What do you use to clean the dust out of your case?

[C1]

People always say do not use a vacuum cleaner because it can cause static chrges to build up that can damage solid state components. I do use a vacuum in a specific way WITH an artist's paint brush that has semi-long, soft bristles. I do NOT touch any of the computer with the hose end or tools. I just put it close to parts so that there's an air flow sucking into the hose. Then I brush over parts to loosen the dust and release it to the air stream.That way stubborn dust bits are dislodged, and they do not merely fly about the case and room.

Ya, that's pretty much how I do it too.

Learned my lesson about using compressed air when trying to clean digital cameras. Ended up blowing dust into view finders & camera body compartments and compound lens/lens filter units.

Best to always use vacuum particularly around anything involving bearings and switches (eg, fans and keyboards).

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Be careful with some brushes and cloth because static. If everything is attached to a ground plane, no big deal I guess, but still.

I’m pretty careful with that, anytime I touch anything in my case I either have the case laying flat on the floor with one hand or arm resting on it.

 

[A///]

Electric duster. I either tape down fans or insert drinking straws to lock them in place. I dust a few times a year.

 

[Markfw]

Air compressor, at full power, for over 20 years. Never had a problem.

Blast everything !

I should qualify that. I disconnect the computer, take it out to the garage, THEN blast the bejebes out of it. That way all of the dust is not back in the house. Its also disconnected from everything, so as not to cause static damage.

 

[bbhaag]

Air compressor, at full power, for over 20 years. Never had a problem.

Blast everything !

I should qualify that. I disconnect the computer, take it out to the garage, THEN blast the bejebes out of it. That way all of the dust is not back in the house. Its also disconnected from everything, so as not to cause static damage.

Same here. Take them outside and blow all the dust bunnies out. I do it a couple of times a year and it always amazes me how much dust can build up inside a PC case.

 

[mv2devnull]

Air compressor, at full power, for over 20 years. Never had a problem.

Blast everything !

I should qualify that. I disconnect the computer, take it out to the garage, THEN blast the bejebes out of it. That way all of the dust is not back in the house. Its also disconnected from everything, so as not to cause static damage.

Same here.

 

[mindless1]

In recent years I've often ran positively pressurized cases, with front intake fans behind a filter panel so there is minimal dust cleaning needed. This was more important back in the day when I had floppy and optical drives, to keep dust from getting sucked into them, but today it still makes cleaning much easier and longer lasting to just have a filter panel to clean more often and the case interior, far less often like possibly once in its lifetime if that.

In that case I yearly vacuum the filter panels, or less often for systems with less airflow or running hours (as needed).

If I can't reasonably (quietly) create positive pressurization I at least block off all passive intake areas, holes stamped into the case and unused fan mounts.

However I've had success using a few different methods, all of which in the garage or outdoor area where dust flying out didn't matter. These are listed from least to most dusty.

- Paint brush plus a household box fan pointed at it. You may need the paint brush anyway to get dust out of PSU grate, fans, and misc case gaps/holes/etc

- Compressor. Good for tight areas that aren't fragile, requires the most attention to detail to not cause damage. On a moderately dusty system I might use one at a greater distance after using a paintbrush to loosen dust.

- Leaf blower. This is when someone brings me a system that's never been cleaned and you don't just want the bulk of the dust out but also blown far away from the work area. With this and the compressor you must take care not to subject anything to too strong an airflow. You may still want to come back with a paint brush and compressor to get the last bits of dust out.

If it's my own system, by the time it needs dust cleaned out, it also needs the PSU cleaned out. I check how much slack the PSU cables have, whether I can leave it plugged in (to computer not wall outlet), set a box or stack of books next to the system to rest the PSU on while I take the cover off to clean out with a paintbrush and one of the above airflow methods.

At that point if the PSU has a sleeve bearing fan, the fan gets lubed with a couple drops of oil. Same for CPU and video card fans, unless the video card is much newer than the other bits (so less fan wear) or requires a convoluted process for removal to access the fan bearings... if the card has a crappy fan prone to wear I may just wait till it gets noisy and replace with a better quality fan - space allowing as that usually blocks an additional adjacent card slot due to being thicker.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

What’s this positive pressure stuff I keep hearing about?
More fans going in than fans going out?

 

[mindless1]

^ More fans, or stronger fans, or less flow restriction, any combination that results in the gaps in the case, exhausting filtered air rather than sucking in dust.

You also have to account for how much flow reduction the filter panel(s) cause. Finer particle filtration typically means lower flow, so ideally you maximize the filter area, but any amount of filtration beats none.

 

[mindless1]

Be careful with some brushes and cloth because static. If everything is attached to a ground plane, no big deal I guess, but still.

