Category: Computers

Summer is coming here on the North end of the World so I was thinking it would be a good time to bring up the need to keep your computer clean, what do I mean by clean, I’m talking about the dust the collects inside that adds heat and slows cooling. While this is an important step to keeping your computer working good don’t forget to keep a firewall running and an anti-virus software up-to-date such as Microsoft Security Essentials.

So why am I bringing this up, it has to do with the fact that its getting warmer and will soon be full on summer. When your computer is hot it will not run as well, is more likely to develop hardware failures, and will become noise as it tries to keep its self cool by spinning up the fans faster. Also on the point of noise, a dirty fan blade will make more noise thus making it sound worse than it is also.

It is important to do this every few months depending on where the system is located, so if it is in an older house with animals then it will get dirty faster than up on a desk in a new house with little dust. But every 3 months is a good time to check if you see dust build up in your system. Setting how long you wait depends on how dirty your system gets so it may not need to be done as much or more.

To check your system and to open it up to blow out the dust you may want to un hook the cables and take the case out side where you won’t worry about blowing dust all over. If you are someone who doesn’t do this much you may want to label what cables are to what, in most cases you just need to keep the colors correct.

When you have set the system on a solid spot free from water and dirt you should have an air compressor or compressed air in a can. Before you start just spraying air every were make sure you don’t turn the air cans upside down because it will spray moisture that could damage your system. Second when shooting air on to fans you want to use a pin or something to stop the fans from spinning up, letting them spin can damage them just don’t push the pin too far to damage other things past the fan. Also remember try not to touching components in the system. Now before you do any blowing ground yourself to a wall switch or something so you don’t shock anything.

Let’s start by blowing out the fan and heat sink of the CPU, it will be in the middle and the biggest cooler in the system. Next work your way to the graphics card, it is most likely the first big card next to the CPU. Now get the case fans and not to forget the power supply, a big box at the top or bottom in the back that has a big black power cord in it. Finally get all the dust off the boards, drives, and any part of the case to get it all clean.

Now that it is all blown out put the side back on, take it inside to where you have your system and hook up the wires how you had them. It is also good at this time to sweep out any dust that is back there you may want to use the air or a vacuum so that that dust doesn’t just get sucked right in to your system.

Start your system and all should be cooler and quieter. It would be a good time also to run a defrag on your hard drive and check for updates. Also you may want to run a full virus scan just to make sure everything is all as it should be.

Just a reminder I am not responsible for whatever you may do to your system, this is just some points that you may wont to do. If you don’t feel that you want to do this you may ask someone you know that is good with computers about doing this for you.