It’s spring, time to clean your PC?

Last Updated on: March 29, 2019

Well spring at least for those of us camping somewhere in the northern Hemisphere. With spring and summer comes increased indoor temperatures, unless of course you have air conditioning. Not very common where I live truth be told.

In any event, and regardless of circumstances or season, regular computer cleaning is important.

Your PC is a dust magnet, whether laptop or desktop. A hatching farm, for dust bunnies. That in later more advanced developing stages packs around fans, suffocates ventilation and as a result, can lead to your computer overheating, then coming to a grinding halt.

Dustbunny

It is one of those tasks so easy to ignore, postpone, to forget. Techy things needs cooling, some more than others, the faster, more powerful, the more need for cooling. Fans need cleaning, dust packs in and around fans, on motherboards, on cards, around sockets.

Dust will not short-circuit your PC, unless it contains conductive material of some sort. But thermal changes can over time cause damage, on welding points, and on components. A little pro-active care and you’ve rid yourself of potential problems.

Symptoms worth paying attention to

Early stages of dust issues typically can be that fan speed begin to fluctuate. Most PCs, lap tops and desktops, have sensors that detects temperature changes. The speed/RPM will increase should the temperature increase in or around critical areas, like a main CPU or the CPU of a graphics card.

If you notice speed fluctuation it’s high time to clean. Careful use of  compressed air can do the trick, desktop machine and/or cabinets with easy access can be vacuumed.

If using a vacuum cleaner, be very careful (!). Too much use of force, careless maneuvering of a mouthpiece, and you risk breakdown of the more serious kind. If you try this, keep it on safe distance from sensitive components. A combo of compressed air through a nozzle and a vacuum cleaner on safe distance is the better approach.