Cleaning inside parts of PC

[texasboy]

Just wondering how everyone keeps inside of case and components clean. No matter how careful I am there always seems to be a gathering of dust around fans and other parts.I have been using a very soft makeup brush to lightly wipe fan blades.Also using the same to wipe over ram/video cards etc,with a strong vacuum cleaner running a few inches away to suck up any dust.
Short of having a completely dust free PC room (I presume most of us have PC in home) How do you cope and how often???
cheers

[bigdaveangell]

a can of compressed air works great. I open the case about once a month and blow out all the dust with compressed air.

[Quantum]

I'm always opening up my case and changing things, some times I don't even bother putting most of the case back together again, so keeping it clean is pretty easy.

Can of compressed air works really well to get rid of loose dust, for those slightly older components that are really bad you can get some anti-static wipes that works like a charm.

However, unless you have a good Power Supply Unit that cost £35+, you'll probably find that because it only has 1 small fan hole, a hell of a lot of dust will collect in there and distribute itself among the case always keeping it dusty. It is possible to rather carefully unscrew it without bending any of the metal casing, then a hover, a can and some wipes are generally needed to get rid of everything. Power Supply Units are always a pain, manufacturers put low quality ones in cases that have a high chance of dying out compared to other computer components, however they can cause the most amount of damage to your computer when they go wrong.

[texasboy]

thanks Dave/Quantum. That all sounds like good advice. Quantum, on the subject of older units such as this family PC and the fact they are normally kept in a reasonable warm environment. Drying out brought up another subject which I had mentioned on another post.IE thermal paste. Is it reasonable to expect the thermal paste as supplied by mass produced PC`s to last the lifetime, or what would be the time to re-paste(obviously rise in temp would trigger a response) A couple of degrees or what?
cheers

[Quantum]

thanks Dave/Quantum. That all sounds like good advice. Quantum, on the subject of older units such as this family PC and the fact they are normally kept in a reasonable warm environment. Drying out brought up another subject which I had mentioned on another post.IE thermal paste. Is it reasonable to expect the thermal paste as supplied by mass produced PC`s to last the lifetime, or what would be the time to re-paste(obviously rise in temp would trigger a response) A couple of degrees or what?
cheers

I will tell you right now, thermal paste dries out long before a PCs life time. If anything the only reason thermal paste will last a PCs life time is when it dries out it will take the PC with it from the excess heat build up. I've had major problems with 2 PCs recently that I've had for about 2 -3 years, took them apart and found that their thermal paste was all dried out, re-applied some paste and they both started working like a charm.

Local variables of household, air flow, computer case and computer case airflow are all so involved it's impossible to say what kind of outside temperature would cause an acceleration in the drying up of thermal paste.

It depends what thermal paste you have, but I would seriously recommended repasting every 2 years or so, your computer will thank you for it. That is unless you use a heatsink which came with copper paste on it, I've not had one long enough to tell, but I imagine they last a fair bit longer.

[james007torres24]

I sense i have 3 huge fans mine baby sucks in a ton of air through ever hole possible. I get like mobs of dust. i just use my vacuum and suck everything up, and vacuum my cpu heat sink. vary little dust inside.

[weera]

I clean my PC not regularly but when I feel it goes slow, I clean it using soft brush and vacum cleaner

[gazu2k]

compressed air should do the trick