Silverstone GD04/05 - Remove dust filters?

[darunium]

Hi All,

reading some posts here it's been suggested that removing dust filters can allow fans to work more easily, which makes perfect sense but you do lose their functionality.

So I'm wondering if anyone has had personal experience with the Silverstone GD04/05 case fans - have you kept the filters on and if so have you been able to still keep your fans at low power? have you taken the filters off and if so have you had any dust issues?

I'd try it both ways but sadly it seems that you need to remove the entire MoBo to remove the covers on the fans, one of the few frustrating design points of the case.

Thanks,

[darunium]

Here is a picture of the filters (attached). They grating is pretty big - I get the sense that it won't actually block much dust, and will do more to generate turbulence and resist airflow than anything, so I think I'll take them out for now.

Edit: there's actually a mesh underneath, so actually this should block quite a bit of dust (it looks a lot like the filters on my Antec P193, which does a fantastic job of keeping dust out of the case). This will restrict airflow even more though. I will look into how bad having dust in the case actually is, to be honest I never figured out why dust is an issue except when you let it build up on components, preventing them from cooling. Maybe that answers my question, although building up on the fans also prevents cooling so...

[nzdcoy]

just had a quick look inside mine. while I didnt power down the fan, shining a light through from the outside makes it look like there is a decent amount of dust buildup. there is some sitting on the outside of the intake too, mainly on the grill areas that are not directly in front of the blades.

It has been sitting on a carpeted floor for about 4 months (on 24/7) to give you an idea of its conditions. Thinking about it I should probably clean it out soon

[josephclemente]

I have removed the filters from my GD05. Filters are restrictive enough - the honeycomb plastic doesn't help. Also, the filters are difficult to access for cleaning.

My plan is to just blow compressed air in the case when needed (so far not yet). Most of the time my HTPC/File Server is sleeping - I use wake on lan to access it. That prevents a lot of dust intake

[GuyClinch]

I have this case but emptied it out - and bought a Lian Li PC-9F with a little wheel thing to stand it on (seperate). I have zero WAF as my g/f is an engineer...

I had the exact same problems you guys had.. It just wasn't cooling well enough - and with my attempts to make it cooler wasn't really silent anymore. Personally I can't remove dust filters because I did catch alot of dust on them. But they really were a bitch to clean. Dust filters really don't need to be very tight to catch alot of dust. I have similiar (albeit better) filters on my Lancool K7 desktops and these catch alot of dust.

Some guys put them on the outside - and that might work some. That's the cheap fix. At least that way you can clean them daily (kinda). Blowing out your case wouldn't have really helped me as my aparment gets alot of city dust - especially if I open the window.

The big issue was that in my cabinet (which is fairly open) I had this machine hooked up to about 8 USB devices as well as a ceton tuner card. So it was massively inconvient to get in there and work on it. And that Ceton tuner let me tell you - HOT. I stuck fan blowing rate at the thing to cool it some.

Now with a normal case on a wheel chassis life is much easier. My whole front bezel pops off - and I can pop out the filters and clean them. And if I want to open the case I can pull it out from near the TV and blow it out.. its not really loud either despite being all aluminum. Well it might be a touch too loud for a desktop but sitting on the couch you can't hear it over backaround noise (I do live in NYC so we rarely get below 40db even with everything in the aparment off).

If I kept using the case I think I would get some nice magnetic filters (as its a metal case) and dremeled teh grill away.
http://www.demcifilter.com/filters_how_choose.php People really like those filters..

Then I get myself some Gentle Typhoon fans - because they can push through cable clutter with their higher speed air (but they are still quiet). Of course if you spend that kinda money (GT's are like 20 bucks each) you can easily afford a regular case.. I got new motherboard because much to my surprise the gigabyte motherboard (socket 1156) was CRAZY buggy and unstable..