When contest 2 was published in LenZFire, Ms Archana commented that she will be cleaning her PC, when she feels bored with her PC. I replied to her that I will write about “How to clean the PC soon?”.

So, now it’s the time to jotter down some tips on that. But before moving into the actual procedure, I wish that you’d know ‘Why cleaning your PC is so important?‘

Why you’d clean your PC regularly?

To simply put, to keep your PC running!

Surprised!

Yes, it’s human tendency to not take precious care of anything until it shows some flaws. Also we cannot handle it as casually as we did, once it shows some flaws.

Is PC cleaning that important?

Obviously yes! But, why?

1.     To improve life of each computer component

2.     To maintain the health and speed of your PC

3.     To avoid unnecessary data loss and repair costs

What will happen if you don’t clean your PC?

To be specific, dusts are the chief enemy of sufficient airflow inside the cabinet.

If these dusts obstruct the airflow severely then components like Processor, RAM, Graphic cards will get overheated.

If they are overheated constantly then the life of each component will considerably be reduced.

If you’re an advanced user, who overclocks his/her processor then the overheating effect will be much severe for you.

These dusts, when left over a prolonged time, will enter into the joints of RAM slot, HDD slot, making them to work slower than their default capability.

Sometimes dust will even stop the fans from rotating.

Are you feared? Good. So are you ready to clean your PC right now.

How to clean the inside parts of your computer cabinet?

You can do it easily, if you have a blower/vacuum cleaner.

What’d you use, if you don’t have one? Use a long haired soft brush and clean gently in one direction. After every wipe clean the brush with a cloth to remove the dust as well the accumulated static electricity.

If you have air pump, you can use that too, but a Vacuum cleaner / Blower is highly recommended.

Caution: Don’t start to disassemble your computer’s individual components, because it’s unnecessary and risky too.

How to carry out the Basic cleaning process?

Before starting to clean your computer, first switch off power and disconnect all the wires that are connecting to your cabinet at the back.

Step 1:

Let’s start from outside of the cabinet. Using a cloth, wipe out the dust from the sides of the cabinet including the ventilation holes. After cleaning it, unscrew one side (mostly left side, when you face the cabinet from front) of the cabinet and gently keep it aside.

Don’t feel astonished to see the amount of dust inside your cabinet!

Step 2:

Now switch on your vacuum cleaner and keep it at 1 foot from the motherboard and suck all the dust.

But see to that you don’t make the fans (including the processor fan) to rotate at high speeds when you use vacuum cleaner to clean the dust. If that happens, then reverse current will flow to your mother board which may damage it.

Once you have sucked out all the dust using a vacuum cleaner, switch it off and keep it aside

Step 3:

Now take a cotton cloth and start to wipe the dust from the wires connecting between the mother board and the components

Be cautious!

Do it gently, in such a manner that it doesn’t damage the cables connected between the mother board and the components.

Also see to that you don’t pull out any connector from the motherboard or from the components connected to it.

Once you have done that, it’s the time to blow out all the dust. So now take your cabinet outside of your home or upstairs, along with the vacuum cleaner.

Step 4:

Switch on your vacuum cleaner in blower mode and blow out all the dust from the components and the motherboard.

Caution: As I said before see to that you hold the fans from rotating when you blow out.

Now from the back, blow out the dust from your SMPS, while keeping the SMPS fan still (To keep it still, you may use a small stick, or hold it by your bare hands).

Now come to the front and blow out your optical drives and floppy drives if any.

Again, keep your vacuum cleaner at 1 foot from the motherboard and blow out all the dust that could have accumulated when you were cleaning the other components.

At any stage of the cleaning process, don’t place the vacuum cleaner very near to the components, because it will create an electrostatic charge, which will cause certain damage to your computer components and motherboard.

Step 5:

If any dust remains even after this, don’t show your anger to your computer.

Remain calm!

Use a cotton cloth to wipe that dust off.

If it remains still, then let it be. It won’t harm your computer, because if you try hard to remove such dust, definitely you will cause some damage to your computer components.

Step 6 – I:

Now, bring your computer back and fit the removed side of your cabinet.

Connect all the wires at the back and switch ON your computer to test whether your computer works.

If it does, then it means, you have successfully completed the task. This completes the basic cleaning of dust from your cabinet.

How to do the Advanced cleaning process?

Now let me tell you the advanced cleaning methods for your computer.

After completing the basic method (i.e. Step 5), don’t put the removed side of the cabinet back (don’t do step 6 – I), because we have some other job to do yet.

Step 6 – II:

First thing is to remove the RAM from RAM slots.

Using the blower, blow out the dust from the RAM and RAM slots. See to that you use smaller diameter couplers in vacuum cleaners, so that you can concentrate on a particular area like RAM slot.

Step 7:

Repeat the same procedure for graphic cards too. While cleaning the copper plate, which goes inside the slots, be sure to wipe out using the cloth in only one direction.

Step 8:

Now, we are going to clean the heat sink and the fan above the Processor.

While blowing out the processor fan make sure, it doesn’t rotate.

While cleaning the heat sink, blow air on all the four sides.

Step 9:

If you still want to be more perfect, in cleaning your computer, you may remove the dust from every connector.

To do it easily, disconnect one connector or each connector, at a time and clean it separately using a blower followed by sucker mode and reconnect it back.

Why I am saying this is, if you disconnect all the connectors at once, after cleaning them, you may get confused on ‘how to connect all of them back?’

Step 6 – I (same as above I- 6th Step)

Once this is done, put the removed side of the cabinet back and connect all the wires at the rear back again. Now switch on the power and also your computer. Check, whether it works normally.

If you want to compare the temperature of your processor or rpm of the fan, then download and install a hardware monitoring software before doing the cleaning process.

Note down all the values such as processor temperature, rpm of the fans before and after the cleaning process separately, so that you can compare the results and check whether any improvements can be seen after cleaning your computer.