Cleaning a smoke damaged Antec 900 PC

[Ally79]

Had a cleaning job on a PC which is about 3 years old, cigarette smoke and dust had not yet caused any hardware damage or severe overheating but only a matter of time would have seen problems. I'm a 20 a day smoker and even the sight and smell of this machine was enough to make me want to barf!

Pics taken on phone camera but you get the idea...

 

[snowdog]

I've seen far worse without the pc having any problems.

 

[mrfun1981]

That's gross, glad my OH dont smoke near my PC.

 

[bash247]

If you think the smoke has done that much damage to your computer image your own organs :O

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

It is normally the result of a customer ringing in with a new incident complaining that his computer shuts off spontaneously. We go out to see the customer or return the machine back to base, to find that it is the result of either smoking, or having the base unit on a dusty carpet. When we look inside the PC, we find that most of the dust is gathered inside the CPU heatsink. This causes CPU overheating and thus sends a signal to shut off the PC. Take the CPU heatsink off, give it a good vacuum, use a static-free Dust Buster™-style vacuum cleaner on the motherboard, then reassemble the CPU heatsink.

 

[valerian]

I've seen far worse without the pc having any problems.

i have to second this im afraid, colonies of spiders etc in some of em

 

[Venares]

Indeed, I have seen WAY worse than that over the years.
Good can of air should shift most of that, however the lovely yellow sheen will be harder to get rid of

 

[Ally79]

I've seen some worse cases looking about online too. I don't smoke in the house at all and my Antec 1200 hoovers dust like mad but the good thing it has the removable dust filters as standard. Any of you folks got any nasty pics post them up, i recon there is some really bad ones out there!

 

[twist3d0n3]

snip

Any of you folks got any nasty pics post them up, i recon there is some really bad ones out there!

erm....

 

[Troezar]

I won't ever worry about a bit of dust in my case again, that's pretty grim. Wonder what the rest of the house was like!

 

[Monkeynut]

Looks like a Hiper Type-R PSU In there?!?!?

 

[subbytna]

rancid pics

saying that check out my "not cleaned out for 12 months" pics....

 

[jazzy182]

That one is not so bad . Had to deal with friend of the familys PC, and smokes. The smell of stale smoke has put me right off from my social smoking. Its nearly identical of Ally's just not as bad but the stench!

 

[snowdog]

rancid pics

saying that check out my "not cleaned out for 12 months" pics....

My pc looks worse than that after 2 months of not cleaning if I leave the case sides off, and about 7-8 months with the sides and dust filters on.

 

[asim18]

I got about £30 to clean this up and reinstall windows for my mum's friend.

Before:

After (I could have done a better job but meh ):

 

[smilertoo]

I have filters on all my intake fans and dust still gets in, they just mean you get a much finer quality of dust.

 

[arc@css]

Omg @ #15. I think that's the most dusty rig I have ever seen.

 

[Devrij]

This inspired me to clean my rig out, which despite dust filters was getting a bit fluffy. Took 5C off my gpu max temp in furmark

 

[Ordokai]

As far as I know the -only- problem dust can cause is extra heat. Arcing on the board is almost impossible and dust cant really stop a fan barring some pretty arcane circumstances. Bottom line, unless the excessive heat killed something, it will work after a clean up.

Also, I'm not sure that cigarette smoke does the whole clot-up-in-dust-chunks bit, I'm guessing its just conventional dust. Of course, eager to stand corrected.


- Ordokai

 

[Essexraptor]

Glad I take the time to take my rigs outside and give them a good blow out every month. Only takes a few minutes and just cleaning the fan filters on my Antec 1200 seems to improve airflow judging by the system fan speeds!