Phase Two :: Suck and Blow

Let’s take a look at the massive dust mites growing inside. Remove the side panel and make sure you put the screw in a place where they won’t roll away and get lost. Set the panel to the side and grab the vacuum and the compressed air. DO NOT start vacuuming your parts up close and all that. Static discharges and the like could occur. What you want to do is hold the vacuum hose outside the case and with the vacuum turned on, start blowing the dust out with the compressed air. You will have to work somewhat quickly as you will start to feel the compress air can start to get cold. It won’t become to cold to touch but it will become less and less effective as it gets colder. If it get cold, just wait a few minutes for it to warm up again and it should be back to full blast.

I use a vacuum in this manner because it keeps the dust from just flying out into the room to be later sucked back in by the computer or to settle right back in while you are working on it.

Phase Three :: The Internal Rub Down

Once you are done with the compressed air, you can take out the paper towels and glass cleaner again. Wrap the paper towel around your finger and wipe down the screens and blades of your internal fans. You can also take the cotton swabs and wet them a little with the Isopropyl Alcohol and wipe in between the tight places like the cpu heatsink fins and the smaller heatsinks around the motherboard and such. It is important that you do not over wet the paper towels or the cotton swabs so as to keep dripping to a minimum.

Isopropyl Alcohol is used because of its fast evaporation rate and the fact that it does not conduct electricity. It is one the most common chemicals for cleaning electrical equipment.

You might also want to wipe off your various components.

For this I encourage you to be very careful for a number of reasons. For obvious reasons, you do not want any extra liquid sitting around inside your computer. Also, paper towels have this great feature I like to call shredding. You see if you run a paper towel across a component without any care whatsoever, all the solder point on that board are going to snag off a little piece of the paper towel. What’s the point in cleaning if you are going to remove dust and replace it with bits of paper towel? So make sure you use a little bit of finesse while going over the components.

Again, take a sheet of paper towel and wrap it around your finger. Wipe with care and diligence just like your momma taught you and you should come out with squeaky clean hardware.