To every gamer and enthusiast, their PC is simply precious. However, we care less about the system’s maintenance needs after a few months pass by. Keeping things clean can actually help in the longevity of the entire system. I’m not kidding!
Drawing dust particles and filth can reduce the lifespan of many internal components. On top of that, it can make your PC look not as good as it’s worth. Worry not. Here. We’re gonna discuss all you need to know about how to clean your PC case.
It might seem like a tedious task, but that doesn’t decrease the importance of it all. You really should do it from time to time. Enough with the introductions; let’s get straight to it!
Contents
The Facts That Make It Necessary
Don’t get too worried about it. Cleaning your PC case can take up to twenty minutes of your time. Also, you don’t even have to do it each day. However, there are some conditions that will make your case dirtier than usual. Let’s discuss one by one.
Don’t Keep it Low
Keeping your PC case on the floor can become troublesome. This attracts dust, dead skin cells, hair strands, and carpet particles easily. The more these get inside your PC case, the harder it’ll get to clean your PC. So, it’s a really good idea to keep it on your desk instead.
Smoking Can Choke Your Airflow
As deadly as it may sound, I was trying to talk about the airflow of your PC. If you’re a regular smoker, tar, ash, gunk, and other particles will easily tend to build up in your fans and inner components. This’ll require proper cleaning after every few months.
Pets Can Make It Hard
If you have a dog, cat, or any other pet that sheds hair pretty often, it’ll become difficult for you a bit. Fur clog fans and cooling pathways easy. You might want to check the mesh filter beneath your power supply to see what I’m talking about. You might end up having to clean your PC case more frequently.
How Often Do You Need to Do It?
Well, the situations I talked about earlier might require you to clean your PC case two or three times a year at least. Unless you’re really conscious about having a perfectly clean PC at all times, it generally takes a proper clean once a year. But hey, no one’s stopping you from doing a monthly session either.
The Essentials
Here’s a list of all the things you might want to have before starting to clean your PC case. Keeping these at hand will greatly decrease your hassle in completing the procedure with efficiency.
- Can of compressed air
- Cleaning cloth
- Zip ties
- Scissors/ Cutter
- Cotton swabs
- Thermal paste (Optional)
- Pencil or pen (Optional)
Note: DO NOT attempt to clean your PC case with a vacuum cleaner. This’ll cause a static buildup that can cause some serious damage to your inner components. Just try not to be brave about it.
How to Prepare
Yes, a simple thing a computer case cleaning can take a bit of preparation. You can’t just go straight to cleaning whenever you feel like it. Follow my lead and do these things step by step.
Disconnect the cables
First of all, make sure you’ve disconnected all the USB cables, audio jacks, and video cables. Just make sure your PC case doesn’t remain connected with any external hardware. It’s a good idea to disconnect the power cable too. If a bit of water gets inside while going through the process, it’ll be a disaster.
Seclusion is Necessary
Move your PC case to a well-ventilated open area. Your backyard or garage might seem like a good idea in this case. You might end up breathing in a lot of that age-old dust if you do the cleaning in an enclosed area. Plus, the dust might return and settle in the PC case all over again.
Open Up the Case
If you have a toolbox and a screwdriver close at hand, you’ll want to open up your PC case before you start with the whole cleaning process. Different computers have different types of side panels/ doors. If you’re confused about how to open them, give the manual a good read.
You just have to open the side and front panels. There’s no need to remove the storage case, RAM and GPU. But if you do, you might get a more thorough clean.
The Cleaning
Just follow the points I’ve mentioned below, and you should be done in no time. Here goes!
- Proper cable management always helps with cleaning. Declutter the cables inside your PC case and arrange the ones behind the motherboard tray with zip ties. You don’t want dangling cables to get in the way of your fan rotation.
- Group together the cables that are of similar type. You can keep the SATA cables and the power connectors in one place. That’ll help you to reconnect them again when necessary.
- Get the compressed air and aim it at the spots that gather the most dust. Yes, I’m talking about the GPU, PCI-E lanes, and the ram slots. The heat sinks tend to gather a lot of dust particles as well. You can do this repeatedly until the area looks clean enough.
- While Cleaning the PSU or the CPU fan, use a pen/ pencil to hold the fans in place. Then use the gust of air to clean the components. Use cotton swabs to clean the fans separately.
- If you fail to get rid of dust buildup just by using the can of compressed air, you can use the cleaning cloth. Wipe an area repeatedly to get rid of pesky filth and old dust particles. Try not to use a wet cloth. It might lead to hardware damage when you boot the PC again.
- Some fans can get really gunky. To deal with that, dip cotton swabs on isopropyl alcohol a bit and do the cleaning. It should work just fine.
- When you’re done, reassemble the PC case and reconnect the cables.
Closing Things Up
There’s nothing to cleaning your PC case, really. It’s easy to do unless you haven’t cleaned your PC in the last half a decade. It’s a good idea to do a thorough yearly cleaning unless you’re under some severe unclean conditions.
So, I think I’ve pretty much covered the procedure. So, the next time someone asks you about how to clean their PC case, I hope you can help them out. That’d be all for now. Catch ya later!
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