More PCs should steal the PS5's dust catcher design

Ever since Sony released their PlayStation 5 teardown video last month showing the inner workings of their latest console box, I've been asking myself one question: why don't more PCs have PS5-style dust catcher holes for easy vacuuming? I know a lot of PC cases have detachable dust filters and the like these days for helping to keep our machines dust-free, but as anyone who's ever tried to clean their PC recently will know, these plastic meshes still end up shooting gunge everywhere as soon as you try and remove it, and are generally a right pain in the arse. The PS5's dust catchers, however, seem like the dream solution. Stick your vacuum next to the dust catcher, and bosh. Job done. More of this on PC please!

Of course, having not seen or used a PlayStation 5 myself yet, I have no way of telling just how effective those tiny little dust catchers actually are yet. It might be launching in a lot of countries today, but it doesn't come out in the UK until next week. For all I know, their tiny fingertip-sized openings might be just too small to get a vacuum over them effectively, and there's also no telling how frequently they'll need to be cleaned, either - which, let's not forget, also requires you to remove the white cover fins every time you want to access them.

But the IDEA of a small, relatively easy to reach vacuum point is one I'm very much onboard with. Having built and adapted several different PC configurations over the last few weeks for testing all manner of different components, from Nvidia's RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 cards to AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X, Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 9 5900X chips, I've very aware of just how dirty some of my cases have become. And man alive, trying to clean individual fan blades, remove goodness knows how many filters AND give the inside the good wipe with a dust cloth has left me feeling both exhausted and very, very grimy.

What I wouldn't give for a single vacuum point that would suck all the dirt out of my PC and straight into my vacuum cleaner...

Of course, the airflow inside a PC case is massively different to the airflow inside a console - even one as large as the PlayStation 5 - and I'd imagine it would be immensely difficult, if not impossible, to suddenly change the way air gets passed through a typical PC system. Unless you're building a particularly small PC where space and airflow is limited, there's usually tons of space for dirt and dust to float about inside a traditional tower case, making it very hard to get it to settle in a single location. It's unlikely to ever happen, but hey, a girl can dream, can't she?