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Just a thought for other SK-6 users...

B

Buz2b

Diamond Member
Over the past year I have noticed that my cpu temps were getting a few degrees C higher than I remembered from when I first built this unit. I thought that maybe it might have something to do with the ASII's "aging" a bit. I had used canned air before to blow out the fins on the HS so I "knew" they weren't dirty. I had the case open the other day to install a new CDRW and decided to take a closer look at things. At first I was going to pull the entire unit and reapply the paste. Then I decided to pull the fan and have a look first. Wow, was I in for a suprise! There was a "coating" of dust on tip of the HS fins, blocking the airflow from the fan by about 20% at least. It appeared as though the dust started collecting on the tops of the fins and then just grew, like a spider web. Possibly this is because of the closeness of the fins, I'm not sure. In any event, if you are noticing a few extra degrees of heat you might want to take a look at this. BTW, I have since installed some filter media on my two intake fans to hopefully keep this from happening again. Just thought I would pass this along. I have "regained" ~ 6 degrees C because of this Spring Cleaning. 😀
 
good advice for any user not just the sk6'ers. I would do the same if I didnt have my machine apart so often. damn case modding bug.
 
Makw sure to clean the filters out at least every two week's, those can get really dirty as well.
 


<< Makw sure to clean the filters out at least every two week's, those can get really dirty as well >>

Yeah, I'm on to that! The thing was that there was not "that much" dust inside my case. A few quick shots of air cleaned it pretty well. That was why I was so suprised at the amount of dust that collected on top of the HS. It's like it was a proverbial "dust magnet". And it was starting to form a perfect little circle in the outline of the fan. Had to use a brush to loosen and get rid of it properly.
 
Yea. I make about 100-200 bux a week from peoples computers this time a year locking up. Open up the case. Pull the furballs out and take er out to the car to blow em out with my compressor. Its amazing though how many cookie crumbs and parts of sandwitches you find around the computer too 😉
 
About every 6 months I regularly blow compressed air through my case to clear out all the dust and check the fans and heatsinks. Even when a computer looks like there is only a small amount of dust in it, it is amazing how much dust just flies out.
 
vss1980:
That had been done. The reason I mentioned this was that the location of the accumulation was not somewhere that is readily accessible nor easliy spotted unless you take the fan off of the HS. Simply blowing out any normal dust buildup was not enough and had been done 2 times in the past year.
 
Yeah Buz2b usually there is not much you can blow through a heatsink and to properly clean them you need to take them apart (Intel P3 HS/Fan units were particularly good at building up dust and needing to have the fan removed to clean in). As for blowing air, I use a proper AC powered compressor we use to pneumatic drills and other power tools and blow air through the case with that. Best hiding place for dust is usually under the motherboard.

As for the build up of dust on the SK6, I'm fairly sure it is probably due to the fact that the air channel between the fins is relatively small compared to other HS/Fan units. This of course doubles the problem up as since the channels are so small when dust accumulates you dont just loose the conductivity properties of the metal but also loose a lot of the airflow through the HS channels.
I noticed things like this before back in the Pentium days where heatsinks that had larger gaps needed cleaning far less than those with smaller gaps in the channel.

As csaddict said, its not just the SK6 that will suffer from this and I'm pretty sure other heatsinks which are as dense with fins as this will have the same sort of problems.
 


<< I'm pretty sure other heatsinks witch are as dense with fins as this will have the same sort of problems. >>

No doubt, but this is the first I've seen with this kind of build up. Really suprised me.
 
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