Attached to a ground plane increases the risk of damage. That provides the lowest resistance so static electricity does the most damage. That is why grounding straps/mats/etc should have a built in resistance of at least several hundred kOhm.

Now the static discharge could travel through the ground and cause little damage, but if it travels anywhere else through a component with a ground, there's where the problem lies. Any component will have at least one other connection besides ground.

 

[ubern00b]

Vacuum cleaner nozzle with a brush on the end for the front mesh and all around my fans, then just the nozzle end for the nooks and crannies (PC off of course), fk electrostatic shocks, never had one (touch wood) in all of 20 years building and maintaining PC's, I do touch the case before hand to ground myself just for luck or whatever...

 

[Fanatical Meat]

^ More fans, or stronger fans, or less flow restriction, any combination that results in the gaps in the case, exhausting filtered air rather than sucking in dust.

You also have to account for how much flow reduction the filter panel(s) cause. Finer particle filtration typically means lower flow, so ideally you maximize the filter area, but any amount of filtration beats none.

So simple route would be 4 fans going in two fans going out?
Let’s assume the power supply is in its own compartment and fans all move same amount of air.

 

[ubern00b]

Positive air pressure is generally preferred over negative as it results in less dust and slightly cooler temps according to the interweb, I guess I have a positive pressure setup with 2x120m intake on the front, a 2x120m push/pull HSF and a single 120m exhaust, not including the PSU

 

[DrMrLordX]

Attached to a ground plane increases the risk of damage.

By Jove, you're right.

 

[mindless1]

So simple route would be 4 fans going in two fans going out?
Let’s assume the power supply is in its own compartment and fans all move same amount of air.

There's the thing, "assume". In general that sounds right (except few cases have mounts for 4 intake unless some use smaller less restrictive filters) but in a specific case and particular fans, you have to check this or else overshoot enough that you may end up with more noise.

I am not a fan (pun intended) of just throwing more fans at things. Case with 5+ fan mounts strike me as silly unless it's for bitcoin mining or dual card gaming.

I am a fan of throttling back any case exhaust fans besides the PSU fan ( which should do it's own thing assuming a competently designed PSU with a thermal sensor for fan control), and letting filtered intake fans push the air.

Then again, some will prefer to just open their case and inspect and clean it, out of paranoid I suppose or whatever, it was a thing back when motherboards were prone to capacitor rot and you wanted to see if any were bulging but these days not so much.

At the risk of sounding carcinogenic, you can test case positive/negative pressure with cigar smoke. At the same time even if the case is only slightly negatively pressurized, that reduces the amount of dust drawn in. Suppose 1/3rd as much dust is drawn in, then it follows that 3X more time passes before cleaning is needed. With any case, budget, amount of time spent, there could be some compromise.

At the same time, if you have front intake fans through a filter, instead of rear exhaust fans, the hole where a rear exhaust fan would be, is still were the air is exiting if the case doesn't have excessive open holes/slits/gaps/etc, but even if it does have other escape areas, if positively pressurized the air was filtered.

You have to assess it on a case by case basis.

 

[AntonioHG]

Compressor about 12 years now for the broad de-dusting.

For thorough cleaning, in addition to the compressor, I use a soft toothbrush to scrub thermal compound out of tight areas (VERY, VERY GENTLY) and a microfiber cloth soaked in alcohol to wipe PCBs clean and soap and water and microfiber cloth to clean fan blades. Although, you can literally wash your electronics in de-ionized water and so long as you completely dry it out, it should be fine... I don't have an ultrasonic cleaner to wash my stuff like that, so yeah.

(I used to do cellphone repair back in the day and ultrasonic cleaning was done in water because it's cheap (cheaper than say alcohol, which you could do as well))

 

[mindless1]

^ In rare cases I've had family/friends bring me systems where the user was a heavy smoker.

I didn't restrain myself to rinsing in de-ionized water, I did a full blown attack on it with Mr. Clean (ammonia is great for tobacco tar removal), immersion in plain old tap water and rinse. Granted, this is not good for fans or thermal compound, assess what it is.

Heh, it's easy to try cowboy tactics with equipment of low value, but as a result, I have no reservations using aggressive cleaning methods and plain old tap water, though if it were a high value component I might finish up with an alcohol rinse just in case there was water soluble flux residue left behind and I didn't want beads of water concentrating that.

Today most components soldered (manufactured) with water soluble flux, are rinsed off with plain old water jets, nothing special. They may go through a blower or may not.

 

[extide]

Air compressor, at full power, for over 20 years. Never had a problem.

Blast everything !

I should qualify that. I disconnect the computer, take it out to the garage, THEN blast the bejebes out of it. That way all of the dust is not back in the house. Its also disconnected from everything, so as not to cause static damage.

Same here, done it on hundreds, probably thousands of computers when I used to fix em for a living. Never had an issue.