I was offline for a short while Wednesday evening for unscheduled maintenance. Some people have dust bunnies but my Server (8100/110) internal fan started getting noisy. While I keep the outside clean it had been a long while since I had been in it and the power supply is kinda hard to get in and out, so I think it has been several years since I had it out. I pulled it out and yep their were dust elephants in it. I cleaned the fan with a little 409 and I always use my wife's cosmetic brushes to dust down the boards (just be careful to put them back and not laugh if her cheekbones are a little darker than usual the next day).
I got out my little computer vacuum and was trying to pull the rest of the collected dust from inside the base of the tower case. I could tell this wasn't going to work after 10 minutes of trying to suck up one elephant. My daughter had carried the big vacuum upstairs so that was out. Then I remembered the leaf blower. I have an electric one that is mounted on the wall in the garage. I have been using it to sweep out the garage and also discover it does a good job cleaning out the car (you don't even have to take out the ashtrays!).
I had the system disassembled on a towel on the coffee table. I fired up the leaf blower and hit the inside of the CPU with the air stream. The big mistake was doing this in the house. Evidently there is a lot more dust in this thing than I could see, because the air looked sorta brown in there for a bit. It took me another two hours to dust the living room and vacuum.....
I did take the power supply into the garage and it is a good thing because it was pretty bad too.
I suppose you could do damage to your equipment with a leaf blower but with a little common sense about not getting right on the boards etc (and doing it outside) it might be a good thing. Anyway the system is back together and working fine and the fan is quiet again.
Bob Nunn - President, Operator Headgap Systems E-mail: headgap@headgap.com
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