Just imagine, you are about to finish your spreadsheet that you must have for work tomorrow to show your boss, or you have a school assignment that you have been working on for the last hour or two when suddenly your PC shuts down, and all you’re hard work is lost.
You then get a sinking feeling and do a little or a lot of screaming and shouting at you’re PC, and get the urge to throw it out of the window, but stop yourself in time before you do some real damage. I know as I have been there myself.
You check your socket and find the power light is on, power cords are plugged in correctly, and you know you have run a virus check this week (I hope you have). So what could possibly have shut the computer down? DUST!
If your PC is over 12 months old and you have never cleaned the inside of it you will be amazed at just how much dust is in there. But how does this affect your PC?
When dust gets into the computer fans, around your processor, components and blocks the vents this overheats your PC which can cause it to constantly shut down, and as it works harder to keep itself cool it slowly degrades hardware performance which shortens the life of you’re PC. You will also find your PC slows down when using applications especially processor intensive ones.
So what can you do about it? Easy, give it a good clean out, and I am going to show you how to do this.
I must admit I quite enjoy doing this, as I love taking things to bits, but don’t worry as its very easy to do.
All you will need are few basic tools to do the job.
1. Either a star or a flat headed screw driver depending on the screws to get the panel of your computer case.
2. Antistatic wrist band you can pick one up from your local computer shop (this is not a necessity).
3. A vacuum cleaner (some IT technicians disagree with me on this one however I was taught it at college and have used it for over 6 years and never had any problems with it as long as you are careful.
4. A can of compressed air, these can be bought at most photography or electrical stores.
And that’s the only tools that you need.
To clean inside your PC:
1. Make sure you’re pc is switched off and the mains plug is out of the wall socket.
2. Take all of the cables out of the back of the PC, for example, USB, monitor, keyboard etc, make sure you take a note of where they came out of. Normally most connecters are colour coded.
3. At this point your computer is free from any connections and you can either take it outside, into your garage or clean it in the same room its up to you.
4. Take off the panel from the side of you’re PCs case so that you can get to the inside of it, all PC cases are different some of them need a screwdriver to get the screws out, some you can unscrew them by hand, and others side panels just clip off. Make sure you don’t try to take off the side with the Motherboard on.
5. Now that the panel is off you will be able to see all you’re PCs components, motherboard and fans. Don’t touch anything as static from you can damage these parts. If you have a wrist band put it on and clip it onto the case or some metal to ground yourself, if not touch the case with both hands to try and get rid of the static and equalise you and the case.
6. With the vacuum I want you to suck up any dust that is on the outside vents on the front and back of the case and anywhere else on the outside of the case that is covered in dust. Next if you are very careful vacuum the dust from the bottom inside of the case, around the fans but do not touch the motherboard or anywhere else. This should get rid of the thickest dust.
7. Using the compressed air on and around anything else that you didn’t pick up with the vacuum, like the motherboard around the hard drives etc. You can spray the fans again to make sure that all the dust is out.
8. Replace the panel, cables and switch on you’re computer and there you have it all done and dusted.
This should be done twice a year to keep your computer running in tip top condition.
If you feel that I have missed anything out or you have any other tips to clean your PC then let me know. Happy cleaning.
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