Due to the noise my workstation makes during AI inference, I keep it on the floor under an adjacent desk. Down there, it’s in the shadows. So, I was a little surprised how dusty the front air intake was after being in operation just a little over a month. It probably says a lot about how bad the air quality is in my apartment despite running three HEPA air cleaners in a roughly 600 square foot space. I know that it would be better for the PC to be up off the floor–on the desk, for example. Unfortunately, its noise and disco lights on the CPU fan and white light on the NVIDIA RTX 3090 make this an undesirable choice. I’ll have to remember to vacuum it every two weeks or so, and I might add a foam sheet behind the front grill to help catch more dust before it goes into the case and lands on the components’ heatsinks and fans.
I’m reminded of The Crafsman‘s “Don’t Forget Your Dust Mask.”
