I Finally Did It

I finally did it. I opened my computer for the first time since I bought it and cleaned it. A few years ago I fried the video card on the computer the kids now have, because I had not cleaned my computer in a few years. I was not about to do that again in my newer Dell and I had already let it go for too long. In a house that burns wood, dust is everywhere.

I waited for a day with decent humidity because I don't like wearing those grounding straps. Being a little geeky at times I very much enjoyed pointing out all the parts to my kids which I actually remembered from my computer tech days at their school. I was very surprised to see that the only place that had accumulated dust was the area by the huge case fan. The cards were relatively dust free. And this is after two years! This tells me that the air circulation pathways in the new Dells (XPS version) really are excellent. I do have dual processors so things need to keep cool in there.

So check out my innards below!

I have dual RAID hard drives too which is comforting if one of my hard drives fail.

Have you ever been to a computer show? I've been to several. I built my first computer and had to find the parts. Shopping for those was fun and there is no better place to do that than at a big computer show. It's a busy place. Kind of like hotels Las Vegas style with lots of clicking and clacking and people milling around. But you want all your parts in one place and you want to talk to the vendors who will give you the specs and advice. You can also easily compare items, so really if you are thinking about building your own computer, that's the only way to do it. I had to drive three hours to Rochester but it was worth it because it was a really big show.