I'm a little skittish about high voltage (defined as 120 VAC or above) and dust. I once had a 100A three-phase breaker box that I had personally locked in the off position blow up in my face. By the grace of God I wasn't injured in the least, but there was a hell of a bang. We later figured that dust falling through the contacts ahead of the breaker had caused a short. (After that I started wearing a face shield while working on electrics.)

My point is that an overheated PC is likely to cause problems, and that overheating is likely to be caused by dust. My concern is that the dust may ignite and be blown outside the PC case by the PSU fan, possibly setting fire to something in the room. This is perhaps a bit baroque, but are you willing to bet the safety of your home or studio on its not happening?

Far better to be safe than sorry. Clean the inside of your PC regularly and make sure, as stated above, that the power supply is rated at least 20% in excess of the sum of your system's component draw. In fact, inrush current on startup can briefly run 30% above steady state, so more is better. Lastly, if your house wiring isn't already so equipped, you may want to make sure that your surge protector has ground fault interruption (GFI). If you don't do these things, at best the CPU or PSU will fail sooner than expected, and at worst--catastrophe.

Signed,

Lemony Snicket (See A Series of Unfortunate Events)

:P


"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."