A few weeks ago I posted that ASUS's fan controlling software - Fan Xpert II on Asus Maximus VI Hero - could be causing dust to pile up inside the case. I didn't see how bad the situation was, until last Friday. I got the USB 3.0 cable for the motherboard/case combo that I ordered from eBay and I wanted to install it. Since I had to route the cables behind the motherboard tray, I had to take the case out and open it up completely to do it. Only then I got a clear understanding of the amount of dust that was trapped inside. There was a looooot of dust. The source of the dust is unclear to me. We vacuum the carpet everyday and everyday there is dust! It feels as if the carpet or the wooden floor underneath is slowly dematerializing!
Anyways, I didn't want to do a proper, time consuming clean up job. Few year ago I would have done that without hesitation but not anymore. It's not that I don't have enough time. I just don't feel like doing it.
But I knew I had to do some kind of cleaning. I started with the vacuum cleaner. It sucked up a decent amount of dust. Then with the use of a moist cloth, I could get rid of most of the dust that didn't require me to take the whole PC apart to get to.
There's more. All this time I didn't have an optical drive nor the front hard drive bays installed in the case. It seems that when you have the optical drive installed, some of the unwanted holes get blocked and the drive bays help channel air from the outside of the case to the inside. So I installed them as well. They sure added some weight to the case. In fact, I cannot believe how heavy my PC weighs now! It must be weighing like 20kg. Or maybe the sheer size of if makes me feel that it is that heavy. Really wish I could make a mini-ITX rig.
I didn't take photos of the cleanup system. It isn't 100% dust free anyways as I didn't take every part out when cleaning.
