The Yearly Computer Clean

[Brian]

It was time, once again, for the yearly computer cleaning.
Having an open design case with cats in the house was maybe not the best idea.



Lots of dust/fur gets trapped in the radiator.



Like, lots...



Ah, nice and clean again.

[YellowKing]

I just did this with mine but it had been more like 3 years (and a move). However, I took the opportunity to replace a couple of old fans and that was a game changer. I had become so accustomed to the noise of the old ones I didn't realize how jacked up they were. She's purring like a kitten now.

[Kraken]

My dusty office should require me to clean out my PC more often than I do. There's one fan that clatters against the card right below it. The tolerance is next-to-nothing; slipping a credit card (non-magnetic!) between them is enough of a gap, but a couple of months' worth of dust is enough to make it drop down a millimeter.

It only clatters on boot-up because my computer never gets hot enough in routine use to spin up the video card's fan so it's not a big enough motivator to clean all the filters and pass a vacuum cleaner over the open case.

[Blackhawk]

With four people and two birds in an old house, I clean mine every couple of months. I need my components to last a long time, so I'm very cautious of heat.

[UsulofDoom]

All that grey stuff is you. One thing I do is not put mypc near the floor. Also make sure its fully enclosed.

A shop vac works well. You can suck and blow. Just make sure you do it on a nice dry day. Works better than can of air.

[Blackhawk]

I have birds. Most of my gray stuff is feather dust.

I also have my system closed and filtered, but I do keep it on the floor - it's considerably cooler down there, plus it is quieter and doesn't require extra furniture.

[Brian]

I also have a bird in close proximity to the PC as well as a cat restricted to the same room the pc is in.

However, we have been considering moving the computers (my wife also has her computer in the same room) into the living room since that room sees almost no use.

[Camulos]

I personally delete spam all the time.

[UsulofDoom]

Did mine this weekend. Shop vac and compressor. I checked the temps running WOW ships at port. CPU was 47 and Fan speed of GPU was 3013 RPM. Afterwards my cpu dropped to 37c and fan speed dropped to 1813. Much quieter now.

Just shows you how much cleaning the water cooler radiator grill and GPU heat sink does.