Give Your Laptop a Blow Job!
acanthis
Posts: 604
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Post edited by acanthis on
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I used to be appalled at the general lack of basic maintenance folks do on pcs. Things like defragging, file clean up, vent cleaning etc. It drives me nuts in our dusty warehouse that no one EVER took care of any of the machines even thought we have an onsite IT dept.
And THEN I remembered...These are the same folks that spend 20-100K on a car and never change the oil.They think all the magic fairy's inside keep everything running spiffy and then look at you confused when the tie rod comes up through the hood.
Most things need maintaining to continue to work smoothly from mechanicals to relationships. There's yer life lesson for the day :)
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be ESD aware when dusting your hardware :)
I bought an air mattress pump for giving my big black tower a blow job.
I grab the two nuts from behind and twist and pull it off first.
Must slip it back snug after as get a cavity invasion warning on my BIOS otherwise.
Yeah, I take in sick computers and nurse them back to health. I keep a hefty supply of compressed air on my shelves. But I have learned that that dust removal process is ALWAYS done outside even in winter. Even then I wear a dust mask and hold my breath. I've had some nasty nasal, eye, and throat infections from getting that crap inside me.
You wouldn't believe some of the carpets of dust I've blown (and pulled) out of some machines. So when I get a real nasty one I take a photo. The nastiest stuff is cigarette smoke mixed with dust bunnies. It makes a sticky slimy black goo. :sick:
I had a desktop that was so bad that the CPU fan had apparently snapped its shaft and was just stuck motionless in the muck. I applied a good burst of air to dislodge the mass and it came out then the air stream made the fan assembly start spinning and it spun so fast that it lifted right out of the fan base and flew about 10 feet into the air! :gulp:
Typical nasty dust image below.
Raising a desktop even 2 or 3 inches off the floor helps keep it from sucking the dust bunnies into the computer. The worst places for dust are old farm houses that still farm. The dirt dust and pollen are everywhere and the old windows don't keep it out of the house. I gave up doing house calls because I was sick of crawling on the floor mucking around in layers of dust and animal hair and dried insect skeletons.
That was the most erotic thing I've read this week! :bug:
Or get a compressed air bottle so that you can blow your computer wherever you like :lol:.
There are far worse things than dust. I used to do basic service for an electronics chain and cleaning VCRs was always an adventure. There was something about that big open slot on a VCR that just attracted weird stuff, especially in households with children, and among the other odd items I found inside VCRS were part of a sandwich, a hairbrush and over $4 in pennies. Surprisingly, all of those machines still worked. The worst thing, though, would be when someone brought in a machine that was infested with roaches or ants. That happens a lot in the south and our S.O.P. when we got a suspect machine was to pull out a garbage bag, spray in a little Black Flag, then slide the VCR inside on top and seal for a day, followed by a thorough vacuuming with a shop vac and only then normal maintenance.
OMG. those images make me gag. YIKES!
My computer is a foot or so off of the floor but still gets quite dusty inside and out. I guess I slough off allot of skin! lol
it appears you have a computer growing in your dust box.
Try giving a bj to a pc with 10 fans ! 1 is 250mm. I have an Antec full tower gaming case. I tear my pc down, clean all parts manually, replace heatsink thermal, put back together, every 3 months, takes approx 2 hours.
Be very careful with compressed air. Best I found so far is Radio shack brand. I tried a can from office store, sprayed out video card dust, system wouldn't boot up afterwards, video was dead. Haven't had any issues with Radio shack brand.
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If I'm honest, I'd never use a laptop for 3D. I have done in the past and one all but burned out, mind you, it did only have a single core processor, a dumb move which I really paid for. The next one had a quad core, but even that got too hot. Cooling is the major problem with laptops in that they hardly have any.
That said, I built a PC specifically for 3D and even that gets too hot even when running DS. I'm buying a couple more fans tomorrow and hopefully it'll cool things down a little. Right now my CPU is at 29 degrees C, but then I'm only surfing, it goes to more than double that when I render. My GPU is at 59 degrees C and that is more worrying. The main fan at the front is pretty much blocked by cables so it's of little use. The new fans will mount just above the GPU so it should be better, fingers crossed!
CHEERS!
