How often do you clean your system?

[Quantum]

I want to keep my system looking new, how often should it be cleaned out and with what?

[Castyles]

Once every three or six months unless you live in an abandoned, haunted, mansion or a desert full of sandstorms.

[Quantum]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Castyles:

Once every three or six months unless you live in an abandoned, haunted, mansion or a desert full of sandstorms.

lol thanks

[Illusion of Progress]

When it starts inhibiting temperatures (functional) or if it looks dustier than you want it to look (aesthetics).

Some don't care about the latter as much as others. As for the former, purely functionally speaking, it takes more buildup and/or over longer periods of time than some people may think think to really cause increased temperatures (in my experience).

It's all a tradeoff. Not letting it build up more makes cleaning it faster, but you also do it more often and also probably spend more time total doing it, with a cleaner looking PC being the difference. Everyone has different environments and preferences for how clean it needs to look, so what works for one, may not be good enough for another.

I don't have any side panels, tempered glass, or LEDs or RGB or any of that, so I don't care about keeping it looking perfectly new. I could do it once every four to six months and that's more than enough strictly functionally speaking, although it'd definitely look dusty in spots. Sometimes I give it quick but less thorough cleanings and others I spend a part of the day doing a more thorough tear down and deeper cleaning.

[r.linder]

Depends on where your computer is.

If it's often near pets, sitting on the carpet, or is in a dusty/dirty environment like a warehouse, it should be cleaned monthly. Pet hair in particular can really ruin your fans.

A clear indicator of when you need to clean it is when your temperatures start to run higher than normal and performance seems to be worse.

[Legenda Polskiego Esportu]

I clean it when I see that performance is falling down and temperatures rising up.

[plat]

My keyboard, I keep an eye on it consistently, so it's as-needed. For the PC, similar to what others have reported: every three months or so. I live in an old building with plenty of dust so I try not to let that gain a foothold anywhere.

[invision2212]

i clean my pc once a month and vacuum the intake vents weekly. if it didnt the pet hair would get out of control quickly.

[🦜Cloud Boy🦜]

If you want your PC to look new, you can clean it everyday. Or whenever you feel like there are dusts. There are no rules for when it should be cleaned.

As for the performance, little dusts won't affect performance. I never clean my PC. Probably once in a year or even less.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

LOL yea having a gaming PC in Iraq was fun; NOT!
OMG you can never keep them clean over there.

[UserNotFound]

For me, it's a twice yearly process, usually entails my disconnecting my PC from monitor, KB/mouse/peripheral devices, etc. I'd roll out my PC (it's on a stand with wheels/castors) to somewhere bright and airy, I'd use a clean brush (a small/medium sized paintbrush) and a can of compressed air to clear all those hard to reach areas with generous blasts of compress air.

That reminds me, my HTPC, the one I'm using now, is due for a thorough clean up soon.....just not today as I'm in a lazy rut at the moment.

[Set-115689]

Vacuum the outside about 1 time per month.

Blow out with an air compressor once every 6 months to a year. Never really gets that dusty except in the front vent area.

Low dust house I think.

[Electric Cupcake]

I dust them out once a year in Spring.

[timltimmy]

Once a year maybe. Sometimes more or less. :(

[kitt]

I cleaned my System once since November 2015. It was a rainy day, I ordered my 2nd but 1st internal SSD and installed it and while doing that I cleaned all the Fans and so on.

I don't see any change in temperatures, so it didn't matter much (even though the CPU Fan was quite dusty).

So yea, I probably only really clea it when I switch something.

[Andrius227]

Every 2 years or so, when i upgrade mobo/cpu/case. Cleaning is too much work.