I hate cleaning my PC. I always seem to have some issue or other afterwards. I gave the matter some thought and as my solution has worked for me I thought I would share it.
As I have an MSI mobo I use PCAlert to report the system stats, like CPU temp and fan speeds etc. That way as they rise I know its time for a clean.
The problem is - how to stop the dirt getting in in the first place. Now my case has no filters. Then I had a brain wave. Like many men I get given boxed hankerchief sets most christmases that I have no use for. I'll use them I thought. So I cut one up and using tape around the edges to fix the pieces, covered every slot/hole/opening I could where air could get in. That includes covering around the drive bays.
The idea being, that the air could get in, but not the dust and fluff. I did not cover exit fans obviously.
Well it worked. The CPU temp went up about 1 deg C as airflow was slightly reduced. But as it continued to climb day by day, after a few weeks when the CPU hit 50C I simply vacuumed off the accumulated dirt from my home made filters. I just powered off, vacuumed the dirt off the 'filters', powered up. CPU was back to 38C. I repeated this when needed.
This week I decided to check inside. There was a very small patina of fine dust that I blew off easily with canned air. This was some 6 months after fitting the home made filters.
Now to the strange issue I had this time.
When I powered up, No hard drives found! Panic Panic. I pushed all the connections to check I hadn't disturbed them. No joy. Finally I noticed I had somehow half removed my LAN RJ45 connector. I pushed that home and powered up again. The drives were there and system re-booted. Big sigh of relief I can tell you. Then I found I had no LAN. It was stuck on aquiring an address. I disabled and re-enabled the device. I tried setting the IP address manually. I pulled and re-connected the RJ45. Finally, and in retrospect what should really have been my first action, I power cycled my switch. Problem solved.
All I can assume is that as the RJ45 was half in it crashed my switch and somehow was generating some sort of constant interrupt that caused the BIOS not to see any hard drives.
Moral of that tale - check all connections after moving your PC (even my the small amount I need to move mine to clean my 'filters')
As I have an MSI mobo I use PCAlert to report the system stats, like CPU temp and fan speeds etc. That way as they rise I know its time for a clean.
The problem is - how to stop the dirt getting in in the first place. Now my case has no filters. Then I had a brain wave. Like many men I get given boxed hankerchief sets most christmases that I have no use for. I'll use them I thought. So I cut one up and using tape around the edges to fix the pieces, covered every slot/hole/opening I could where air could get in. That includes covering around the drive bays.
The idea being, that the air could get in, but not the dust and fluff. I did not cover exit fans obviously.
Well it worked. The CPU temp went up about 1 deg C as airflow was slightly reduced. But as it continued to climb day by day, after a few weeks when the CPU hit 50C I simply vacuumed off the accumulated dirt from my home made filters. I just powered off, vacuumed the dirt off the 'filters', powered up. CPU was back to 38C. I repeated this when needed.
This week I decided to check inside. There was a very small patina of fine dust that I blew off easily with canned air. This was some 6 months after fitting the home made filters.
Now to the strange issue I had this time.
When I powered up, No hard drives found! Panic Panic. I pushed all the connections to check I hadn't disturbed them. No joy. Finally I noticed I had somehow half removed my LAN RJ45 connector. I pushed that home and powered up again. The drives were there and system re-booted. Big sigh of relief I can tell you. Then I found I had no LAN. It was stuck on aquiring an address. I disabled and re-enabled the device. I tried setting the IP address manually. I pulled and re-connected the RJ45. Finally, and in retrospect what should really have been my first action, I power cycled my switch. Problem solved.
All I can assume is that as the RJ45 was half in it crashed my switch and somehow was generating some sort of constant interrupt that caused the BIOS not to see any hard drives.
Moral of that tale - check all connections after moving your PC (even my the small amount I need to move mine to clean my 'filters')