Yeah, until joining this forum, I had no idea how many people were doing CGI with laptops. Blows my mind.
Just... wow.
Kudos, you harried adventurers!
I recently opened my desktop case to make sure it is clean.
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Weeeeell, you know, by that point we might be doing more stuff cloud-wise.
I mean, consider this idea:
You pay some service for computer power elsewhere. Your computer (or laptop) is basically a GUI terminal.
When it comes time to render something, you aren't running it on your machine, you have access to some hefty machine somewhere out there who can crunch it right-fast (depending on your account level).
So, basically, tablets/laptops become more a matter of how well can they communicate, and how well they can manage the front end files and image previews.
(Which is hilarious, because we sort of return to the terminal/server model of the 70s/early 80s, although a lot cooler, since our terminals are very very portable)
Yeah, I've been around this computer game long enough that I've watched the pendulum swing back and forth several times between centralized computing/data service and endpoint/distributed computing/data service. Each time, the proponents of either direction think it's some new great idea. :roll: Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages and each time the proponents think they're going to solve the whole issue. But what it really amounts to is that someone is making money off the change of technology.
HAHAHAHA... that's a funny one!
it appears you have a computer growing in your dust box.
The time will come when the laptop can return the favor :)
Back in the early 90s I was designing a multiprocessor computer system to perform experimental communication processing for a government contracted think-tank. We used military portable equipment sheds parked in a field on a military base somewhere in Virginia. Some of the computers in the shed were PCs and had been left idle for several months in the locked communication shed. Upon our return we found that field mice had gotten into the shed and had built nests in the PCs because some of the vacant slot covers had been left off the back. From that I developed the habit of ALWAYS replacing all slot covers for vacant slots and putting screen mesh over the fan openings whenever equipment was left in the rough.
I do my 2-D work (drawing, painting, 3-D postwork, etc) on a laptop. When I finish, the bottom of the laptop and the top of the table would be hot. So I now place the left side of the laptop on top of a hard cover book and the right side on top of a second book, raising the laptop off the table without blocking the vents. Seems to provide better air circulation.
I have an old laptop and a holder with built in usb powered fans but it generates static electricity and gives me shocks
that cannot be good for laptop
not my render machine btw
...sadly, Radio Shack is in bankruptcy having closed about half it's stores nationwide. We lost 9 stores here in the Portland/Vancouver metro area.
I had one of those types of stand, I didn't get any shocks, apart from the fact that it made very little difference. As stated before, laptops are portable terminals and shouldn't be treated as hubs.
CHEERS!
I kept thinking of trying to keep my content in a cloud but not sure how that would win to out.
Back in early 2000s I had a nice laptop but it did get kind of hot so I bought one of those USB powered fan platforms. A short while after I used it the first time, my laptop crashed. Hard! I took it to a fixit guy and he said the power supply had burned out and had taken the display chip and other motherboard components with it. I had no insurance coverage for it and was very unhappy.
Perhaps modern machines have better power supplies but I don't trust mechanical devices to get power from my USB ports anymore. Well, perhaps one (1) external USB powered laptop sized hard drive but nothing more. No USB toaster for me! :-S
The thing with a cloud is that you don't know where it is, how secure it is or who is monitoring it. You'd like to picture a nice, temperature controlled, hyper clean server room somewhere as secure as Fort Knox, but, for all you know it's a lock up garage in Calcutta.
At least when it's in your home you know what is what
CHEERS!
blow back dust, yikes. wear goggles.
Going back to what I was saying about cooling, I have bought 2 extra fans for my case and I'll see how I go with them. If, however, I find I'm not getting any better cooling, then, when I'm financially able, I'll gut the current case and get a gorgeous mini tower case by Fractal Design which can have fans mounted everywhere and it has the PSU mounting at the bottom, which is very rare for a mini tower. That case fully fanned would be awesome!
If you're serious about 3D a full PC is the best way to go
CHEERS!
Well, I use Dropbox extensively as my 'brain-dead disk backup.' It's awesome.
I finally sprung for the business thing, so I have 1 TB of room for all this graphics stuff, confidant that if my computer exploded or my kids decided to water it or something, I still have all of my STUFF.
I'd happily pay a service so that I don't have to worry about getting better and better cards/disk/etc.