Regular radiator cleaning?

[kofman13]

I my rig is in a Corsair Vengeance C70 and has a top mounted Corsair H100i cooler. The case has no top dust filter, and the H100i is pushing air out. When dusting the insides and checking something inside my case i noticed the radiator of the H100i behind the fans was FILTHY and gunky with thick dust build-up. So hard to clean it without removing fans or the whole radiator.

How often do you guys clean radiators? how much do you take a part to clean? If i can find a convinient way to clean, i wish i could clean it once a month

[Van Weapon]

The main reason you have so much dust is because youre in a push config with your fans. If you change it to pull then you will get very little dust build up on your rad

[kofman13]

Just now, Van Weapon said:

The main reason you have so much dust is because youre in a push config with your fans. If you change it to pull then you will get very little dust build up on your rad

Ahh i understand, I am new to all this!  Should i flip my fans and make it pull instead? whats the downside of pull? ( right now i have front  2x120mm fans pulling, and then radiator pushing, and back 120mm fan pushing as well)

[givegomezthegun]

If you keep up with cleaning more frequently (before it's all caked in there) you can generally use an air dusting can to sufficiently blow the fins out while the fans and everything are still attached.. I find I'm good for doing mine about once a month.. Only takes a few minutes 

[kofman13]

Just now, givegomezthegun said:

If you keep up with cleaning more frequently (before it's all caked in there) you can generally use an air dusting can to sufficiently blow the fins out while the fans and everything are still attached.. I find I'm good for doing mine about once a month.. Only takes a few minutes 

Haha well even tho i was doing regular cleaning of dust filters and other areas and fans, now is the first time i actually checked the radiator in the 6 months since i got this computer :(. im gonna see if theres an easy way to unscrew radiator and take off fans to clean without actually taking off the pump off of the processor

[Van Weapon]

Linus has a video on it, look up push vs pull vs pushpull or something like that, its one of his older ones. 

The basic difference is that if you have the fan blowing directly into the rad, then that will give you more dust like what you described, so the alternative is to swap which side you have the fans on, i.e

 

Case

Fan blowing up i.e pulling air from within the case

Radiator 

 

with that setup the fans pull the air through the rad and push it out the case. Although this will create negative pressure in your case which leads to having more dust in general, lookup a linus vid on positive vs negative case pressure to see what i mean. 

 

I have mine set up 

 

Case 

Radiator

Fans blowing air down

 

This is still pull but it creates positive pressure inside the case, which generally keeps dust out of crevices and stuff. 

 

Again the best way to get your head around it is to search linus's vids on push/pull/pushpull fans, and his positive vs negative air pressure vid, which i think Luke hosted