Keeping dust out of my PC

My PC has to be dust free since I have a reference design radeon 4850 which needs major dissasembly for cleaning.

I use the same technique used by INTEL and other semiconductor fabs.

The pic on the left is one of the famous intel bunny men. They wear those suits to protect the chips from contamination by stuff flaking from their bodies. Skin cells, bacteria, etc.

The actual factory is a clean room. No, not a room that is "clean". Its called a "clean room". Like some clean rooms, i keep my case at positive pressure so no dust can enter the cracks and seams. Although i try to seal those leaks. The principle is to have more total power in the intake fans than in the exhaust fans. And the intake fans are filtered. The fans keep my case at postive pressure. Look at the pics.

The first pic is the front. Theres a small intake fan behind the filter. You can see the grey brown dust on the filter in a circular pattern showing the location of the fan . The blue aircon fiter is cheap and available in mall hardware stores. Its held on by the red velcro, the hook side. Behind the blue airocn filter you can see the mesh that came with the case. Some dust gets through because the holes are too big.

The next pics are the side. Its a big and powerful 120mm fan with a screw on screen filter made out of fine Galvanized iron wire, the same thing you place on screen doors and screens for windows. Its courrogated a bit to increase surface area. Its washable. I had to use a fan adaptor because at the time I did not want to cut the case, I'm thinking of enlarging the hole and ditching the fan adaptor. BTW, the adaptor and fan and filter were bought in singapore.







Oh yeah, The DVD drives dont fit too snugly so the front of the case has small spaces where dust can enter. I simply folded pieces of paper say 5.25 inches long and 1 cm wide and jammed them in.


update: the blue aircon filter is disposable, but the wire mesh screen is washable. If you are lazy, just use a vacum cleaner. Careful that you dont make the fan spin too fast because it might damage the fan.
And the side intake fan has 2 cellphone cards that serve to deflect the air towards the bottom of the case. Hot air rises so this should help ventilation

update: picture server may be down from time to tome. Aww. Anyway let me summarize
* you can get away with only one exhaust fan, the PSU as the intake fans willdio the job of circulating the air
* cover all openings, including small holes and cracks
* most important - install properly filtered intake fans, and make sure the CFM of the intake fans is way in excess of the CFM of the exhaust fans + any holes or leakage. That way the only way air is getting in is through the filters


update: this website gives more advantages of this setup, plus it has animations



LINK