how do you clean your system?

So my system was getting its routine clean out today which made me think.. how do you clean yours?

I use my Kirby hover set up to blow and a soft paint brush on certain areas.
this is the way ive done it for years and never a problem.

heres it is after its been cleaned..

love the size of that cooler

my method is similar, a can of compressed air, hoover, and a paint brush

I use Hoover, comp. air and a small paint brush, too.
But I also use q-tips and nailpolish remover to clean the fans.
When I do the BIG cleaning, I completly remove everything that's possible from the case and give it a nice warm shower

Martin wrote:

love the size of that cooler

yea it keeps the 4790k nice and cool even at 4.6Ghz 24/7.
Ive had it running 4.8Ghz and I still feel theres room for more but for 24/7 use I dropped back to 4.6Ghz.

hm, never seen a psu shroud before...
looks interesting.

Nik wrote:

hm, never seen a psu shroud before...
looks interesting.

Yea Nick its one of the things that attracted me to the case. It's great for hiding the cables coming from the psu and also hides the HDD bays

and keeps of the dust as well, doesn't it?

I'm going to switch off my HTPC / Server tomorrow and give it a clean after reading this, its not been turned off or opened in 3 years since I built it / moved into the house! could be interesting!

Nik wrote:

and keeps of the dust as well, doesn't it?

I think it does help to a degree. I do blow out the bottom of the case during cleaning.
my only gripe with my case is I think the front dust filter is a poor design. I will take some pictures later and explain.

Martin wrote:

I'm going to switch off my HTPC / Server tomorrow and give it a clean after reading this, its not been turned off or opened in 3 years since I built it / moved into the house! could be interesting!

I hope you take some before and after pictures..

Martin wrote:

I'm going to switch off my HTPC / Server tomorrow and give it a clean after reading this, its not been turned off or opened in 3 years since I built it / moved into the house! could be interesting!

yea, please take some pictures, might be really interessting.

Well finally got time tonight to shut down my HTPC / Server and open it up for a spring clean. So I was armed with my best PC cleaning tool kit. A can of compressed air, some baby wipes, a paint brush, a tube of Arctic silver 5 and my trusty screw driver.

The machine has the following specs:
Coolermaster Elite 110 Mini ITX Case
Corsair VS350 350w PSU
Asus AM1i-A Mini ITX Motherboard (AMD Socket AM1)
AMD Athlon 5350 Quad Core 2.05GHz Overclocked to 2.2GHz
8GB (2x4GB) Crucial Ballistix SPORT DDR3 1600MHz
60GB Sandisk SSD (OS)
2TB Seagate 7200RPM SATA (DATA)
Logitech K400+ Wireless keyboard with track pad
Panasonic Viera 50" LED TV

The machine sits under my TV and runs 24/7. Its main use is by my Wife and daughter for streaming Netflix, YouTube, it also has all our previous DVD collection ripped to it. Along with family pictures and videos and our Music collection. We also use the machine as a file server to serve out all our files on the network to the rest of the machines. It is also used for web browsing in front of the TV

The machine was built around 3 years ago and has ran, constantly since without being opened or cleaned!

This is where the machine lives, under my TV in my living room. note the dust on the front panel (this gets a wipe down regularly but the majority of it is now embedded in the foam dust filter.

removed from its home and disconnected.

The machine originally ran a copy of Windows 8 and then 8.1 PRO before the free upgrade to 10 Pro

Inside surprisingly clean, it turns out that dust filter does its job very well! (Trusty VS350 PSU was the only part reused from another machine when I built it)

Tiny little Mini ITX motherboard (Asus AM1i-A)

Front cover removed.

large 120mm fan (as supplied with the case)

inside of the front panel

Front mesh removed

The dusty side of the dust filter!

After a quick rinse in the sink.

Trusty baby wipe for the front fan frame and blades all cleaned up

nice and shiny like new again!

At its heart the AMD Athlon 5350 (2.05GHz) Overclocked to 2.2GHz

CPU Cooler surprisingly clean!

Fan removed, hardly any dust on the heat sink its self, however the little 40mm fan runs at a low RPM shifting hardly any air, you could actually run it passive, its a pretty cool running CPU.

Not much dust even on the underside of the blades

A quick wipe out of the inside of the case and a blow with compressed air and its back in its home.

looking like new again, hopefully another 12-24 months hassle free running and it will be ready for an upgrade

I was hoping for some interesting pics or a video of just how bad the machine was but it turns out that big dust filter on the front really does a good job of keeping the machine clean. I think also due to the machine being run in a closed cabinet there isn't a great deal of dust there to be sucked in (Must try harder next time!)

that didint look to bad Martin considering its not been done in a few years.
Just shows how good a case it is.