Under the Desktop: Spring (or Summertime) Cleaning Blues

David Morgenstern

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Where computers are concerned, digital content creators are by nature obsessed with performance and reliability. Yet with all that effort spent on speed and creativity, many folks seem to have no time left for small but important tasks, like spring cleaning.

By any measure, I’m no neat freak. But during several site visits recently, I was astounded to find dust-laden logic boards, filthy monitors, and questionable cables. And ironically, while these designers are focused on boosting their productivity, they actually ended up hurting their system performance, color quality, and hardware value by ignoring a couple of preventative maintenance tasks.

Disciplining the Dust Bunnies
One obscure feature of desktop computers is their built-in ionizing air cleaner. A fan pulls room air across the logic board, primarily to cool the heat-producing processor module and other components. At the same time, the fan draws in a variety of environmental pollutants, including dust, lint, carpet fibers, and hair. Like an ion generator cleaner, the electromagnetic parts of your computer attract some of the dust, trapping it inside the box.

This dust can build up over months — sometimes shorter depending on your work environment and the placement of the computer (desk or floor) — forming a blanket over the processor, memory modules and adapter cards. This layer of junk packs a double whammy: It insulates the board, holding heat in for these heat-sensitive components, and it prevents the circulating air from cooling the parts.

This extra heat will degrade components, hurting the investment you’ve made in the computer. Worse, it can produce intermittent hiccups on the logic board, thus preventing the smooth flow of data throughout your computer. Hardware designers spend considerable effort to tune system performance, making sure that the data requested gets to the right place at exactly the right time. However, when one subsystem is slowed down by heat, the other components will accommodate with extra cycles — a situation that’s the opposite of synergy.

Karl Seppala, marketing vice president with Mac upgrade developer Sonnett Technologies, also warned that dust bunnies and upgrade cards don’t mix. Dust motes can prevent the narrow trace connectors on PCI cards and memory modules from making proper contact in the slot; this can bring the card’s operation to a halt or worse, produce intermittent results. Certainly, it’s worthwhile to clean your computer before installing an upgrade.

Cleaning your computer is a straight forward job. You will need an ordinary vacuum cleaner with its nozzle and brush attachments as well as a can of compressed air.

You can find small handheld vacuum cleaners advertised to clean computers and copy machines. Unlike the usual DustBuster-style vacs, these units filter the outgoing air — nice for computers but essential for toner spills. However, today’s HEPA (high-efficiency particulate-arresting) filter bags available for popular consumer-grade vacuum cleaners will do just as well. In addition, HEPA filters can capture mold spores and pet dander, helpful for those of us with the allergies.

Start by unplugging the computer and then vacuum the outside of the case with the brush attachment, cleaning thoroughly the air vents and the fan. Next open the case and vacuum the visible collections of dust with the nozzle attachment. Avoid touching the components with the nozzle. (Please be advised that while we do recommend cleaning your computer that you do so at your risk.)

With your free hand, pick up the can of compressed air and from a distance of three or four inches, direct several very short blasts at recalcitrant dirt, catching the resulting cloud of dust with the vacuum’s nozzle. Just blowing compressed air without the vacuum cleaner is futile; you will simply move the dust from one section of the case to another. Point quick blasts of compressed air from different angles to loosen clumps of dust, rather than blowing a long stream of air; short puffs are more efficient and this also avoids the possibility of freezing components with the liquid air.

In addition, Ron Hipschman, the senior media specialist and Webmaster at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, advised against blowing compressed air into floppy drives, especially those found in older machines. He said although the drives may be dirty, the dirt is usually piled in places that doesn’t affect the reading of the diskettes. Cleaning the drive can force the dust into the wrong place or around the read-write head assembly, causing the drive to fail.

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