I am not a tech person, but I cleaned out my secondhand PC today, and it took hours with the sheer amount of dust accumulation. The fans were nearly overloaded with it!!
Does a clean PC run better / faster than one filled with dust? Or is it more a matter of keeping the fans running easily? Or something else…? Idk, maybe I imagined it, but it seemed to boot much faster after cleaning. Could be wishful thinking!
Dust traps heat and blocks airflow, fans run worse etc. More heat means more likely the system will throttle down to keep temperatures manageable
WHOA!
Removing that nearly entire bucket of dust feels justified now! Makes me happy I wasn’t just wasting my time. Thank you!
Dust can conduct electricity…
I am learning all kinds of new and alarming things today!
Thank you!
Computers need to be relatively cool to function properly.
Dust acts as a heat insulator, trapping heat inside.
Dust also clogs the cooling fans from doing their job.
Most computers have built-in features that auto throttle or even self shut-down if the heat gets too high.
More dust = more heat = more speed throttling & shutdowns.
A cool PC runs better than a hot PC, and a dirty, dusty PC is a hot PC. So the answer to your question is “YES!”
Yes if a modern computer gets too hot the CPU will throttle itself and the fans will run faster.
If the computer is on the floor try to get it off the floor at least somewhat. Set it on a box or something.
Thanks so much! I have in on a little shelf below my desk. I’ll be cleaning it much more often now!
And a less modern PC will burn itself up, or just completely shut down as a safeguard.
On top of that modern computers are essentially designed to run as fast as they possibly can while staying just under their max temperature. Especially laptops, they will regularly kiss 100c as part of turbo boost.
Your GPU has a much lower temperature limit and starts throttling way sooner than its max rated temp since they do NOT like running hot. Your CPU will tolerate it, but your GPU is far too large of a chip for this temperature fluctuations.
Never underestimate the effect dust can have on airflow and cooling in general
In the old days when cases were much less designed for good air flow, in the summers I used to take the side panel right off my rig.
This reminds me that I need to clean my PC,I can see cat fur in it
Half a year worth of my lovely fur ball sitting on the top of my desktop was enough to entirely block 1/4 of my CPU heatsink in a highly vemtilated room. I would have thought that it was uniformly distributing everywhere. Nope, it wasn’t.
Just open it and do a quick pick. And pet that bastard for me.
Luckily my cats don’t sit on the PC, but I haven’t cleaned it in years and I can see a fine layer of dust and cat fur on the power supply and the drives. I’ll have to clean this weekend. And I’ll pet the cats for you :3
Yes, it will be able to efficiently cool itself better and therefore improve its performance.
I have one computer that I can tell is dirty because the CPU and video fans run at max all the time, and the machine slows down (I’m sure it self-throttlws, I have the bios configured to be sensitive to heat).
Clean it and it’s quiet as can be, runs fine.
An old Pentium III an extended family member had burned itself out of disrepair. The computer was used for about a decade before being forgotten, but plugged in for some other 5 years. Then they had the bright idea of using the old computer without cleaning it. It all went well for a while it boot up and otherwise was it old win7 self. Except, a couple of days later they let it on overnight. The house owner was awaken alarmed by the fumes of burning plastic and a faint trail of smoke coming from the case.
The over a decade buildup of dust had been trapping heat so bad that some old shoddy HDD power cable melted partially exposing the conducting wires. Then it short circuited and arced through the dust setting some lint on fire.
The flame was minuscule and it was controlled fast. But I would say that, it is indeed wise to clean your computers, at least once in a while.
Username checks out
Yes, especially laptops. Dust leads to heat buildup, which is detrimental to performance.
This goes doubly so for laptops, as the cooling rarely has more than one flow “channel”. I open my laptop an clean it out once a year, as it runs somewhat hot even when perfectly clean.Yes.
Also a machine on fire tends to run a bit more slowly. 🔥😉
I thought it was just those fancy LEDs people put in their computers these days! Like a secret feature!
Yes, it can make a very real difference.
