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sound proofing

Scannerman said:

Not mine but I worked on enough of them that looked like this.

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I started sneezing just looking at that.

I just saw one a couple weeks ago, I think my grandson thought they were self-cleaning!

To be fair, my daughter built this when she was 11 years old. I installed the software and the operating systems.



Despite all the filters it is such a dust trap.
The pictures here don't really show it so well.

Computers by their vary nature are dust traps. All those fans move every bit of dust they can find through the computer.

gunrunnerjohn said:

Computers by their vary nature are dust traps. All those fans move every bit of dust they can find through the computer.

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Some, definitely more than others. The blue aquarium brings in slightly less dust than the pink one but I've found that these cases with the glass panels tend to bring in more dust than the hot boxes that have much less air flow. It would seem to be a trade off: If you want air flow, expect dust. If you don't want dust kill the air flow.



For the longest time I never understood why they would put dust filters on top of a case where air is normally exhausted. Apparently this is because some people build cases to intake air from the top of the case. The "hot boxes" I describe have no such thing. They usually have a little front intake and at best a little on the side and exhaust through the back of the case.

Scannerman said:

Some, definitely more than others. The blue aquarium brings in slightly less dust than the pink one but I've found that these cases with the glass panels tend to bring in more dust than the hot boxes that have much less air flow. It would seem to be a trade off: If you want air flow, expect dust. If you don't want dust kill the air flow.

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Major problem with that idea! The whole point of more fans is to keep things cool inside the case. Given the high power some systems run at, moving heat out of the case is a significant task. Heat is the killer of electronics. A general rule of thumb used widely in the electronics industry is every 10C temperature rise cuts the component life in half. So, if you have inadequate cooling and the temperature inside the computer is 20C higher than the well ventilated model, your computer's component life is roughly 1/4 the MTBF of the properly cooled case. Given all the emphasis made on cooling your processor and GPU, that's probably not a good way to go.

gunrunnerjohn said:

Major problem with that idea! The whole point of more fans is to keep things cool inside the case. Given the high power some systems run at, moving heat out of the case is a significant task. Heat is the killer of electronics. A general rule of thumb used widely in the electronics industry is every 10C temperature rise cuts the component life in half. So, if you have inadequate cooling and the temperature inside the computer is 20C higher than the well ventilated model, your computer's component life is roughly 1/4 the MTBF of the properly cooled case. Given all the emphasis made on cooling your processor and GPU, that's probably not a good way to go.

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Agreed. My point is not so much that one is better than the other as I would suggest each has its up side and down side. What I find interesting is that some newer computing units are moving away more from traditional air and liquid cooling by employing massive heat sinking. Many of these newer devices are very compact and I can't help but to raise an eyebrow and wonder what their life cycle might be. Dust is also a killer of electronics not only because it holds heat, but also because it is frequently electrically conductive. The battle rages on but a large part of it is determined by the usage. For example, someone basically using a PC for standard office tasks, checking e-mails, and mostly engaging in text won't really need massive cooling for their humble PC. Someone engaging in gaming, high end video processing or rendering, content creation, commercial servers, massive tasking etc. will certainly need better cooling.