Clean Your Computer's Airways
Next to moisture, dust is the second biggest environmental threat to your electronics. Dust builds up, blocks airflow over heat sinks and in extreme cases can actually carry a current. Now lots of people blow out their PC periodically with canned air. When we work on PC's here, we use an air compressor. This allows us to clean much deeper using much higher flow and pressure. Here's an example mid-size tower with just a few fans moving air though the case. This is about three months worth of buildup in a home office that admittedly doesn't get vacuumed more than perhaps once a month. Here is the CPU heat sink. Keep in mind the function of the heat sink: The fan pulls air across the fins. The heat exchange occurs between the moving air and the surface area of the heat sink. In this case, the dust buildup is actually blocking the fins of the heat sink reducing heat exchange efficiency. Dust similarly affects airflow in other areas such as graphics cards and power...