts of electric
equipment -- for two reasons:

First (and that is the most important as far as computers are concerned),
dust in larger amounts (i.e., in the traditional bunnies) will eventually
clog up what little ventilation there is, causing the already high
temperature in the machine to rise further. This may -- and will in the long
run -- cause somponents to die from overheating. This is especially true for
the average off-the-shelf PC with its rather primitive airflow design (if
any at all) and its tiny standard ventilators (usually pretty small ones in
the power supply, and that's it).
This is no reason to panic -- a thorough cleaning is required every six
months or so unless you live right in the middle of the desert. Get rid of
your dust bunnies by vacuuming the machine out *without* touching any
machine parts with the vacuum hose. It is good practice to *blow* out dust
with compressed air, since the vacuum method may cause static electricity to
rise beyond the frying point.... which brings us to

Second: What is "dust"? What we consider to be a nuisance isn't exactly a
uniform matter in itself. It can contain small particles of all sorts, and
quite a few of them may be electrically conductive. If a grime layer guilds
up inside the computer, it is likely to eventually bridge contacts -- and
there we go. Bzzzzz, fry, and the well-known smell of burnt equipment will
warn you just one second too late... Furthermore, any conductive particles
(metal dust, carbon dust an dthe like) will create pretty strong electrical
fields if in motion  (e.g., whirled around by the fans inside your machine),
which can again result in static discharges, and no electronic qeuipment
likes that, either.

However, we're talking real *dust* here, not what falls on the cmputer
during a night off -- the problem isn't avoided by dust covers over the
equipment when it's off (htis is merely for the cosmetic side of the
matter...), but dust in operation, sucked in through every gap and crack in
the casing. And you wouldn't believe what size of dust bunnies you can get
out of floppy drives in machines that haven't been cleaned for a year or
so...

That said I have to repeat what I said above -- don't panic!
Avoid build-ups of dust by cleaning the machine every six months or so, and
that will do. No need to give it the weekly rinse... but then some people do
wash their cars every friday afternoon, whether it has been moved or not...

Helmut