Its That Time Of Year Again

Where I live, the trees have lost all their leaves and we’ve got the odd dusting of snow. The bushes are all wrapped up and the Christmas lights are up.

Its also the time of year when I perform an office cleanup, making sure everything is documented and in working order. One of the most important tasks I perform is blowing out all the dust from computers, routers, etc.

I missed blowing out the dust last year due to time constraints, workload, and life in general. I am always shocked at how much dust gets sucked in and attracted to motherboards as well as the impact on the device.

In this example, I took a photo and some temperature measurements before and after I cleaned out the computer. This desktop is used for network monitoring, packet capturing, and general lab use. After blowing out the dust, I noticed a few things. The operating temperature dropped almost 10 degrees Celsius. The second thing was that the fan wasn’t running as fast/loud. In hindsight, I should have recorded how loud it was with a sound meter, but maybe for the next one.

I’ve told clients many times to blow out their network components. I only mention it because I have seen excessive dust cause devices to shut down, reboot, or fail completely.

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Tony Fortunato

Sr Network Performance Specialist

The Technology Firm

https://www.thetechfirm.com

Getting things to work better - bit by bit-

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