Cleaning a laptop/desktop - What are your experiences?

PC: Take everything apart. Take it outside and give it a good amount of compressed air. Use the vacuum to dust off the inside of the case and suck the dirt out of the PSU.

Laptop: Unscrew the bottom cover. I believe there exist many different designs but in my case I had to remove the fan with two screws. Behind it there is the radiator part that usually collects large amounts of dust, looking like a thick felt cloth (!) that you can just peel off.

Edit: I just found a fitting image... enjoy

I take all the fins off the CPUs and wash them with water.

Fans I take off, and wipe clean with a rag.

Everything else I blow off with DRY compressed air.

For laptops, I make sure to pop off the keyboard and get under it as well ( depending on what model, this can be tricky .

Neglected PC

Thanks .

Btw, from the bottle, it does say that it's highly explosive which worries me, is this normal?

Those are some real nasty pics you've got there...

Lol yes. Compressed air will explode under heat.

i had to get my laptop repaired a couple months ago, in doing so, i pulled litterally a wall of dust that had covered the gpu fan vents. At first i thought it might have been some sortof cloth, but it just fell apart, so it was just dust. now i plan to do a cleaning every 6 months, my laptop is running waaayy cooler now thanks to that cleaning. laptops however can be a pain in the ass. I took my friends apart to clean/fix a broken fan, but can't reassemble because the cable ribbions connecting the keyboad to the motherboard is just insanely short, and getting one in tends to pop another back out. it's extremly frustrating to deal with that crap.

Uncompressed air will 'explode' if heated enough and contained in a pressure vessel.

Compressed gas can contain a huge amount of energy, which is generally not a good thing to release in rapid and uncontrolled ways. Assuming you're not trying to stick a knife in them, or hitting them up with a torch, then you are generally safe. Biggest hazard comes from accidentally crushing them and sending them flying, or them aiding in the spread of fire in your house is burning down.

Big thing to watch out for is the compressed gas getting overly cold from use. If you get a 6 pack, don't use them one at a time. Unbox them all and swap between two or three if you need to use a lot. You really don't want to be spraying your electronics with cold gas, especially if you are in a reasonably high humidity area.

Always amuses me when I see someone playing paintball or something with a CO2 tank, and then puts an insulator wrap on to 'keep it warm' so it will shoot better. Sadly their eyes tend to glaze over when you mention ideal gas law and such.

When blowing it, it seems that it's not only gas, but I assume that it's part of the product, is this safe?

Liquid should not be coming out - make sure you keep the can upright and don't hold the button down, use short bursts. I don't think the liquid should cause any significant problems beyond making the dust a bit harder to remove, just don't get it on you - it's extremely cold and may give you a burn. It's not a very good idea to cool down your expensive electronics in this way, though it can be useful to detect overheating components when designing your own electronic circuits. In such cases the can is designed to let the liquid out.

It hopefully goes without saying that you shouldn't breathe the gas in, either!

Always amuses me when I see someone playing paintball or something with a CO2 tank, and then puts an insulator wrap on to 'keep it warm' so it will shoot better. Sadly their eyes tend to glaze over when you mention ideal gas law and such.

Keeping it warm is a perfectly valid method of maintain Pressure. With each shot, you're reducing n, which then results in a proportionate decrease in P. The only other variable to play with is Temperature, since volume is typically relatively constant, and R is, by definition, constant.

The irony though is that by insulating the tank, you're actually accomplishing the opposite, because as the pressure decreases, so too does the temperature of the gas. By insulating the tank, you're only maintaining that lower temperature. All in all, I really doubt it makes a substantial difference in the performance of the gun.

Short of actively heating the tanks, physically damaging them, or overfilling them, there's little you can do to cause a catastrophic rupture.

That being said, the nitrous bottle in my old Trans Am actually had an active heater. Of course, it was a pressure regulated heater, and the tank had a safety blow-off valve in case of dangerous over-pressure, so I'm certainly not advocating similar use on paintball guns.

it does say that it's highly explosive which worries me, is this normal?

Don't worry, that only applies in California.

You don't want to blow compressed air deeper into crevices (don't stick it to the outside vents of the laptop and blow inward - not a good idea ).
You need to take apart the laptop carefully (download the .pdf manual for your laptop, they have detailed instructions for repair and for replacement part numbers). Each laptop is different. Desktops are easier to clean.

I've taken apart my parents' laptops to fix stuff from time to time, but not being an expert and because everything is crammed in so tightly, I've accidentally damaged them in minor ways (down arrow key no longer works on one of them. The videocamera doesn't work on the other. Neither feature was used much anyway).

Sometimes videocard overheating occurs for reasons other than dust - my videocard (in a desktop) had a flaw in it that makes the oil evaporate from around the fan, so the fan slows down and can't pull the heat off fast enough - I have to re-oil it about every six months (and I dust out the desktop at the same time, while I'm in there). That's rarer though.

Desktops are a whole lot easier, since there is plenty of room to work, and desktop cases are easy to open.

With both my mom and dad's laptops, when I want to get inside the case, I have to take off the keyboard and the entire front face the keyboard is in, disconnecting the keyboard and touchpad and such - it's a multi-step almost hour-long process to take it apart and put it back together. With my desktop, I basically click a button, and one wall of the case slides off, and I have access to the entire thing - a 5 minute clean job, 15 if I'm oiling the videocard.

Make sure you have tiny screwdrivers to unscrew the screws - don't try to cram large screwdrivers into small screwheads. You're looking for ones larger than eyeglass screwdrivers, but smaller than construction screwdrivers - they aren't expensive and you're local Ace Hardware or Lowes will probably have a set.

If you plan to do this regularly, see if you can get a deal on compressed air. I bought a 6-pack off Amazon for $23, so it worked out to about $4 a can. Each can has lasted awhile - Amazon said I ordered it two years ago, and I'm on my 4th of the 6th cans (one can was defective and I threw it out, but it was still a good deal).

I was nervous the first couple times I did so (and still am a little when it comes to laptops), but hey, if something breaks, that's the cost of education - fear of damaging something shouldn't discourage you from attempting to do so, and you'll learn and gain practical skills through attempting to do what you've never done before.

Both of my parents' laptops overheat when watching netflix for too long, because they are cheaper laptops (<$500) and are in use throughout the day with little rest for them.

There's little that can be done to 'fix' that, except to notice when it's heating up too much and close the lid of the laptop and flip the thing upside down to let it cool off. You could also get a good cooling pad to help vent the laptop to pick up the slack of a weaker fan - we've done that about three times, but the cooling pads all broke after a month or two. I think they were cheaper $10-$15 bargain ones, so maybe the more expensive ones last longer.