Ways to combat dust buildup on CPU?

[ones3k]

What happened with me was kind of interesting. I built my system in january 04, its on 24/7 and i use it a lot. Back in may i noticed Guildwars was telling me my memory was bad... I fired up speedfan and my CPU temp was idling at 70c!! The extreme heat was causing me to fail out of prime95 within seconds and memtest86 was causing my system to reboot. It took me awhile to suspect the dust buildup, i didn't think it would cause such extreme temperatures. I took off the AMD cpu fan from the stock HSF on the socket 754 a64 3400+ and there was a thick film of dust blocking out most of the airflow from the fan. I took a vacuum to this, and my system was stable as a rock.

So what does everyone here to do to combat dust buildup?

 

[theMan]

well, my case, an antec p160, has a filter on the front intake. but, that doesnt get rid of all dust, it because there are openings in other parts of the case that dust gets sucked into. but, fan filters are a good idea. also, you should periodically check temps. (i have mbm5 running all the time). if it seems hot, just open up the case and clean it out. also, you should shedule a clean out every 6 months or every year. another good thing to have is compressed air that comes in a spray can. that stuff works really well for cleaning out dust.

 

[Ike0069]

1. Buy a case that has a buitl in intake filter.
2. Buy/make a filter for your intake fans.
3. Clean more often.

I use options 1 and 2 and have very little dust in my case even after several months of 24/7 oeration.