How to Clean Your PC

How to Clean the Inside of Your PC

Regardless of where you live, modern science has not yet found a way to keep the air dust free. That means with time, dust will accumulate inside your PC. The question is - will this dust affect your PC's performance over the long run, and if so, how do you clean your PC? It's easier than you might think.

Opening up Your PC for Cleaning

There's a couple things to remember before you dive in and clean your PC. First, many prebuilt PC's have a manufacturer's warranty (for the PC as a whole, not the individual parts) that will be voided if you open it. Then again, since most PC's advertise their expandability, this seems kind of silly - since you can't expand your PC (add parts to it) without opening it. Nevertheless, it's something to keep in mind - especially if there's a sticker advertising that fact taped over your PC's opening mechanism.

In most cases, you can open your PC by simply unscrewing a screw or two. In some cases, the cover will simply slide off. Other PC cases will have a lever. The process of opening your PC for cleaning varies by manufacturer, although if you mess with it enough you should be able to figure it out.

Turn off the Power

Before you dive into the innards of your PC, make sure you've turned off the power first. You can do this usually via a power switch on the back of your PC, as well as by shutting off your surge protector or simply unplugging your PC's power chord. Once that's done, keep in mind that certain parts of your PC will still hold a charge (such as the power source) - so be careful and don't go sticking your fingers where they don't need to be. In fact, you shouldn't need to touch anything to clean your PC of dust.

How to Clean Your PC - Vacuum

There's plenty of people, including PC builders, that advocate the use of compressed air. While compressed air or gas can be quite effective in helping clean your PC, it can also be detrimental. The problem with compressed air is that you are blowing air in, as opposed to sucking air out. This means a lot of the time you're just rearranging the dust in your PC. The best way to clean a PC is to get a PC vacuum, such as the DataVac PC Cleaner Handheld Vacuum. By using a vacuum, you will be sucking the dust out of your case, and you'll keep your PC operating at peak performance for a longer time.

Cleaning Your PC in an Environmentally Friendly Way

The advantage of using a vacuum to clean your PC is that you are helping the environment by trapping and removing harmful pollutants before they escape into the atmosphere. With blowers, you are simply blowing dust into the air, letting it escape and causing potential health issues at the same time.

The DataVac PC Vacuum (Personal)

The DataVac PC Vacuum helps you access the nooks and crannies of your PC, letting you remove dust from otherwise inaccessible places. You can also use it on other office and PC equipment, including your keyboard, printers, disk drives, etc. It operates on 15 volts of cleaning power, which is four times what you get with inefficient battery-operated vacuums.

The DataVac 2 PC Vacuum (Corporate)

For a larger office environment, you can get the DataVac 2 PC Vacuum. The DataVac 2 picks up dangerous toner spills from laser printers and copiers and is 99.9% efficient on particles to .3 microns. You can use the DataVac 2 on mainframes, laser printers, copiers, fax machines, disc drives, calculators, electronic typewriters, automatic teller machines, and more.

The Problem with PC Dust

One of the main issues with dust collecting within your PC is that it will cause components to overheat, thereby reducing their lifespan. For example, if you never clean your CPU fan, it will get weighed down and clogged by dust particles, which will cause your CPU and motherboard temperature to increase. The lower you keep the temperatures on your CPU, motherboard, graphics card, etc. - the longer they will last.