Blower to clean PC

C

CapriAnupam

Adept
I had been cleaning my PC with the blower of my vacuum cleaner and it had been working great for me so far.

I know many people will advise me against it, but I use the blower from far, and don't use it for long duration.

Since many years now, I haven't been able to clean my PC... been lazy, and then my brother took our vacuum cleaner away too. So, I have nothing to clean my PC.

I searched a bit, and found that now, there are blowers available, which are meant for cleaning PCs. Is this true? Are these blowers good? If yes, please suggest options which I can buy.

Really need to clean the PC, as it has accumulated a lot of dust over the years. As posted in another post today, I recently lost a hard drive, which just died abruptly. Don't know if dust can be the reason for it. Anyways, I plan to buy a new hard drive for the system, but before using it in the system, I want my system to be clean and dust free.

Don't want to go for canned air, as it is costly, and I think it won't be sufficient too.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 
yes blowers work very well to clean and you can try using dust filters ahead of intake fans to reduce build up + positive pressure ( more intake fans vs exhaust). If you live in a humid area then this dust + humidity can lead to corrosion.

I use this one, but probably any leaf blower should do. Its too powerful, i use slowest and 2nd slowest speeds.
Make sure to block your fans ( cpu / case /gpu ) from spinning else it can cause damage.

 
Like others said, just get a powerful blower and dust off every six months or so. And always do it when humidity is low like really low. Otherwise it's absolutely pointless.
PS: I bought a stanley one few years ago. More or less powerful enough. Works fine for non sticky dust. To this day i have not figured out how to rid of sticky dust, unless one puts the cabinet under shower.
 
Tracer_Bullet said:
yes blowers work very well to clean and you can try using dust filters ahead of intake fans to reduce build up + positive pressure ( more intake fans vs exhaust). If you live in a humid area then this dust + humidity can lead to corrosion.

I use this one, but probably any leaf blower should do. Its too powerful, i use slowest and 2nd slowest speeds.
Make sure to block your fans ( cpu / case /gpu ) from spinning else it can cause damage.

Click to expand...
Thanks a lot for this suggestion. It looks like a great budget friendly choice. I also saw it recommended on some other forum. Will order this one.

How can I block the fans? And how do I block the PSU fan, coz don't have physical access to it, as it is packed inside.

sauravghosh said:
Like others said, just get a powerful blower and dust off every six months or so. And always do it when humidity is low like really low. Otherwise it's absolutely pointless.
PS: I bought a stanley one few years ago. More or less powerful enough. Works fine for non sticky dust. To this day i have not figured out how to rid of sticky dust, unless one puts the cabinet under shower.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion.

I think sticky dust might be a problem in places of high humidity. Thankfully, I don't have this problem at my place.

I guess if the sticky dust is not on some electronic component, and is on the chassis or somewhere, it can be cleaned off with a damp microfiber cloth?
 
CapriAnupam said:
How can I block the fans? And how do I block the PSU fan, coz don't have physical access to it, as it is packed inside.
Click to expand...
So we need to block fans that are near the blower only. Airflow is directional more or less.
Use fingers or pencil or something like that when blowing over the fan.

PSU - dunno, maybe dont do it or do it briefly at lowest setting and perhaps keep some distance.

I think what we don't want is for the fan to move too fast (could break) or to move in reverse ( maybe sends back current and can cause damage ? ). Not an expert.
 
Tracer_Bullet said:
So we need to block fans that are near the blower only. Airflow is directional more or less.
Use fingers or pencil or something like that when blowing over the fan.
Click to expand...
Okay, thank you. Will do that. I also read that you can use tape to block the fans, but I don't know exactly how that will work. Will have to watch some videos about it.
Tracer_Bullet said:
PSU - dunno, maybe dont do it or do it briefly at lowest setting and perhaps keep some distance.

I think what we don't want is for the fan to move too fast (could break) or to move in reverse ( maybe sends back current and can cause damage ? ). Not an expert.
Click to expand...
Yea, I have read about this. Many people say it might cause damage to the fans if they rotate too fast, or maybe because of some current. I am not an expert too.

To be honest, I didn't know about this before, and so with the vacuum blower, I just blew over the fans too, and even put the blower close on the PSU fan, and lot of dust came out from inside it. Thankfully, no damage was done till date, and computer used to work great. But yea, now that I know about it, will be careful to take precautions.

I was searching for blowers, and also noticed that nowadays there are electrical compressed air blowers too, and these might be good to clean PCs, but they were on the costly side.
 
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