Best Household Items to Use for PC Cleaning
Keeping your setup clean is important because that way you know your mouse, mousepad, keyboard, and headphones will serve you for a long time without needing to be replaced. The same principles apply to the main component of your setup, your PC.
Keeping your PC clean will ensure that your main components like the CPU and GPU do not thermal throttle, reducing your performance and increasing the chances of something breaking permanently. Cleaning your PC usually requires specialized tools like compressed air cans or dusters but it can also be done without needing to buy anything special.
Household Items That Can Be Used for Cleaning
The process of cleaning your PC without better tools will be a bit more tedious, but if you do not want to spend money or have to wait to acquire what you need then this might just be the way to give your PC a spring cleaning.
Microfiber Cloth – You can find these anywhere and usually there is at least one of them in each house. You can use it to wipe surfaces, wipe fans blades that might be covered in dust, wipe heatsinks, etc. A universal tool.
Painting or Makeup Brush – If you have any sort of smaller brush it can be used to get the dust out of smaller crevices. It can also be used to dust off fans and heatsinks where dust usually accumulates the most. We would recommend you have a hard and soft brush for different needs while cleaning the PC.
Screwdriver Set – Because you cannot just blow the dust off like with a can of compressed air a lot of the time you will need to physically take off the fans and heatsinks and that is pretty much impossible without a screwdriver. If you cannot find any screwdrivers in your house you can also use a small pocket knife or a pair of scissors instead of a screwdriver but you should be a lot more careful because you can also injure yourself if an accident happens.
Items You Should Stay Away From
There are also household items you should stay away from when trying to clean your PC since they might cause damage to the components and render your computer useless.
Blow Dryers – You might think that a blow dryer might be a good replacement for a special PC duster machine but that is not the case. A blow dryer produces a lot of static therefore it is not smart to bring it close to electronics. Doing it once or twice while your PC is shut down might not kill your parts but you are always running the risk of it happening.
Vacuum Cleaners – The same advice from the blow dryers applies here. Vacuum cleaners create a lot of static and might also be too strong for PC parts ripping something out and rendering your PC useless. Just use a wipe and spare yourself the troubles.
Household Cleaners – A lot of these products have substances that do not play well with electronics. Use dry wipes and dry brushes since this is the safest method. If you do want to clean the case exterior then wet wipes or other solutions might be fine. Just make sure when spraying or applying said solution that there is no mesh surface through which it might get inside of your computer case.