Air filter

Dear Chris W:

This dust is largely from dead skin cells, unless you use an evaporative cooler all the time..

Bad idea, because you are still in the room... making dust.

I'd recommend obtaining a small HEPA filter, a good squirrel cage-type blower, and pressurizing the computer case with highly filtered air.

David A. Smith

There is a lot more than just dead skin cells in the dust here.

There is a lot more dust in the rest of the house that gets blown into this room through HVAC system.

Well since we are talking about 3 computers and not 1 that is a lot of work, not to mention what a pain in the but to build when I can buy a room air filter. On top of that the dust on the computers is almost as annoying as the dust in the computers.

Any filter you add is going to add SOME resistance to air flow. Going to a larger size will help. Do you have enough cooling in that room now? If not, don't add the filter inline. If you do the oversized filter will probably not be a big problem. The only way to be sure is to do it, then take the filter out of the inline filter housing if it makes a problem.

When you say polyester panel filter do you mean a pleated filter? Those have a high resistance to air flow, typically 2.5 times that of a fiberglass filter. if it is a flat filter you can almost see through, you will probably be OK.

According to the fan laws, if you cut the velocity in half at the filter, the pressure drop is 1/4. The change in pressure drop varies with the square of the velocity change Hope this helps.

Stretch

You also forget that unless you seal that room off from the rest of your house you are still going to get dust in there. The only way you would be able to get around sealing that area off would be to have a fan on your vent that could help you increase the pressure in that room.

A solution that would be simpler would be to remove the covers from your computers and have a 8 to 12 in fan blowing directly on to each motherboard. The fans should probably be about 6 inches away from your heatsinks.

You still only need one pressurizing system, just distribute it to 3 computers instead of 1. The boxes don't need to be airtight either.

Is there a reason you're concerned about your computer's overheating? The engineers that size the heat sinks take things like dust and fuzz (which reduces the heat transfer coefficient) into consideration.

Dave

Perhaps. Is this computer room close to an outside door? If not, keeping the floor clean in perpheral rooms will cut this extra source down.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness. This all passes *through* a filter to get to the HVAC system, so if you'd concentrate on that filter, then that extra source should be captured. Note that the evaporator coil of most refirgeration units (condenser coil when operating as a heater) is exposed to high air flow rates, and the same dust, but doesn't load up like your computer internals. I

I felt about gnats the way you do about dust. I carefully screened several AC vents for several years (I ran evaporative cooling). I had reduced airflow in the affected rooms, and

Annoying, but not damaging to the internals. Unless you open them up frequently.

The single ducted "filtered-air source" for all the computers is a good idea. There is usually an unpopulated fan port in the center-back of a PC case.

The room air filter will capture particulates from the air... but my crystal ball tells me you'll still have buildup unless the filters capture air right at the installation point of the computer(s).

Adding filters to *all* the return air vents in the system (the house) might work, to keep the flow balanced. If it doesn't blow the return duct off the AC unit. It will make the system less efficient/effective.

If you only filter the return air duct in one room, you cut off the air to that room. Regardless of filter size (within reason). Try it yourself. Take 5 cheap room air filters and duct tape them to form 5 sides of a box. Hold/attach them over the return air vent for the room in question. You loose the momentum that lets the air project into the room, and you severely reduce the airflow. This room heats up, which defeats the cooling concept. Additionally, you *still* will get buildup on the computer internals.

Get one of those fancy liquid cooling packages, which externalizes the CPU cooling. Then you can clean the fins more easily. And you do not centralize the dust in that fashion (inside the case).

My two cents worth. I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. You'll do what you think is best.

David A. Smith

I just realized that your approach is totally wrong. Since the problem is the dust inside of the computer box, you should put a filter around your computer box. This is the simplest solution, and won't affect the room air flow.