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Helllo Rawrcast readers…Cornelious here bringing you another installment of Under the Hood.

As I stated in my last post I continue to keep myself busy overclocking and benchmarking hardware for DogHouse Systems but I’ve (finally) been able to eliminate a number of stresses in my life and it should be much easier to schedule my time moving forward. This week I want to take a short while to bring up a few points involving the friendly household dust bunny. Dust (in bunny form or otherwise) builds up in our computers for a number of reasons, some of which are: a dusty home/room, smoking, pets and poor case airflow and filtering.

The first three points are fairly self explanatory but I wanted to make sure to hit on the 4th one. Even the dustiest and most animal crowded homes can still house relatively dust free computers. Many people simply don’t take the time to take the necessary precautions. One of the first things people think of when attempting to prevent dust buildup is fan filters. While having filters on your case’s intake fans will help, it won’t do the entire job for you and also create their own bit of maintenance. Just as important as fan filters is the design and capabilities of your computer’s case to circulate air as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately for many people, there’s only so much you can do to improve on your computers airflow without transplanting everything into a new box.

There are often situations in which a case has room to accommodate additional fans and this is often a good idea but beyond the amount of airflow the problems typically lie with the design and airflow mechanics of the case itself. While on the topic it’s important to note that there are many many circumstances where more airflow isn’t always the answer, positioning and balance of intake and exhaust fans is almost always MUCH more important. One positive note is that there are a number of cases available in many different price ranges that can comfortably house a high-end gaming PC but some people may have to compromise more than others when it comes to a cases aesthetics and cost when looking for something with balanced airflow.

Breaking down some of the finer points of airflow balance and case design will more than likely end up boring more people then I have already so if any of this has peaked any interest I’d encourage you to catch up with me on Twitter or leave a post in our discussion forums if a 140 character limit isn’t forgiving enough. As I mentioned earlier, I continue working on stress testing a number of hardware configurations for DogHouse Systems so if you don’t see anything from me for a week or two I wouldn’t panic, you know where to find me.

- Cornelious0_0