Computer cleaning

How often do you clean the actual hardware of your components?
I personally wipe my entire laptop off at least once a week with a dry microfiber cloth. Microfiber cloths are fucking great, they clean all oils that accumulate on things like the mouse pad and can also be used to safely clean screens without fear of scratching them.

I NEVER use any kind of liquids, just a dry microfiber cloth, it will get all the dirt up without water and you take much less of a risk

Then at least once a month I clean the cloth itself by throwing it in a washing machine on "Hand Wash" mode (you can damage the microfibers if you clean them on a more aggressive setting) and then let it air dry

Oh user, you have so much to learn.

enjoy scratching your shit up

I use the piss of virgin boys

I just use the same method as the OP pic. Never had any problems.

I use salt water, the electrolytes form a coating over the circuit board that allows the electrons to flow faster. For drying I put my devices in the microwave.

And I thought I am the only one who does it this way

I just use a compressor

peeing on your computer is probably not a good idea, especially if its still plugged

I keep my computer turned upside down, that way dirt cannot fall onto the motherboard

I like the sweet burn. And I love fireworks and magic smoke. Is that a crime?

This. Been doing it this way for years and never broke anything.

Touch your vaccum cleaner aganist a metal object and clean your computer

For boards or contacts you could probably get away with 70/30 isopropyl alcohol/distilled water and wait for it to evaporate but 99% works best. But there's always the risk of other ingredients/impurities in the 70/30 shit.
I have 99% lab grade for special occasions above and 70/30 for everything else: monitors and lenses (with a microfiber), desk, mouse, keyboard.
Just don't use it on plexiglass or lucite. Otherwise, it cleans fucking everything. There's no reason to buy anything else.

Every 6 months or so I shoot some compressed air in places. I don't generally handle my electronics with Cheeto fingers so I usually don't have any tough gunk to remove.

That won't help unless it's a Kirby or something else with a metal casing.

What does help however, is touching a radiator or in Yurop the earth pins of a socket.

>with a damp paper towel
just fuck my wallet up user.

paper towels are rough. They will scratch plastic. That said, touchscreens are more scratch-resistant

cheeto fingers or not, human skin tends to just be naturally oilly and that oil will get all over your shit

I've never scratched anything, once, with a damp paper towel. I mean you can't have at your electronics like it's a scratchpad on a sponge but I doubt anyone uses a microfiber cloth in that manner either.

Its not that simple. Yeah, I'm sure you have been able to clean your shit fine, but that doesn't make up for the fact paper towels do contain rough wood fiber not suitable for delicate plastics. Its not worth the risk

are coffee filters meme or are they really that good?

Want to get blind from smelling that evaporated isopropyl shit.

100 percent is actually too flammable, thats why no store will carry 100 percent. It must be diluted in water or else its virtually an explosion waiting to happen, the most any store will sell you is 90 percent

I've never even scratched a screen with newspaper, this feels like unnecessary shit

When I feel like it, I clean it. It probably needs a good cleaning now, but I don't feel like turning it off.

never I just occasionally blow out the dust.

You don't need to clean this stuff.

You can drink the extra and get drunk as fuck from it too.

How often do you clean the dust out of your fans?

When problems occur. IE weird sounds or heat.

I finally cleaned my PC today for the first time since I built it in May 2011. Opened it up, removed all the casing, took out the video card, blasted everything with compressed air.

The difference is amazing, it's no longer like having a space-heater running under my desk. It runs as cool as it did when I first built it. Definitely a plus when the weather today and for the rest of the week is 40c+.

Isopropyl alcohol is not toxic. The main ingredient in rubbing alcohol is isopropyl, which you could actually drink and not get sick if not for the small amount of methanol added to prevent people from drinking for tax reasons or something.

Its a thing that started in prohibition era to prevent people from using cleaning alcohols or industrial-use alcohols as drinking alcohol, it stuck around to deter teenagers from buying rubbing alcohol and getting drunk without needing to show any ID. Although its mainly applies to ethanol used for non-drinking purposes. Isopropyl is naturally more toxic

There's this flarp-like shit they sell on Amazon called CyberClean that is awesome for getting all kinds of gunk out of your keyboard.

