- Mar 4, 2011
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I'm bit of a clean freak. I built my system mere 10 months ago.
Why is it that new PCs are super quiet (you can't even tell if it's on), then they get much louder within a year?
That got me curious to open my case. The inside was still quite clean, but the case & PSU fan built up a bit of dust. I also noticed my GPU (HD6870), and case fans virtually made no noise, while the stock CPU fan (i3-2120) was the single biggest offender of the noise. And the heatsink had surprisngly lots of dust stuck between them.
I got my vacuum and put the brush handle on it. I sucked the crap out of them all. Squeaky clean.
I also ended up unseating my CPU heatsink & fan and cleaned it. Because the heatsink was hard to reach due to the fan blades, I also separated them both and cleaned them. This could've caused far more trouble than it's worth, but it was a mission for me.
The PC is cooler now.. about 6-7 degrees. And it SEEMS quieter too.
Idles at 33-35 (previously 40~, amazing)
Regular after being on couple hours is 40-45
Haven't seen it go above 50
I have to do this again in 10 months? Blech.
Why is it that new PCs are super quiet (you can't even tell if it's on), then they get much louder within a year?
That got me curious to open my case. The inside was still quite clean, but the case & PSU fan built up a bit of dust. I also noticed my GPU (HD6870), and case fans virtually made no noise, while the stock CPU fan (i3-2120) was the single biggest offender of the noise. And the heatsink had surprisngly lots of dust stuck between them.
I got my vacuum and put the brush handle on it. I sucked the crap out of them all. Squeaky clean.
I also ended up unseating my CPU heatsink & fan and cleaned it. Because the heatsink was hard to reach due to the fan blades, I also separated them both and cleaned them. This could've caused far more trouble than it's worth, but it was a mission for me.
The PC is cooler now.. about 6-7 degrees. And it SEEMS quieter too.
Idles at 33-35 (previously 40~, amazing)
Regular after being on couple hours is 40-45
Haven't seen it go above 50
I have to do this again in 10 months? Blech.
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