Most of the time on older computers they will seem to run slower, ping is spiking in the high hundreds, or the game gets choppy. This may be due to dust within the computer itself.

I would suggest to anyone that has been running a computer for over a year without opening its hood to give it a good check thru. Dust will accumulate on your computers fans/heatsinks/hardware and to get the best from your machine this dust should be removed.
Most people will be worried about airflow or maybe giving a poor circuit board an electric shock so heres my advice:
1. you will need some Q-tips and canned air (bought from staples, circuit city, most major supermarkets, or computer retailer)
2. a phillips screwdriver, (phillips is the pointed tip screwdriver vs a regular flat tipped screwdriver)
3. when first starting out Turn OFF the computer! I go even further and remove the power cord from the computer itself.
4. using the phillips open only one side of the computer, if the box of your computer is all one piece thats not a problem. after the screws are removed most computer sides will slide off and you then can lift it up.
5. BEFORE going any further touch the side of the exposed computer frame with BOTH hands in order to discharge any ELECTROSTATIC on your body. if you have a wrist grounding cable, at this time would be best to put it on and attach to the computer frame.
6. Now that you are looking at the interior of you computers box you can see how the wires are placed and your hardware. You need not touch any of the hardware cards at all. the Canned Air is best suited and just spray each hardware piece from 6 to 8 inches away.
7. Dust bunnies may be present and in order not to nudge or bump a sensitive piece of equipment with your hand just stab the dust bunny with one of your Qtips.
8. Once you are happy with the spraying off of the hardware use the remaining Qtips to wipe off the blades of all your fans. It will be tedious but the less dust on them the better.
9 Heat sinks will needed to be wiped with a Qtip as well between its girders. "Some heatsinks will just need to be can aired". Whats a HEATSINK? a heatsink is pretty much a chunk of metal (copper or aluminum) that is designed to pull heat off from your mother board or fans. It will typically look like a deep groved piece of metal ||||||||| from the side or a fancy looking metal spiral surrounding your fan.
10. lastly before putting the hood back on the computer check the fans intake area for dust as well.

Thank you for your time, If you have more questions or some tidbit more to add please do.

Odebram

This is pretty useful information. I hadn't cleaned my computer for about 4 years and I took it to Corpse's house. When I said something about not ever cleaning it, he said we could clean it there. We took it into his garage and used his leaf-blower on it. We totally owned those dust bunnies.

I should actually clean my computer again here pretty soon.

Thanks Odebram!

You guys are just full of good info as of late.Great post sure there plenty of dirty pc's on the n00bfest.

Also id like to add if there is a extreme case of nastiness on a video card or sound card you can take a tooth brush and dish washing liquid and clean the shit out of it in the sink. Wow that was a long sentence. Or just throw them in a dishwaher.Just let it completely dry before reinstalling.

I used to stuff boards at a electronics company and when the boards were finished being soldered we would throw them in a dishwasher.Perfectly harmless as long as you let them dry.

Are you serious?

Yes i am,i have washed a geforce gtx,9700pro and 9800pro this way.

wow..i never knew that lol

You might want to make sure to use cold water and not used the built-in drying feature if your dishwasher has one.

Heat = damage

ya, ive been looking in my case (its right next to my face) and keep meaning to clean it. but, I keep doing other things with the spray cans :)

I know mines gettin' a fine layer of crap on it. It's about time to run to sams and get a couple of of them air cans eh Gman?

It's not water that damages electronic equipment. It's the electrical current traveling through the water. No power=no damage. Once it's dry, theres no harm done.

Yes, as odd as it sounds, you can actually WASH electronics.

Haha..man that is awesome..

Silly n00b.

H2O is actually a very poor conductor of Electricity. Everyday water (such as that you get from a tap) contains more than just H2O. There are tons of microscopic impurities which are what actually conducts the electricity. :shock:

i have never opened up my comp so i guess im gonna open it up tomorrow i am gonna clean it out

correct. pure 1000000% perfect water does not conduct electricity

The positive ions in the water conduct it!