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Appreciation post: the guy who told me to stop using canned air on laptop fans
He said I was just pushing dust deeper into the heatsink and handed me a soft brush instead, now my old ThinkPad runs 10 degrees cooler after a 5 minute cleanout and has anyone else been doing it wrong this whole time?
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chen.fiona4mo ago
My buddy used to work at a repair shop and would go through cans of air like crazy on customer laptops. One day his boss caught him and made him watch as he took the back off a Dell and brushed out the fan instead. That same Dell came back six months later still running fine. Meanwhile my friend's own laptop at home died because he never cleaned it at all. He said the dust was basically a blanket stuck to the heatsink.
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kais673mo ago
So how did the boss even figure out that was happening? Was it just obvious from the pile of empty cans in the trash, or did he catch him mid-spray? I'm curious if the friend ever bothered to brush his own laptop after that lesson, or if he just kept killing his personal machines with dust.
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claire_butler14mo ago
Brush your laptop's fan, folks, it's cheaper than a funeral. That boss knew what was up, probably saved a whole case of canned air and the customer's dignity too. My own laptop sounded like a tiny leaf blower before I finally took it apart and found a cat's worth of fuzz in there. Now I just pretend the grime adds character and thermal paste.
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