Dust Off compressed air

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I know this doesn't qualify as hardware but I couldn't find anywhere else suitable to post reagrding this...

Basically is this product ok to use for cleaning pcs internals? I bought some thinking this would obviously be the case (especially given the place that's selling it) but after using it I'm not so sure? It left a frozen almost liquid patch on things that, although dried off fairly quickly, didn't look a good thing to be spraying on internals. I probably had the canister too close but I've never had this problem with other compressed air, such as the one available from a well known office store..

I'm installing a new psu soon so I'd like to have a little clean up while I'm at it. Is this stuff safe to use?
 

J.B

J.B

Soldato
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16 Aug 2006
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I made this mistake the first time I used compressed air, liquid all over a graphics card!

Since then I have used it many times (holding it upright) and not had a problem. I use it on my phone sometimes too to clear out the dust in the headphone jack!
 

rjk

rjk

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hold it upright and dont shake it at all when spraying

the first mistake is to move it whilst it is spraying, this causes it to go cold and thats when you get the liquid coming out of it
 
Associate
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I made this mistake the first time I used compressed air, liquid all over a graphics card!

Shouldnt damage it at all.

We tried it at work on a machine that was running at the time to see if it was going to cause any issues or burn anything out, which it didnt. We sprayed it over every component.

Sprayed it upside down on the CPU heatsink and it dropped temps by a lot for about 30seconds though :)
 
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Instead of wasting money on (air) why dont you take it to your local garage and use the airline to blow it out, far more pressure and its free

If you dont want to look like a total nob while doing it, put it in the boot of the car so it looks like your just blowing up your spare wheel :)

works for me and lasts months
 
Soldato
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The compressed air is expanding against the atmosphere. As such it is doing work on the environment. This energy must come from somewhere, the only available source is the internal energy of the gas inside the cylinder. So the internal energy falls, as temperature is proportional to this it gets cold.

The cylinder will get cold regardless of whether you shake it around or not.

If liquid forms, it'll fall to the bottom of the can. So holding it upside down isn't a good plan. Equally shaking it will distribute the liquid around the can, so encouraging some to come out. You really don't want the liquid to come out, as though it's vanishingly unlikely to harm computer hardware, it'll lead to your can running out much faster.
 
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30 Jan 2003
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oxon
hold it upright and dont shake it at all when spraying

the first mistake is to move it whilst it is spraying, this causes it to go cold and thats when you get the liquid coming out of it


i have a divers bottle that has an air pressure of 3000psi and there is no liquid in side the bottle only dry air.
your can has a pressure of what? 5psi? if you got liquid in there it aint air.
you dont get liquid air... hope this helps.....

co2 is a liquid is that what you have? when you let pressure out aof co2 fast the can gets cold when done with air the can/bottle gets hot only the nozzel gets cold.
 
Last edited:

rjk

rjk

Caporegime
Joined
8 Aug 2007
Posts
25,381
i have a divers bottle that has an air pressure of 3000psi and there is no liquid in side the bottle only dry air.
your can has a pressure of what? 5psi? if you got liquid in there it aint air.
you dont get liquid air... hope this helps.....

co2 is a liquid is that what you have? when you let pressure out aof co2 fast the can gets cold when done with air the can/bottle gets hot only the nozzel gets cold.

cans of compressed air are an aerosol [a bit like deoderant]

a 3000psi HPA Dive Bottle is slightly different to this.
 
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