PSA: Clean your battle stations regularly

[P1X3]

PSA: Clean your systems regularly, not yearly...

 

I have got lazy with my own system, and it has come to the point where I haven't cleaned it in over a year. It has 100H so I clean that every once in the while, but nothing else besides that. As of six months ago, 3.3V on my power supply dropped to 2.9V and would drop even lower with load causing system crash.

 

Today I have finally cleaned the system and got out almost a handful of cat hair in chunks. Half of the was from power supply, not including two small wood chips.

 

To my surprise 3.3V voltage is now where it is supposed to be. Also I have taken out second fan off my 7970 as it had failed, so now my GPU is running with one fan but ~8 degrees lower on idle. Just something completely odd that I can't even...

 

 

[Notree]

Who knew keeping your system clean would help keep it running cool.

[WiiManic]

Just pop the dust filters off and clean them occasionally (top, front, bottom) and occasionally (every few months) give the inside a few squirts of compressed air and a wipe down of the more flat places like unused drive bays.

That has kept mine really clean so far so it seems its working.

[Si3Rra_7]

It was so expensive for me every 1-2 months i scrub it clean and do a full suite of system checks. Currently saving for a 980 ti if it ever comes out