Maintenance/Upkeep

Chances are that's the rad mounted under the top. It might have the fans mounted below or sandwiched between the rad and top panel.   Blow the air from the inside out, through both the rad and fans. Short bursts.   Then wipe the top down.    If you were adventurous you could remove the rad/fans but that's if you're comfortable pulling things apart.

Have fun.    Good chance the rads need a cleaning before temps climb.

It does appear that way. I thought i was tending to it frequently enough. Apparently since the last cleaning, one of the bottom fans broke; looks like one of the prongs snapped off. Would dust buildup do this? Picture to come, need to resize it.

Also, similar issue with what I'm assuming is another heat sink (or filter?) just behind these fans on the bottom. Can't figure out a good way to clean. Compressed air doesn't seem to knock anything out of it, as it is situated behind the fans. I just cleaned everything manually using a Q-tip to the best of my ability, but can only reach so much of it.

i got myself one of these to blow out my case: https://www.metrovacworld.com/DataVac_Electric_Duster-ED500/overview.  a lot more efficient than compressed air canisters.

i doubt dust buildup caused that broken fan blade.  more like a defect that gave way after prolonged use.  just replace it with the right sized fan. 

pro tip: unplug power to your rig and tilt it on one side, then blow out the top rad/fans.  dust won't come down and settle onto the rig that way.  it won't hurt your system in the least.  also, you should remove the rad fans every once and awhile to clean off the dust that accumulates in/under and around them.   


Edited by db188 - 17 Oct 2015 at 4:08pm

i don't think you need to take apart the case or anything just to do simple dust house-keeping.  if you really want to get every speck of dust and get the system back to pristine condition, you're going to have to pull out almost the entire cooling system (rads/fans/etc.).  that's a couple days of work (drain the loop, take out the rads, remove all of the fans, clean, put it all back together). 

the rad fans should be easy-just unscrew the 4-points and lay them aside (you can even keep them connected if the wires are long enough to allow laying them flat).  if you need to disconnect the fans completely they're just a 3 or 4-pin leading to either the mobo header or a fan hub/extender.  if you need to remove that DS base plate, i'm sure it just held in by some screws, it shouldn't be a big deal but you can contact DS specifically for that.  the case is just a Corsair 900D, so you can probably easily find a bunch of videos of people building inside it for more on that. 

edit: forgot to mention, it looks like there's a fan bracket in front of the fan-mounted rads, easy enough to remove the screws that mount it to the fans, before removing the fans themselves.


Edited by db188 - 17 Oct 2015 at 5:40pm