I never realized how important built-in fans are for computers of all sizes.
The motherboard and CPU tend to warm up whenever they’re being used. Going without proper ventilation could result in an early death for an otherwise healthy PC. That’s what canned air is sold for, although I prefer to use a brush attachment on a small handheld vacuum to get the dust out of my computer. I do this at least two to three times a year. For whatever reason, my house has a lot more dust floating through the air than any other home I have lived in. People tell me it’s a combination of two huge factors. On the one hand, the environment here is rural and we have a lot of dust, dirt, and tree pollen swirling through our outdoor air at any given moment. It tends to get into the house through open windows and doors, although we tend to keep windows closed nowadays for this exact reason. The other factor in our dust here is lint from the laundry we do every week. Clothing slowly breaks down as it is repeatedly washed. Most of this lint is caught by your laundry’s lint trap, but a little gets into your indoor air. It can collect on surfaces throughout before finding its way into your computer like it did with mine. I have a small marijuana grow box that I bought off the internet recently, and I have to be careful with the ventilation. It has fans blowing air outward to prevent anything from leaking in. Mold spores can infect your crop of cannabis plants if it is left unchecked. I also don’t want all of the dust from my house getting into my cannabis grow box.