Dust-Off! Dangerous?

[Scarlett]

I've bought some compressed air to try to clean the back of my PC/fan and possibly my hairdryer fan- but am worried that it may do more damage to squirt clumps of dust further into the PC and maybe onto the circuit board. What do you think, and what is the best way of using this compressed air to clean things?

Thanks

[boxtops]

I've not heard of blowing air to clean - we have a mini-vacuum with a tiny head, which does the exact opposite, sucks the goop out of all the tiny crevices.

[deggers316]

yes air blaster is excellent but take off the side cover of your comp give all the fans a good blast BUT hold the blades so they don't spin while your doing this. i bought six cans of this off the net (a lot cheaper than a well know comp store)
the thing about using a vac is that you could give a static charge to the comps fittings also clumsily knock something out of place best give it a good blast and preferable if possible take the comp outside to do it,

[chas2008]

i look after 8+ PCs here which is a bodyshop so you can imagine how much dust & c**P gets sucked in... I use one of the workshop airlines with a nozzle on to blow them out !!! not damaged one yet , to be honest dust on the curcuit board shouldnt be a problem, no moving parts...

[Scarlett]

Chas, do you take your computers apart before squirting them, or can I do it through the back? I am a COMPLETE novice and would hate to damage it or not be able to put it back!

[ChuckFickens]

Take the cover of first and just give it all a good blast, especially in between the fins on the large heatsink on the CPU... and as others said, make sure the air doesn't spin the fans round as this can damage your mainboard.

[Old_Geezer]

OK, at the risk of being flamed, how does making a fan spin, something that's designed to spin in normal operation, cause a problem ?

BTW last time I was clearing out dust I took the fan off the CPU heatsink so I could get at the dust, and once cleared screwed it back on again. Seemed to work.

[ChuckFickens]

OG...

As I'm sure you know, an electric motor is simply a generator in reverse... when it's working as a fan electricity goes into the motor and spins the fan to about 4000RPM max from 12V

If you blast the fan with compressed air you can easily spin the fan up to 3/4 times the normal speed so the 12v electric motor suddenly becomes a 36V+ generator and having 3+ times the rated volts going the wrong way round your motherboard can easily damage it.

(it's also not good for the fan bearings spinning them that fast)

[ChuckFickens]

That should have been 3 to 4 times normal speed, not 3 quarters normal speed BTW :)

[Old_Geezer]

Ah, electrical issues never occurred to me; and to be honest, I'd have expected protection on the board if it had. That said I've never used one of those compressed air blasters so I've got away with my cleaning efforts. Cheers.

[chas2008]

ooops! i blow the motors until they whistle....not had one go wrong yet...
I actually take the side cover off which are easily removed on the PCs here, most are just held on with a couple of screws and then slide off...

[RATTER15]

Ive always blow mine out with a compressor and airline as well and I make the fan whistleI I will immobilise the fans in future, I got 8 fans in my PC (with pretty blue neon light attached) and I think im right in saying that mine dont have any bearings in them.