You fuckheads are confusing denatured alcohol and isopropyl alcohol. Denatured alcohol is ethyl alcohol with a denaturing agent such as methanol. Isopropyl alcohol is its own chemical. The proper IUPAC name is 2-propanol. If you drink isopropyl alcohol it will give you raging diarrhea.

Only when Speccy says it's running like a fire storm. I have yet to buy an air compressor due to a constant parade of bullshit sapping my funds to the bare metal. When I clean out my cases, I tend to reapply the thermal compound as well.

wut?

No.

This guy

is correct.

There are many types of "alcohols", chemically speaking. Ethanol, which is what people get drunk on, and also has many industrial uses, is a different chemical from isopropyl, also known as "rubbing alcohol", which is used as a cleaner and disinfectent. They are both different from methanol, which is known as "wood alcohol" and has industrial / racing fuel uses. Isopropyl is a poison and will make you quite ill if you drink it. Sometimes alcoholics will drink it in desperation when nothing else is available (Betty Ford story). Methanol is even more poisonous, and can cause blindness and death in fairly small amounts. Starting during prohibition, and continuing to this day, industrial ethanol is "denatured" in the USA (in other words made undrinkable) by adding methanol, because this doesn't affect most industrial uses yet makes it unusable for drinking purposes. Sometimes unscrupulous bootleggers used it to make booze anyway, sort of like drug dealers selling bad drugs cut with poisonous stuff today. After prohibition the "denaturing" practice continued because drinking alcohol had to have a special tax paid on it (still does). Of course booze is both legal and cheap so no one goes blind/dies anymore from drinking the denatured stuff, but it is estimated that several thousand people did back during prohibition.

Well, at least there's plenty of those on 8ch.

Tell that to the 50% tax or more in liberal shitholes. Not to mention most hard liquors are already $15 and up for a litre.

Is driver an alcohol?

Does that actually completely fucking ruin a motherboard? I mean not scratching it up with a big brush but just dipping it in water, what's the big deal with that?

Why not just use canned air or a DataVac?

1.) That image was a joke you moron
2.) Technically speaking the only reason why water kills electronics is because of shorting of various circuits. If you get a PCB completely submerged in water, AS LONG AS THERE IS NO POWER GOING TO IT, you can most likely still use it granted you wait for it to dry completely before plugging it into anything

And there were no electrolytes/conductive debris in that water - meaning, it'd have to be distilled water.

Hm. I have some old computers. Maybe I will try this one day.

I use an air compressor once every month or two. I hit all entry points and any gaps, and it makes a big difference. I actually neglected my computer for many years before I started doing it, and the first time I blasted it, it was a freaking dust storm.

Instead of spending hours taking everything apart, I just hit it with the compressor, and it makes a huge difference.

Drinking isopropyl will fucking kill you. Drinking methyl alcohol will make you blind. Denatured alcohol usually ends up in the hands of undergrads that don't check how many ppm of isopropyl, methyl, and everything else is in there. One of the guys in a lab I was in almost killed themselves drinking industrial denatured alcohol. Even that stuff isn't safe to drink.


It all makes sense now.

ack that really came out shitty. tbh all of us almost committed a heaven's gate because we thought it was safe to drink.

no

I'm a hardcore gamer so I like to make sure ally equipment is really clean. You can use soap and water if you're a pleb gamer, but for that crisp out of the box performance you really need to drunk the whole thing in some industrial grade acid.

Actually no, it's because anhydrous ethyl alcohol is more difficult to produce, you have to dry it off with molecular sieves or something that reacts with water but not with alcohol like magnesium filings. You can't get it through distillation, because alcohol has a lower boiling point at 95.6% than at 100%.

You can dunk an old motherboard in distilled water and it will be safe once it's totally dry. The problem with water is that the slightest speck of salt will make it conductive.

microfiber cloth moisturized with a vinegar/water mixture. Best way (and cheapest) way to clean your screen. The only downside is it stinks for about half an hour.

I use a 50% mixture of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide and water.

Why the fuck do they do this? I thought alcohol damages protective coatings on screens. Should I try to find wipes with a non-alcohol solution?