How Often Should You Clean Your PC
Just like your peripherals (mouse, mousepad, keyboard) your PC needs to be cleaned from time to time to ensure that your CPU and GPU are not getting choked up in dust resulting in thermal throttling and damage.
The intervals at which you should plan your PC cleaning depend on different factors but today we will talk about some general rules of when it might be time for spring cleaning for your hardware.
General Advice
No matter what kind of PC you have it would be a good idea to look inside at least once every 2-3 months to make sure that no excessive amounts of dust or other foreign objects have made it into the PC case.
You might think that once every 2-3 months might be a bit excessive but generally in this period you will notice a decent amount of dust already building up on your case fans and components.
Dusting your fans off every other month is quite easy and will take only a couple of minutes, meanwhile if you would ignore your PC and clean it only once a year the process will be long and tedious with a lot of disassembling involved.
The Quality of Your PC Case
A big factor in how often your PC will need to be cleaned is what kind of PC case you are housing your components in. If you have a very airflow-friendly case like the Lian Li Lancool 215 with many vents and open areas dust will enter your case faster and will settle on your components easier.
You should make it a rule for yourself to check the inside of your PC every month so you can maintain cleanliness and keep the temperatures down if you have such a case.
On the other hand, if you have a closed case with less airflow (which is not recommended) you can fall back to the general rule of checking every 2-3 months since not a lot of dust can enter your case anyways.
Another factor related to PC cases and cleaning is whether your case has dust filters because these will be able to prolong the time that your PC can go without maintenance. Most quality cases do come with filters but in case yours does not it might be time for an upgrade.
Case Airflow
Another variable that will change how often you will need to clean your machine is based on what kind of case airflow you are currently using. Depending on your case fan configuration you can end up with different types of pressure inside of your case.
If you have a negative case pressure (where your case fans exhaust more air than they take in) you risk getting a lot more dust into your enclosure at the cost of better temperatures. This will result in needing more dusting and cleaning along the way for your PC but might be a cheap way to keep your temperatures down if you do not have enough case fans for other types of airflow.
Environment
The biggest possible determining factor in how often you will need to clean your PC is how clean the environment around your PC is. If you keep your PC on your table in a room that is not dusty the chances that you will need to clean it more than 1 time in 2-3 months is slim.
If you however keep your PC on the floor in a smoking environment, with lots of fluffy pets you will more than likely have to clean your PC once (or more than once) a month to maintain a working machine.
When Do You Absolutely Need to Clean Your PC?
Our general requirements focus on maintaining your rig clean but if you want to do the absolute minimum in terms of cleaning then the only time you need to clean it is when you notice temperature increases with your monitoring software that lead to FPS drops and freezes in games.
Although low effort this approach is not recommended because at that point in time you will need to do more than just dust your hardware (change thermal paste, disassemble parts, etc) which will end up costing you more time and money than would otherwise be needed for the process.