Dirty Nasty Mac Studio Max

Hardware
1

Are folks noticing dust build-up on the intake holes on the bottom of the Mac Studio?

I’ve been running mine for about a month and just now peeked at the intake holes on the bottom of the box. There was a significant build-up of dust in and around the holes. Some of them even look like they were plugged.

Now I’m on a quest to find a good small vacuum cleaner to clean the intake holes out. Does anyone have suggestions for what would work for this?

It seems like there is an opportunity here for some after-market hepa filter thingy that these boxes could sit on.

2

I use this on all my electronics: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dusters-EG-1000-UK-Electric-Air-Duster/dp/B073F9NY1X/

Not exactly a vacuum, but the dust it removes is staggering. Works a treat on my NAS drive enclosures.

4

Just noting that filters reduce airflow by their very nature, so I don’t think I’d be keen on trying it with something as expensive as a Mac Studio. :slight_smile:

5

Help me understand how blowing on dusty intake holes doesn’t result in the dust getting blown into the machine?

6

Ok then I’m guessing we may need a mini clean room to keep the dust out of these machines? :cowboy_hat_face:

8

If I’m understanding this design correctly, the fans suck the air in from the bottom, and blow it out the big grille on the back. Compressed air directed into the machine, with properly-running fans, would loosen up caked-on dust and should allow the tiny particles to move and get blown out. If you see dust caked on the exhaust vents themselves, blowing across the vents (as opposed to in) is a better option.

Or put a bit more simply, blowing compressed air is a violent process. It makes a big ol’ cloud. And if any fan is running, it can push that cloud around. :slight_smile:

Also, the Studio does disassemble on the bottom, so getting at that part to blow out air would be much more trivial than a complete disassembly to get at the exhaust.

10

That said, dust will always form around the computer. Can’t be helped, pretty much. But that’s different from tons of dust being inside the computer. Vacuuming around the outside of the Studio or wiping around the base with an ever-so-lightly-moistened towel never hurts. :slight_smile:

11

You mean it doesn’t suck? :slight_smile:

13

Hmm,
My first thought on that would be, if it maybe makes a difference, if the dust covers “only” the fan-area, or if the dust is blown, with some extra pressure, all over the inside of the casing, and could even go into the tiniest little gaps, or accumulate on top of the chips, battery’s and some other vulnerable parts.
I mean, you are not removing the dust by blowing it up, you are just blow it up inside the casing.

15

The thing is, dust buildup can also cause fan failure. So if the dust is accumulating on the fan, that’s actually a rather large potential problem.

With most computers, the fan is running constantly to keep it cool - and there’s a direct exhaust path from that fan to the outside. So if you kick up the dust with compressed air at a reasonable pressure it’ll make a nice little cloud and the fan will push it out of the computer.

Not sure what the Mac Studio does in that regard, but if there’s a way to tell it to ramp up that internal fan’s speed (I’m thinking perhaps an app like the old SMCFanControl) while you’re cleaning, that would be optimal.

Otherwise, as I mentioned, the bottom of the Studio comes off - so you could at least blow that part out. The top seems to be a royal pain to get to.

17

First of all, you should switch off the Computer, before you hit him with compressed Air.
Second, it is very unlikely, that a fan is dying because of the accumulated dust on it. Yes, there are Fans dying, and they could be covered with dust, but normally there is no direct relation between this two thinks.
Third, the Fan is just not able to remove the Dust, if you blow it “with compressed air at a reasonable pressure”, because alone the Airspeeds produced by the pressure, and the Airspeed produced by the Fan just don’t work together. The Fan has just no chance, to get the Dust, that has been blown up, into a somewhat controlled Airstream, to remove him. And, if that would be possible anyway, there would no dust accumulation at all.
I had build Computer for Friends, Family and Customer during the last 3 Decades. I haven’t counted them, but it would likely sum up into some three digits.
And I had never one, that died because of Dust on a Fan.
BUT I had a couple of them dying, because of a “clean” Fan, and Dust all over the interior, on the RAM, the CPU, the Cooling Elements, on the circuit board, within connectors and so on.
And I had also a couple of dead Fans, after they where hit by compressed Air, and just overturned, or damaged the bearing by being hit on one side.
If somebody really thing that it is necessary to clean the inner part of an computer, take a Vac, with a small hose (“PC-Hose”) and/or a soft cloth, and wipe the parts you want to clean carefully, while the system is open (and Off, of course!), and remove the dust immediately by the Vac.
I live in a rather dusty environment.
I have my woodshop in the house, a Dog with an almost year-round Coat change, a Dog-Toilet with wood shavings, a lot of trees and flowers around the house, producing a lot of Pollen, and so on.
If I keep the area of my 4 computers and 3 NAS running 24/7 somewhat “clean”, by vacuuming once in a week, I had never a problem with Dust on one of my systems.
So it might be an idea worth considering, to clean the area around the computer once in a while, instead of spreading the dust already inside the computer, with the risk of some damages, caused by this.

19

Get AppleCare and gather take it to Apple Stire to get it professionally cleaned :grinning:

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It would be interesting to know if Apple evaluates dust penetration/accumulation during development and product qualification.

I know my 2017 iMac had a fair amount of dust penetration as it would intermittently drop dust from the intake holes onto my desk. That machine seemed not to suffer from whatever dust it had collected inside.

21

Holy smokes, thanks for posting this as it reminded me to check my Mac Studio. After not even 2 months, the cooling intake is seriously impeded by dust and cat fur:

Mac-Studio-dust - 1
Mac-Studio-dust - 1960×1280 310 KB

Here’s the pile I wiped off the intake:

Mac-Studio-dust - 2
Mac-Studio-dust - 2960×1280 269 KB

I had planned to check this in 3 months, but yikes! I have 90-year-old house and two cats, so despite the HEPA filter on the furnace and the standalone air cleaners and my regular cleaning (really, my house is clean!), it’s dusty. Much more so when I have the windows open regularly (I haven’t opened the office windows yet this year). And it doesn’t help that the Mac Studio is on my cats’ flight path to the window.

I really hope that most of this debris is sucked in because dust/fur lands on the surface of the desktop around the enclosure. If so, that would mean that elevating it on a platform that doesn’t extend beyond the edges of the enclosure would cut down on the buildup. As a quick fix, I found a small box that only extends about an inch, and that’s where it will stay for now. And I guess I’ll turn it off every night, too.

I’d mount it under my desk but I use an old iPhone as a webcam and I need easy access to that front-facing port. If my Studio Display ever arrives, and I decide that its webcam is acceptable, then I’ll reconsider.

This situation reminds me of the original Macs where there wasn’t an adequate air intake path so the computer’s fans sucked in air through the floppy drive. Continuously! You could really kill a drive that way. I believe that’s why they added a spring-loaded door to the floppy drive.

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