![]() ![]() Modifying the fan arrangement of an existing machine might help with the dust situation, but there are many factors involved and usually you'd get a much better result by designing the system from scratch. Maybe I wouldn't notice so much if I didn't have a quiet machine myself: at one point I had to overhaul the UPS system in my office as it had become noisier than the computer! These days I often cringe when working with clients teaching them Lr/Ps things on their machines, as in comparison their PCs are fairly noisy. There are three SSDs in there (OS, Lightroom catalogs, and Photoshop scratch) but also ~12 TB of fast HDD storage with internal SATA docks for backup drives. In fact the HDDs are now the noisiest things in the machine. The specific fan models in my workstation were chosen for their silence, their speeds have been carefully adjusted, and the case is fitted with baffles which minimise the fan and HDD noise leaving the machine. I know some people have experimented with HEPA filters to try to trap as much particulate matter as possible before it enters the machine, but these generally require enough pressure to push the air through that the setup becomes quite noisy. I need to clean the filters every couple of months (as well as cleaning the inside of the machine, as the filters never catch everything) but it works great. If you look at the internals of the old G5 tower and the tower Mac Pros you'll see a lot of work was done by the engineers to guide the airflow. A series of plastic air guides is placed inside the machine to avoid this. The PSU in the the base of the case has its own 140mm fan which pulls air in through a filter at the base of the machine and pushes the air out the back of the PSU.ĭesigning the machine so there are minimal areas of "dead air" is important, as when the air slows down it will deposit any of the dust it is carrying, and this dust will act as an insulator on the computer components trying to shed their heat. At the top rear of the machine a final 140mm fan pushes the air out the back of the case. There the CPU's huge heatsink has a pair of fans (120mm and 140mm) which move the air past the CPU's heatsink as well as past the RAM and the power regulation circuitry on the motherboard. Through the cooling fins of the GPU's huge heatsink, and up to the top of the case. This air then meets the air coming up through another dust filter in the base of the machine (driven by a 140mm fan) and is driven up through the body of the machine. I have two 120mm fans fulling air in the front through filters, and pushing the air across some HDDs. I don't believe either is optimal: in my own machine I have a mixture of both. Yes this collects most of the dust in one place. Sucks air into the machine through dust filters, letting the air exhaust through lots of other places around the case. As a result air finds its way into the machine wherever it can, and deposits lots of dust as it slows down just after squeezing through gaps. Sucks air out of the machine (consider the PC designs of the 1990s, with one exhaust fan in the power supply). There are two extremes of airflow design for computer cases: But air always brings along dust (and hair, etc). Airflow is important in providing cooling for the heatsinks inside the machine. ![]() My workstation is a monster machine which was carefully designed, including in terms of airflow and cooling. ![]()
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