Have you been vaping around your desktop computer, laptop, or gaming console? Here is the damage caused by the smoke to the electronics.
Smoking e-cigarettes and vaping have become the new alternative to cigarettes, drastically increasing among gamers and streamers who show off their cool tricks with the dense smoke. Besides damaging your health, many tech enthusiasts are concerned that vaping could affect their PC or gaming rigs.
Certainly, vaping near your PC can cause a lot of damage since a vape produces a lot of denser smoke than a traditional cigarette. All types of PCs and laptops have ventilation, which means your PC is also inhaling the smoke released near it by vaping. Even Xbox mentioned this in one of their Tweets to abide players from vaping around their consoles.
Even though many doctors around the globe have mentioned that smoking vape is less harmful to human health than traditional cigarettes, but what effect does it leave on the machinery? In this article, we will discuss how vaping near your PC can damage its components with some graphical images to show how bad it can get.
How Vaping Around Your PC Affects its Components
Vaping can affect your PC and its components in several different ways. You may not see any immediate effects, but a few prominent issues might appear over time after constantly vaping around your PC.
Vape Residue Clogs Fans
The first and far most prominent effect of vaping will appear on the fan coolers of your computer system. If you have been vaping around your PC for a while, you’ll notice that a gross layer of liquid will start gathering around the fans, affecting their spinning motion. Moreover, it can affect the airflow your system’s internal components need to maintain the temperatures. Here is an example of what it may appear to be like.
It is essential to understand the basics of CPU and GPU cooling to prevent the PC from overheating. E-cigarette liquid can also reach internal cooler fans to overheat the GPU, damaging its hardware components. As a result, you may experience 100% GPU usage in an idle state.
Another concerning place is the PSU fan, which collects all the dust and dirt inhaled by the computer system. And If you have connected extra fans to your motherboard, the vape smoking residue will also appear on the exhaling end of the rear fans.
Also Read: Is It Possible to Put a CPU in the Wrong Way?
VG Film Layer
If you’ve ever vaped in your car with closed windows, you may have noticed a blurry layer forming on the window’s edge. It is more noticeable from the outside of the glass window, which is the VG (Vegetable Glycerin) layer that can easily collect residue and dirt on the surface.
As shown in the picture above, you can see how this layer forms sludge and collects dirt. This VG residue layer can also form on the inner side of the PC case, forming a thick layer of vape liquid all over the place. Now if you have built your PC, it would take some elbow grease to clean all of VG from all the corners and bits of your computer system.
Also Read: Liquid vs. Air CPU Cooling – Which is Right for You?
Moisture + Electronics = Damage
Understandably, moisture and hardware technology don’t get along too much unless something is made to be waterproof. The VG with the vape smoke that covers the internal hardware components can cause all sorts of damage, like short circuits of electrical parts and failure of specific power components.
Hence the ‘M’ word (moisture) is offensive for any technology. VG can create a sludgy mess after getting mixed up with dust particles, which makes it even more challenging to clean the insides of your PC.
Final words
We are all aware of the health risks of vaping or cigarettes. Besides human health, these chemicals and toxicants are also hazardous to your computer hardware. Therefore, it’s recommended not to smoke vape around your PC or laptop, especially if you have a gaming rig with a number of coolers.
