Dust problems? Theorectical.

[Unseul]

So I've just watched a tech yes city video where he tests a basic setup, in a cheap case without fans (or maybe one extractor). Now obviously you're normally not going to setup like this, but it got me thinking.

The coolest setup, and easily the best in terms of temperatures around the case, rather than the GPU/CPU was without the side panel, and a desk fan blowing straight into the case. A definite budget option, but I'd have to think that dust would be an issue?

Question is, would dust build up be that severe, with a desk fan blowing in the system, I'm not sure how much chance dust would have to actually settle to that great a degree, very few dead spots with little air flow. Next thought was if it would be possible to buy some mesh, cover the whole side with it, and use it as a basic dust (more pet hair etc) filter, whilst still using the desk fan.

Obviously it's going to be noisy, ugly etc, but if aesthetics aren't a worry, and you have headphones on?

 

[prjwebb]

My mate used to run his PC like this. I went around the other week to help him stabilise his OC and sort his temps out. The amount of dust in his system was staggering. I couldn't believe how bad it was.

After a loooooot of cleaning, remounting cpu cooler with decent tim application, setting fans up properly for good positive pressure and a decent exhaust and putting the side back on the case it's all running much better.
His gf is happy because it's a lot quieter and his components would be a lot happier too because they don't have a couple mm of filth all over them anymore.