Did you know that having a noisy PC is bad for the environment, and bad for climate change. This might come as a surprise for many but it’s a truism that means you might be making a negative impact on your personal or business carbon-footprint, rather than reducing it. If you have a noisy PC of laptop though, and this applies if it makes almost any noise at all, there are still things you can do to mitigate the issue.
The reason why a noisy PC is an environmentally unfriendly one is that noise is always caused either by fans spinning, cooling components on the motherboard, or by faulty components. Either are bad because if a component needs cooling it’s giving off heat. Heat is expelled by a computer that’s not using the power it receives efficiently. Any excess power is turned to heat and expelled, thus a truly power-efficient computer is one that would stay relatively cool, even under a heavy load.
Of course, components will always get hot, but you can help by cleaning dust from them. There are several different things you can do to achieve this.
Unused paint brushes can be used to gently wipe dust away from fans and components in side a desktop PC case, or from air vents on a laptop or tablet.
Vacuum cleaner on low power can be used with a soft brush attachment to gently remove dust from air vents, or from heatsinks for the processor or graphics card. You should always be careful though not to push the vacuum into components, as they could become damaged through excessive pressure.
Specialist air blower, these are hand-held air blowers designed for computers that can gently blow dust out of air vents and away from computer components. Sometimes they work via a rubber ball you squeeze, others can be battery powered or powered by USB.
A clean PC will not only be a quiet PC, but it will also help prolong its life which reduces e-waste. All in all, keeping your PC clean and healthy can only be great for our planet and helping tackle climate change.
Learn how to make your computer and smartphone use more environmentally friendly and sustainable with Mike Halsey’s book “The Green IT Guide“, now on sale from Apress, Amazon, and all good book sellers.
