I just cleaned my computer

[dudester28]

Just a few minutes ago, I opened the computer for the first time to clean the inevitable horror awaiting me. Note that this computer is five years old. I found a sticker across the panel opening which leads me to believe this computer hasn't been opened up before.

The reason why I haven't cleaned it yet is because it previously was my dad's computer for the last four years and he is a hands-off type of person. It didn't surprise me much that this computer was never opened up before.

Already, I am noticing that the fan is extremely quiet (I had to make sure it was still running!). Can I expect a noticeable increase in performance? Note that when I opened up the console, the heat sink was virtually buried in dust.

[GDJ]

It certainly won't hurt it at all. Less dust means better cooling.

The performance increase may be subtle, but it will be there. If nothing else, you kept your computer from damaging itself due to overheating (yep, that can happen).

[pxi]

Ideally use a can of compressed air to blow the dust out of the PC. Failing that, something like a clean paintbrush. A lot of people use hoovers to suck the dust out, but you run the risk of inducing static. It's a theoretical risk, I've never actually seen a computer damaged by it in my experience, but worth being aware of.

As to speeding the PC up, depends exactly on the chip you have, but a bit unlikely. Most modern processors will stop dead once they hit a thermal threshold to prevent physical damage to the chip. Some of the newest ones will drop the clock speed as temperature increases. However cleaning out the PC is most likely going to extend the usable life of the thing either way.

[fastaviationdata]

Me, I'm just using paint brush when cleaning my system unit. So the computer is 5 years old? If you want to speed up your computer, you must upgrade some of your parts like the processor, RAM and video card.

[The Destroyer]

I had this PC that would actually crash during KSP and other high-performance games when it went over 100C, so I had to close games to cool off at times. I dusted it, and uhhh

The fan was never on again

Wasn't dead either, just cool!

[Jones-250]

Do the Kerbal thing, mate! Build a dust-cooled computer, with plain ol´ dust in the pipes instead of liquid.

[pxi]

Frankly this would be a far more Kerbal way of cooling your PC: