Hacker News Reader

Comment by j79 | Hacker News Reader

OMG! You were not joking about the "felt" like appearance of the dust!

My MBP seems to always have the fans on. I do occasionally run compressed air across the vents (from the outside) but decided to open it up thanks to this thread.

As I was cleaning, I noticed that when blowing compressed air into the vents, one of the fans was not turning (indicating no air reaching?) I grabbed some precision tweezers and pulled this out: https://i.imgur.com/aIPSRdi.jpg

View on HN

Nice find, but please don't blow compressed air into a fan without blocking its rotation. It will induce currents and can cause damage to your mainboard.

Even more important: do not blow air in the opposite direction of the one the fan is made to rotate. If you are unlucky you'll damage it, if you are very unlucky it will stop working enterely. Source: I broke a lot of them

I'm pretty sure I managed to blow dust into the screen of an XPS 12.. So yeah, it pays to exercise caution.

Seems like a problem a simple diode would fix. Is this really an issue?

Most motherboards (but not all) have basic protection for this, so it's quite unlikely that you break your motherboard electronically that way.

That said, blowing compressed air at a fan will spin the fan much faster than what it was designed for. So you still risk breaking the fan mechanically. Always hold the fan when blowing compressed air at it.

Almost certainly not an issue on Apple hardware. Maybe on discount motherboards.

that's a really good point. thank you for pointing it out. I've cleaned many a fan, and have never thought about this.

Compressed air effective against little dust particles. But in case of fabric pieces or hair-like things it only making things worse.

Glad I could help!

Enjoy your now silent and non-thermal-throttling laptop =)

I love that it looks literally like a dust bunny.

wow! That's a lot of 'felt'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com