This was a beautiful mini-ITX case that served for many years as my desktop gaming machine for quite some time... but it has sat idle since we returned back to Australia as the desk that we had for it slowly got more and more cluttered with stuff whilst we were sorting out the house. Anyway, the decision was made to get rid of the desk... seeing as we weren't really using it anyway, and to free up the space for more room in the guest room.... and a small drum kit from one my daughters.
The entire machine case is the size of a ream of A4 paper... and as a sort of marker of its age, it is rocking a Nvidia 1060 card.
So, as part of the getting rid of the desk idea... this would be one of my only self-builds that I would keep and it would move into the living room to be attached to the TV... for family Steam gaming on the TV and to be able to easily read digital music scores instead of needing to constantly be printing them.
Eeep... but first things first... seeing as we were popping open old computers and laptops, and it was being moved to a new location... well, it was probably a good idea to clean up the insides!
At some point, I should probably replace all of the wiring with shorter and lower form factor wires... but the case is built in such a way that it is more of an aesthetic problem and not an airflow issue. Still... it looks really messy!
Most of the dust buildup was around the CPU fan... oddly enough, the GPU fan was relatively clean... and so, little controlled bursts from the compressed air can was in order. Of course, holding the fan so that it wouldn't spin and break itself... I had started off doing this inside... but my wife sent me outdoors when she saw how much dust was flying out of the thing.
The fan blades were dusty... but the bulk of the dust was on the top of the heat sink fins... so, a few more blasts to get rid of those... thankfully, it didn't force the dust down further into the fins. That would have been a pain in the arse!
Woohoo! Nice and clean and ready to run!
And here we go... I can now read pdfs of music easily from the TV screen! I can't wait to play Portal or Dungeon Defenders with the kids again!
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I saw compressed air and read heat sink and remembered just how much dust flew out of mine when I realised it was there and needed to clean it. My desktop gets air dusted once a month or so (I try to do it every time i have to reboot the computer for kernel and graphics card updates but don't always remember) but because I'd somehow manage to not realise it had heat sinks even though I kind of knew it had heat sinks it was maybe a year or so before they actually got cleaned out x_x
There was a lot of dust.
That looks like a good use of an old tiny rig :)
It's so cute XD
Looks like it has been a nice little unit for you. If it makes you feel better I have seen much worse cases than that when it comes to dust. I've seen some nasty ones!
I think I'm going to need to start paying attention to and cleaning the fans of my machines. I know they can cause lag but It always seems to skip my mind. Great job btw