Dusting Your Computer - Keeping it Cool

By: Steve Perlow

My mother always told me to dust, but I never did, mostly
because I was lazy, but also because I couldn't find any
tangible benefit to dusting. I just didn't see how I'd benefit
from my room or my things being less dusty. Well now I've gotten
a bit older, and I finally found a reason to dust - a cooler
running computer. I'm going to give some background on my own
system and circumstances first, then run tests before and after
dusting, as well as explain how and what I used to dust. Be sure
to take a look at this article - with pictures and graphs - plus
a whole lot more, at aworldofhelp.com.

I've had the computer in question for a little over two years, a
dual AMD Athlon MP workstation that while no longer the top of
the line, is still plenty fast enough for what I do. The
computer is running at standard speeds and specifications, and
has always been very stable - but not 100%. When the system was
about a year old I had been getting by with the occasional,
roughly once weekly lock up. At that point, I finally spent the
time to try and diagnose the problem.

To be perfectly clear, I'm talking about a lock up, where
everything stops responding, the screen freezes and I have to
reboot, not simply an application crash, which I can usually
just blame on Microsoft. My initial thought was that the
computer was overheating, specifically the CPUs. I was a little
hesitant though because I was running AMD retail processors at
standard specifications with AMD retail heatsinks and fans, and
I figured that should have been a fine setup. But I've had CPUs
overheat before when I was sure that was the problem and this
just felt like it now. I did some research online and it looked
like the AMD cooling solutions were somewhat underwhelming
performers, so I broke down and bought new heatsinks and fans.
These still weren't top of the line, but they reduced my CPU
temperatures immediately by about 20%.

In unscientific testing I'd say my computer was absolutely more
stable after the reduction in temperature. I estimate the weekly
lockup became a monthly or even every other monthly lockup. This
clearly isn't perfect for a system that really should be 99.99%
stable, but it was a big improvement, and I let the problem go
for a while. I will note that as many of you many assume, this
computer is always on, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week.

Anyway now it's another year later and my computer is
increasingly unstable again. I'm not going to go out and get
better heatsinks and fans again, as I'm sure the improvement
would be less than before. My next though was about how dusty
the whole system is. I know I should have dusted it once in the
last two years, but I never got around to it. I'd say I live in
an average environment in terms of dustiness, not especially
better or worse, and I just never thought it would make a very
significant difference in my CPU temperature. As you'll see, I
was completely wrong - which incidentally might make my mother
right.

Almost all users should really consider the results of both
tests, possibly giving more weight to the one which most closely
matches your typical computing. Even if you run predominantly
business applications, you'll almost certainly occasionally do
something that falls under this content creation test, editing
pictures or an occasional home movie, for example. So consider
all the tests, don't just focus on one graph.

Should you dust your computer? Yes, why not, it can't hurt. But
really, there are tangible benefits of cleaning your computer,
even if it seems stable right now.

Computers and electronics in general don't like heat. Dust
blocks fans in your case, which generally cool you CPU, video
card and motherboard components. Dust also blocks fans and their
airflow into and out of your case. Cool air needs to be brought
into a case, and then the host air dispelled. If the airways are
blocked, system temperature can rise quickly. If your computer
is stable but the CPU is running too hot, you cut down on its
lifespan, potentially quickly.

More important to many people though, may be the result of that
first heat related computer lock up. Even if it's never been a
problem before, if your computer crashes at the wrong time it
can be catastrophic. Usually mine just locks up when I'm away
from it, or overnight, and I just turn it back on and restart
Firefox and haven't lost anything important. But last week it
locked up with unsaved graphs for my last article and Excel
chose no to auto save. I spent the hour it took to redo them
considering ways to eliminate these lock ups.

Of course, reducing heat is also always a priority for people
who overclock their CPU. For those that don't know, overclocking
is running a CPU at a higher frequency than it was sold to run
at. For example, you could take your Intel Pentium 4 that is
running at a "clock" rate of 2 GHz, and try to run it at 2.1
GHz, 2.5 GHz, faster speeds, or anywhere in between. I have an
old dual CPU system that was supposed to run at 366 MHz. Instead
I ran the chips at 500 MHz each, which was a huge performance
gain. Overclocking is actually a great way to get more "free"
performance out of a system, as long as you can maintain
stability. Usually the single biggest factor for success is
reducing heat as much as possible.

Another thing to note is that while it is very important to keep
CPU heat to a minimum, hard drives, video cards, and other
components all need to be kept cool as well. In fact, I don't
really know for sure that my CPUs are the current problem. I
think they are, but my next guess (if I'm correct that it's a
heat problem) would be my video card, since I've checked, and it
runs really hot.

Consider this as well, if my CPU were to actually stop working
because it was too hot, it would probably be a gradual process,
and I could fix the situation by purchasing a replacement. If my
hard drive crashes and ultimately loses data, that could be a
much more problematic situation. I could replace the drive, but
recovering the data could be far more difficult than just
replacing a CPU.

