On Apr 3, 1:19*pm, "Lee Michaels" leemichaels*nadaspam* at comcast
dot net wrote:
I had a computer go down last week. *Turns out that the power supply was
clogged with dust and needed to be replaced. *It was probably under powered
too, which added to its demise. *Talking to some friends, this has happened
to two more people in the last 3 months. *All of them multi monitor machines
running some big apps. *Regular computers did not seem to suffer from the
same type of problem.

The tech suggested regular cleaning of the interior of the case every two
months. *Again, this is probably overkill for most machines, but we have
three examples here of where we probably could have prevented the problems
we had. *He suggested a small compressor for this purpose. *He had one in
his shop. *I have no problem with getting a small compressor to make my
computers happy. *It is just that my beloved and other folks working in the
offices would have extreme objections to a noisy, pancake compressor
starting up.

I could probably get by with a can of compressed air. *I have a small vacuum
cleaner which will do an OK job cleaning. *But I need some compressed air to
get everything really clean. *I need something small, quiet and not scary to
tool phobic office workers (or wives). *Any suggestions?

I was thinking of the baby compressors that run artist's air brushes. *But
did not think they were powerful enough. *Maybe even a fireplace bellows may
work. *I looked at a small compressor from Harbor Freight and was assured
that it was very noisy. *So that won't work. *Maybe I am asking too much,
inexpensive, quiet and effective. *Any input from you guys would be
appreciated.

Our quad core machine runs rather warm especially with its upgraded
graphics card. I use canned air for the close in stuff and our house
vacuum, with the long nozzle, for general cleaning. With heat sinks
and internal perforated mounts (disk drive, etc) it pulls air from the
back of objects instead of pushing dust in deeper. Just be careful
and don't bump into board components.

We don't do it quite as often as he recommended but I probably clean
it out 3-4 times a year. The main machine, mentioned above, actually
starts sounding a little different when it wants to be cleaned - a
mild buzz when working harder with big graphics of video.

RonB