Computer furniture with filters?

[Stephen Tashiro]

Computers get very dusty on their insides. So does other electronic equipment that has a fan. There should be furniture designs that employ a large furnace filter to filter the input air. A large filter wouldn't restrict the airflow and it wouldn't often have to be changed.

Has anyone see such a design?

[Dan Hintz]

It restricts airflow enough that you need to provide open vents for cooling, defeating the purpose. Furnace filters aren't very restrictive to forced airflow, but they cause real issues with low-pressure convective flow.

[Jamie Buxton]

I think the reason that there aren't such designs is that solid-state electronics doesn't care much about dust. Dust on the outside of the components doesn't affect their ability to do their jobs.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Jamie,

I'll argue that one with you.

Solid state electronics don't like static or heat and dust can lead to both.

We actually have some filters that HP developed for the HP computers we use on our MR and CT scanners. They Velcro over the front of the computer where the air intake ducts are. Works like a charm.

Prior to the development of these, we had to open the computers up to clean them regularly. Now we pull the filter off, vacuum it and put it back on. We have had a lot of DVD and MOD drive failures to to dust infiltration restricting air flow.

[Dan Hintz]

Ken beat me to it... dust buildup means less heat dissipation, and that leads to significantly reduced component lifetime.

[Thomas Bank]

Dealing with higher end graphics processors that spit out a fair amount of heat, I've had this thought as well and considered a small air conditioning unit of some sort with filters built into a computer desk to house the computer in. Unfortunately, I've never really been able to find a suitable cooling unit. You're talking at least a grand for a small split unit system.

[Jamie Buxton]

... dust buildup means less heat dissipation, and that leads to significantly reduced component lifetime...

Anybody know what the R value of a sixteenth of an inch of dust is?

[Stephen Tashiro]

It restricts airflow enough that you need to provide open vents for cooling, defeating the purpose. Furnace filters aren't very restrictive to forced airflow, but they cause real issues with low-pressure convective flow.

I'm not sure what you mean by the open vents. I was thinking of a scheme where the computer's power supply fan would be ducted into the opening of a plenum that had a furnace filter over it. The fan would pull air from the plenum. There wouldn't be any part of the furniture that would particularly restrict the air from blowing out of the computer case at the places where it normally does.

[Dan Hintz]

Ducted would be highly preferrable...

[alex grams]

Stephen,
I just finished a desk for my father that had a 12x12 filter incorporated into the desk cabinet which would filter intake air, and then had a USB powered fan which would pull air out of the cabinet which the computer was sitting in.

Look at this link for the finished desk (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=148719).

This link has the in-progress construction pictures which show the vent holes on the underside and the removable panel which the fan is mounted in. (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=146974)

If you want some more detailed pictures of my arrangement, I have a sketchup model of the desk I can send you, or I can dig up some pictures.