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Who here cleans their PSU?

D

deadman_uk

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 30, 2003
Messages
2,036
After noticing my PSU unit had very little air coming out of the back, I decided to clean it out. I took some pictures just to show you how dusty the PSU was.

Sorry for the poor quality of the images but you can see all the crap inside there.

PSU1.jpg


PSU2.jpg


PSU3.jpg


My question is, who here cleans their PSU?
 
Wow. How old is that thing? I never heard of anyone cleaning their psu on a scheduled basis tbh. But that might convince me.
 
every now and then i blast some compressed air in the intake vents while the unit is operational to get muost of the dust out, but I usually only do it when am in the modd to make sure there is no dust in my rig at all...
 
Put a dust filter on the intake fans, both for case and the PSU itself. Metal grills can be replaced with metal filters.
 
I always clean my rig thoroughly before a lan, including blowing out the dust from the PSU.

Usually once a month or so.
 
I cleaned 3 computers at my GF's place and the psus looked exactly the same as yours, the good thing is a new bottle of compressed air cleaned every bit of dust from those computers, and now are running cooler and with less noise than before.

oldmx
 
I cleaned one PSU I had out to that extent. It was a higher quality PSU that I put in a friend's PC that they sold back to me. Well, said friend smoked in the computer room and I didnt quite want that in my room. It looked similar to the OP's but a little more brownish.

Yup, a couple cans of air and it's almost "gently used" :D
 
Air Compressors work, just take the psu outside. Mushroom clouds of dust have been known to be unleashed.
 
Isn't there the possibility of pushing larger dust deposits in certain areas when using compressed air? Could be doing more harm than good.
 
davidhammock200 said:
Openning voids the warranty & can be dangerous, just use canned air. ;)
Click to expand...

Oops......I don't think any of mine are under warranty anymore :D
 
thats why you have a case that has dust filters in it... so the PSU evacuates nice, clean air...

either way, good preventative measures, and you shouldnt have to clean the inside of the psu :rolleyes: i just blow out the bottom of the case every few monthes, cause the filters make the dust clump and fall to the bottom...
 
I live with my mum and siblings, and my mum uses tulcan powder for her skin and for my little sister. This causes dust build up in my case so I have to either clean out the PC every few months or risk overheating it.

The PSU hasnt been cleaned for 11 months so I had to do it.
 
that is crazy looking OP...

i clean mines via can of air... i just give the PSU a couple of blast as i do the rest of my pc, once every 2 months or so (computer on a table, so not much dust gets it)
 
well, i'm the "computer guy" at a school district, and because of the lovely job the janatorial staff does at keeping the school clean, we do scheduled lab cleanings.

we go into the 15 labs (25 pcs each) every summer with the compressor and some slave . . err student labor and blow out heatsinks, power supplys, and generally get crap off of the motherboards.

because of the funding structure that technology gets, we keep pcs for 5-7 years (weee we finally got rid of all the PIII 450s) and have had alot fewer hardware failures since instituting this.
 
that looks like the innards of a Antec, possibly a trupower430? I just took mine apart last night because i had blown the fans inside of it... DONT ASK So while rewiring them i and soldering away i cleaned the gunk out(been running for 2 years, it didnt look as bad as yours). I dont know about you, but i tried to touch the least amount of things as possible, those capacitors looked really scary...


Edit: after looking again, it looks like i can see the antec name on the fan, but i didnt see it before!
 
Who needs warranties? :p

Whenever I buy a PSU the warranty is about the first thing to go, but then again I'm an experienced electronics tech. I open and dust mine out carefully with a small paintbrush. Sometimes I'll completely gut them and make sure every last bit of dust is gone.
 
Soul Coughing said:
I dont know about you, but i tried to touch the least amount of things as possible, those capacitors looked really scary...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't think you'd have been around to type that reply if you had touched one of those bigger capacitors. :eek:

I'll do with the canned air, thank ya. If it's clogged enough to warrant removing the shield, I think it would be about time to upgrade the PSU anyway... Just my 2 cents. Although, I'm sure some of you geezer nerds hang on to old, decrepit 286s just so you can impress your friends! :D
 
JCJones86 said:
Although, I'm sure some of you geezer nerds hang on to old, decrepit 286s just so you can impress your friends! :D
Click to expand...

Oh it's on now.... :mad:
 
im actually going to do a whole system dusting with compressed air so yes its getting cleaned out
 
is there any risk of pushing the dust into an area where it does damage? one time, i cleaned out a ps with compressed air (while off), only to have it explode about 5 minutes after turning it back on. it was a ps that hadn't been used much recently so i can't pin the failure on the cleaning but it did scare the hell out of me when it blew and i'd like to avoid that next time
 
I dont have to clean my psu much. I have intake filters on my case. I clean that.

every 2-3 months I do take canned air to it tho. Not much gets out.

Also when cleaning a psu with canned air. jam the fan blades with something(like the straw from the canned air. It's not wise to let the fan blades spin while you're spraying
 
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