Clean air issues with a mac pro

Question

have any of you peeps battled with the simple problem of air quality around a mac pro. my machine exhausts so much hot air and fumes (it's always done this, i know there's no technical problem, i'm just super-aware of air quality, do a lot of yoga etc)
any ideas or solutions? at the present i have the tower in a walk-in cupboard but the build-up of heat and fumes in there after a three or four sesh is fantastic. anyone got any tips for safely (and cheaply) treating the air in the cupboard? (is it even recommendable/safe for the mac to breathe it's own air like this?)

Answer 1

tbirdparis wrote:
I wouldn't be worried about it. It's literally just warm air. The CPU cores heat up, the heat is transferred to solid metal heat sinks, and that warm air is just lightly blown away from the computer via perfectly normal fans. It's the same air that is already in your room, just warmed up. Nothing is added to it, your computer isn't aspirating anything and outputting any fumes of any kind.
I'm not as sure as you are. There are some electric motors in there (cooling fans) that probably can produce (tiny amounts of) ozone. Also, the other day I installed a new PSU (Power Supply Unit), and when it came out of the box, it had a strong smell of fresh paintsolvents to it. And some fumes are smellable long before they get to a nasty level. If you are really seriously paranoid you should somehow lead the air from the computer to the outside via some sort of hose... ?
Exactly the same thing is going on all around you whenever your house or studio is warmed by the sun (not very often in London...), and the metals in the construction of the building warm up and give off heat. Something would actually have to burn,
Or just evaporate...
as in literally reach a burning temperature in order for any kind of chemical reaction to occur that will produce fumes of some kind.
But if that happens.. your computer is broken and you have a fire hazard and immediate danger to deal with.
Actually this happened to me once in the studio, when I installed what turned out to be a dodgy RME PCI card in a G5 some years ago. A few minutes after turning the computer on, I smelled a very acrid burning smell which was quite alarming and so I immediately had to hard-shutdown the computer and disconnect it from the power, real fast. As soon as I determined that it was indeed coming from the G5 and not somewhere else, we opened all the windows and left the room for some time, just checking to make sure nothing was on fire.. because the burning smell did at least seem quite toxic. Once that was over, took the card out and indeed it had started to fry, so who knows what kind of chemicals were coming out in the fumes.
But I point that out only to make the reminder that it really just comes down to chemistry and physics.. In that case, yes, there were potentially dangerous fumes because a temperature was reached which caused actual burning to occur - an actual chemical reaction - which produced fumes. However, the warm air that comes out of your computer under normal operation is really just that - warmed up air, the exact same air that is in the room already.. If it were producing fumes of any kind, even in trace amounts, then that would mean that the components responsible for the fumes would actually be chemically reacting and thus would actually be transforming chemically over time with regular use and wouldn't last long.
Or it is marginal evaporation. Some fumes (especially paint solvents) are smellable even at a non toxic low concentration of a few ppb (parts per billion).
"New computer smell."
My 'old' G4 doesn't smell at all, even with my nose to the motherboard I don't smell anything anymore. My newer machine does, however. It still has to "dry up".