PC 4 Gamer

Computers moderate temperature by employing several fans that cause air to flow through the system. Unfortunately, dust and other small particles generally ride that moving air and wind up inside of your system. In the long run, this will put more of a burden on your fans. They will ultimately break down if this dust is not dealt with. Once your fans break down, you will need to get new ones or your parts will overheat. Overheating parts will break down very rapidly. Many users don’t figure out that their fans are gone until a piece of hardware fails.

Unfortunately, there are just a few safe ways to clear dust from your system. The mechanisms that clear dust can also hurt system parts. Even the safest methods should be used in moderation. There must be a balance between these two concerns.

The safest and easiest tool for removing dust is a can of compressed air. When you get canned air, you should confirm that the specific formula is safe for computer parts. Since canned air is fairly cheap, price shouldn’t be an hurdle for this step.

If you are dealing with a desktop computer, you will need to open the case to clear the dust from your system. When you start spraying the canned air inside your case, you may notice a white foam forming on the surface. This is liquid butane being forced out by the air (usually because you are holding the can at an angle) and it evaporates in very little time. While this does no damage to your computer, you might want to attempt to keep the can completely straight as you are spraying so that it keeps working longer. You may need to stop them from spinning by placing a soft object next to the fan blade. This is a divisive step; many users dust off their fans without doing this. As long as you choose something that will not damage the fan to prop the blades in place, it should be fine, but the decision is yours. You should be careful to blow the dust off of every fan in your system. There may be a number of case fans. You also may have another fan on the heat sink of your CPU. If you have a high quality graphics card, it may have a fan as well. Your power supply fan is a very important one to clear; a dusty power supply fan can catch on fire.

You also want to clear dust lying on all of the other parts inside your system. By the time you have completed this, you may note an improvement in the operating temperature of your system. If so, you have likely waited too long to dust your computer.

If you are dealing with a laptop, this will be slightly more difficult. You can clean off the outside very easily. However, the inside of the laptop will gather dust too. You can get into the fan intake and exhaust with the tiny straw that will come with most canned air items. For most users, this will solve your problem. You may need to take your laptop apart every so often to dust off the rest of the interior. This is an advanced step. If you don’t know how to take apart your laptop, you should probably not play around with this.

You shouldn’t obsessively clear dust from your system. Cleaning too often may hurt your fans or other parts. However, you should make sure to do it every couple of months. This will add years to the life of your hardware components.

Geek Choice recognizes that a dust-free system will last a lot longer. As a national computer service and repair company, Geek Choice is committed to helping the general public learn good pc maintenance habits. Geek Choice provides on-site expertise for any computer repair crisis. If your fans are not properly cooling your system, give us a call at 1-800-GEEK HELP (433-5435).