Dust proof, fans based, cooling system for desktop PCs (XDust) - Showcase Project

Today PCs are great. But their performances are achieved with a price: the heat. The solution to this problem was more fresh air. But fresh air come with a price: fresh dust. In no more then a year a new PC might become unusable due to accumulation of dust. To dedust a PC being lap or desk top is a challenging mission and not always entirely successful. But there is a solution: replacing fresh air with fresh coolness. XDust uses an interesting properties of counter-current-heat-exchangers: the two connected mediums almost completely change the temperatures between them. Such a heat-exchanger with two fans, one for outside one for inside can be equivalent with one of the fans blowing fresh air. The heat exchanger itself consist in a bar of extruded aluminum with longitudinal fins on two opposed faces. A fan blow air trough the fins at outside, another fan blow air trough the fins at inside in opposite direction. Some very simple plastic fairings guide the air. The PC require almost no modification at inside. All fans remain in place. Only the in the case of the PSU the perforations on the back panel that blow the air outside PC case must be replaced with perforations on the opposite face, inside the PC. A big advantage of the system is the fact that heat dissipation properties of all internal components is preserved unchanged trough time. Therefore if the internal cooling medium (air) temperature is under a threshold we can know for sure that everything is alright in terms of cooling. So the system is completed with a thermal sensor inside the PC and a LED at outside that light green if the temperature is is safe, orange - close to limits or red - off limits. Off course the external section of the heat exchanger is prone to dust accumulation but dedusting it is a much more simple and safe operation than dedusting the insides of a PC. The project consists in a 10 pages PDF, the drawings (SVG files) being provided also independently in the download package. The project is listed as showcase because ti is provided for free. Any one who like it is welcome to download and use it for any purpose even as starting point for new improved designs. For the latest news, read or download the project, please visit the project's homepage. This project belong to a group of projects meant together to greatly improve the functionality of a desktop-PC. The other two projects are (also at SideProjectors): Contactless, external, SATA (MCubes, MemoryCubes) Power System with Battery Backup for Desktop PC Systems (ATX-UPS)