betasam's Journal: Noisy Fans and PC Cabinets

Fans are a noisy thing and the moment the blade starts making contact with collected dust inside the cabinet, more trouble queues up. I wonder whether we should start redesigning the cabinets (both pressurising and depressurising ones) to a better trouble free design. The lesser mechanical components that can cause trouble, the longer we should be able to keep the machine up (hoping you have a good power supply.) Most of the cabinet mods I've come across are for reducing the noise rather than improving system efficiency. I've noticed the same that many "/."ers have reported, put my machine in an office environment - and I hear nothing at all, take it back home and I hear a racket (well, not quite, but something loud enough.)

Yesterday, I had trouble with an extra depressurising fan setup for cooling both my processor and my GeForce 5300 PCX2 (outdated today) card. It caught some dust and started making a rattling noise at random intervals after startup. Diagnosing which fan was rattling took some time, particularly the one inside the SMPS is dangerous enough as its load can blow a few fuses and render the machine unusable for over a day (I can't stick that.) I figured out which fan using a tough piece of paper, so I could actually relate to which fan was making that noise (not much luck if all your fans sound the same when they come into contact with dust or brush against something.) I then cleaned up the dust, refixed the fan with a different alignment, checked the depressurising and had a long test run just to make sure things were normal. While I've been thinking about self-cleaning houses and all sorts of far fetched (some cranky enough) ideas, I've never thought of the simple things - like creating a dust-free, noise-free cabinets. Now's the time to scan for rugged PC/Laptop cases to find out any of their tricks that might be of help. And oh yes, dust levels in India are an all time high, cleaning my keyboard is effort enough.