I opened up the system and saw more dust than computer. All the
fans were covered in dust, and their airflow was totally
blocked. I put the case back on and took temperature readings of
my computer both idle and when working. The tests are all run
are on the following system:

CPU - Dual AMD Athlon MP 2000+ (1.67 GHz) Motherboard - AMD K7-D
RAM - 1024 MB RAM (2 x 512 MB registered DDR 2100) Video Card -
Matrox Parhelia AGP 128 MB HD - Segate 5400 rpm- st320410a
Windows XP SP2

I picked that unexciting hard drive because it was the only one
I had that reports temperature.

For the idle readings the computer was freshly booted into
Windows. To get the computer running at full load I ran two
instances of Prime95, a math application that will max out a CPU
(2 copies running, one each for 2 CPUs), and copied 2 GB of
Music on the hard drive to another folder on the same drive. The
entire process took about half an hour.

Without anything to compare them to, those numbers for the most
part aren't terribly interesting. My only reaction was that 63
degrees Celsius seems pretty hot, and the idle CPU temperatures
aren't too wonderful either. Remember, each CPU type has a
different recommended temperature range. 63 degrees may be too
hot for mine, but could be either acceptable, or perhaps way too
hot for your own. Regardless, you hopefully will notice a
relative reduction in temperature after dusting.

Dusting the computer

As I said, I've never dusted a computer before, but I came up
with what ended up being a reasonable plan. I bought compressed
air and a small brush from staples for $7 total and used a rag I
have here. I made sure to unplug my computer, grounded myself to
discharge static electricity by touching something metal other
than my computer, opened up the case and was ready to go.

As long as you make sure your computer is unplugged, don't get
anything wet, and are gentle while you have it opened, you
really shouldn't damage anything. For the most part, the inside
of your computer is delicate, but it isn't brittle. The most
notable exception is your CPU. If you were to disconnect it and
pull it out of the motherboard you would expose pins on the
bottom that are in fact extremely delicate.

You could do a really thorough job by taking everything apart
and getting all the dust out, but I didn't want to spend that
much time doing it and I figured if I left everything connected
their was less chance I'd mess something up. So I used the air,
brush and rag and got the dust off the computer, taking the most
time to clean the fans and the holes they blow out of.

I ran the same tests again, and the results were dramatic.

Idle, CPU 1 saw an 18% reduction in temperature, while CPU 2 is
10% cooler. That's very important, as all those hours my
computer is sitting doing very little it's going to be
considerably cooler.

At full load, CPU 1 is 21% cooler and CPU 2 is 12% cooler. These
are again very impressive results, and very important as well. I
have had lock ups when video encoding and doing other CPU
intensive tasks, and now the chips should be running cooler
while doing those.

It's interesting that originally CPU 1 was hotter than CPU 2,
and after the cleaning they switched. An important fact is that
the temperature reporting on this type of dual AMD Athlon system
is generally uneven. That said, CPU 1 was easier to dust around
because the DVD drives were in the way of CPU 2, so I probably
did a better job cleaning the former and there is still likely
room for improvement in cooling the latter.

One other note, I kept track of the fan speeds before and after
cleaning, and I saw about a 2% increase in the CPU fan speeds
after I dusted. I wasn't expecting this at all, and certainly
can't be certain that this will always result from dusting, but
it could be very interesting for overclockers trying to eak out
every last bit of fan performance.

The hard drive temperature saw a 9% improvement while idle after
dusting, and again a 9% improvement at full load. It's a nice
temperature reduction for a mechanical component that will be
grinding away for thousands of hours over the life of your
computer.

The case temperature stayed the same throughout all the tests.

Conclusion

All in all I was surprised the results were so dramatic. I
expected few degrees for the CPUs and maybe one for the hard
drive, but to see a 20% reduction in temperature is just great.
There is defiantly room for improvement as well. The CPU fans
have covers that I could have taken off and gotten more dust
out, and as I mentioned reaching one of the CPUs was harder than
the other. Further, I'd say I got most of the dust inside my
computer, well over 90%, but I still saw some that proved more
challenging to clean that I was willing to bother with. Taking
all the cards out and thoroughly cleaning the whole system would
have no doubt led to even better results.

My system has maintained the cooler temperatures so far, a week
after the cleaning, and I haven't had a lock up since. I can't
be certain I've solved the lock up problem, but it does appear I
have for now. At the very least, I can be sure CPU heat is not
the problem, as now they are running at very acceptable
temperatures. Your own results will vary, and may not be as
dramatic if your computer wasn't as dusty as mine. Regardless,
you should see some reduction in component temperature after
cleaning your system.

All in all I recommend you take a look around and inside your
computer to see how it looks. If it's dusty, $7 and an hour of
your time seems like a good investment to increase the life of
your computer and prevent system lock ups. I suspect many people
suffer the occasional heat caused lock up, it just isn't obvious
what the problem is, and they don't occur often enough to be a
serious concern. But remember, even if you only have one heat
caused lock up in the entire life of your computer, it could
come at the worst time, or cause permanent damage.

About the author:
Steve Perlow is the founder of aworldofhelp.com, where you
can find the aworldofhelp Top Picks in desktop and notebook
systems. Visit aworldofhelp.com to get answers from real people
to your questions about technology, travel and more.