Basement Issue

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manny1222

Gawd
Joined
Mar 11, 2012
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Hey guys, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but what is everyone using to reduce dust around your rig?

The reason I'm asking is that I just moved in with my girlfriend, into a townhome with a basement. Because there's not much room else where, my whole setup has to be in the basement. One good thing about that is that my build stays cool, as in I've seen the idle temp go down to 23 on all cores, where it was usually around 30 in my previous apartment. Only thing is that I see the dust screen on the front of the PC is filled with dust and it's only being a week.

I was thinking about putting an air cleaner, but wondering if anyone has better suggestions
 
This is what I would try.... use a negative pressure only setup, exhaust fans only, no intake fans. Use non-permanent tape to seal all cracks, and either completely block off or add filters to all other openings so all intake is through a filter. Obviously this is an experiement, so you'll want a good history of temps before (load, idle, etc, cpu, gpu, hard drives) to then reproduce those scenarios and compare the temps after.

If it is on the floor, get it higher, on a stand or even a desktop.
 
valve1138 said:
Is the ceiling finished?
Click to expand...

The ceiling is not finished

JRS said:
This is what I would try.... use a negative pressure only setup, exhaust fans only, no intake fans. Use non-permanent tape to seal all cracks, and either completely block off or add filters to all other openings so all intake is through a filter. Obviously this is an experiement, so you'll want a good history of temps before (load, idle, etc, cpu, gpu, hard drives) to then reproduce those scenarios and compare the temps after.

If it is on the floor, get it higher, on a stand or even a desktop.
Click to expand...

I only have 1 intake (a 200mm in front) and 3 exhaust (200mm on top, and two 120mm in the back and on the side. The front has the filter. This is how I've always had it. I'll tape up every other opening like u said. After previous experience, I have everything on the desk, even all wiring and surge protection.
 
With three exhaust fans, I think you setup is a good candidate for negative pressure. if you try running it with the intake fan off, this will mean the air does not get pulled directly in at velocity, but only moves in as needed, which should mean less debris building up on your filter.
 
I'd consider an air filter, if only because you're going to be inhaling it otherwise.
 
I've found that running positive pressure with filtered intakes works very well for keeping a dust free case. Just need to clean the filters when they get dirty.
 
I am definitely getting an air filter when I get some extra cash.

I still haven't figured out how to use the print screen or even post pics on this site, but here are results of my little comparison tests. I used Intel Burn Test (standard test) and Prime 95 after 1 hour (large FFTs I think - the one with high power and heat). Idle temps where after 15 mins of inactivity. My temp recordings where from HWInfo64. My hardware is listed in my sig. The 2500K is OCd to 4.5GHz

1. Initial Setup with 200mm intake fan in front and 3 exhaust fans.
Core # //// Burn Test //// Prime 95 //// Idle
0 //// 60'C //// 60'C //// 30'C
1 //// 64'C //// 63'C //// 28'C
2 //// 64'C //// 63'C //// 28'C
3 //// 64'C //// 62'C //// 30'C
Max //// 64'C //// 63'C //// 30'C


2. Current Setup with no intake (front fan off) and 3 exhaust fans (200mm exhaust fan on top switched from "power fan" plug in to "cpu opt" plug in).
Core # //// Burn Test //// Prime 95 //// Idle
0 //// 59'C //// 59'C //// 29'C
1 //// 64'C //// 62'C //// 27'C
2 //// 63'C //// 61'C //// 27'C
3 //// 63'C //// 61'C //// 30'C
Max //// 64'C //// 62'C //// 30'C


Also of note is that all my drives were at 30'C with the first setup, while in the the second setup both spin drives got to 33'C while the SSD stayed at 30'C.

So I guess I'll keep this setup for now and test again at another time. A little surprising that the second setup had a slightly better temps in general. Maybe making the top exhaust fan rev up with the cpu fan (connected to cpu opt plug) instead of a constant speed (pwr fan plug) helped that.
 
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I live in a pretty dusty environment, (south dakota), and used to have quite a bit of dust build up in the case after a very short time. Once I switched to the Raven case in my sig, I haven't had dust in my rig since. I do have to clean the filters once a month, but that is it, and I'm well over a year now, almost a year and a half. I really like the positive air pressure cases like these with filtering on the intakes.
 
I will not able able to afford that for a long time, even if for a case. Right now I'm struggling to get a new gpu. I don't really see any dust on the inside of my case, but then I haven't been here long. We'll see what happens
 
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