I just simply hate doing it. In the last 4 years of owning this desktop i've only cleaned it once and it was a few months ago.
I built my Windows 7 computer on May 31. Today I received another 8G of RAM so I had an occasion to go inside the case. MEIN GOTT! what a mess. I'm glad I had a reason to go in there.
I took the bottom cover off a late 2009 Macbook Laptop I bought second Hand sense its accessible and I checked the fan and it looks brand new inside.I Imagine there not prone to that much dust like desk tops.So other then that I clean the screen and dust the keys once a week.I hate dust,finger prints and scratches,So everything i own looks New.
To be honest with you, actually i hate taking my PC down because one of my hard drives is dying, every time i move my Desktop tower a bit and shake my HDD it starts doing a ticking noise, like if the reading head is failing. The only way i can fix it is taking the HDD out completely and shaking it until it works HAHAHAHAHA. BTW, just in case anyone of you wanted to know, the reason why i dust out my PC a few months ago was because i saw some really high temps on the CPU, nothing dangerous but still pretty high, so after dusting it out and i did not even apply new paste the temps dropped almost 10 C.
How often your pc needs a blow depends I think on where it is. Mine is in a corner room that gets no traffic to kick up dust, and it's on a table in the corner. I rarely need to dust the outside. After 5 years I popped the side panel on my XP Dell and found minimal dust lying on the flat surfaces. The fan was clear. On the other hand a high traffic area where you can see dust floating in the sun light, should get weekly attention.
My XP got dusted out yesterday after about 15 months of not doing it. It was not that bad despte living in a dusty country. I try to have it done about once a year. Bo
Every 6 months, should be dustier than it is I had a creative Audigy Platinum Ex sound card that took up two Blanking covers but only one slot on the mother board. I updated the computer to a to a creative X-Fi sound card. Which uses one slot and one Blanking spot which leaves one Blanking cover open.
I have to clean the cooling vent on the main laptop I use every few months. I only do it when I notice my laptop starting to run hotter than usual. Fortunately, all I have to do is remove a few screws to get access to the fan and the vents. A laptop I am currently fixing was shutting down after about 10 minutes use when not getting plenty of ventiation. In this case the fan and vents were easily accesable and when I opened it up, there was a huge amount of dusk collected inside the vents. I removed this, and now the laptop doesn't overheat.
I really appreciate all the participation. Looks like most people clean their out within 6 months. And I personally think that's good advice (it's what I do too).
I actually dust out my computer about once a month. It doesn't really collects a lot of dust since all entry points/grates are either blocked or have a dust filter. Still, I do open it every month to remove what little dust there is.
I do a dust off when I see dust on the intake vent. I do a take down and blow out about once a quarter. Depends on CPU temp, and about of dust on the heat sinks, fans.
Hahahaha the computer seems a bit snappier on certain things such as booting up Windows Desktop but overall i can't really feel any difference. The HDD is the bottleneck, i ordered a WD Velociraptor.
I dusted out my computer (tower) this morning and couldn't believe the amount of dust that was blown out especially in the fans. It was over 6 months when I last dusted it out but I think it will be every couple of months from now on. The system is running quieter since this dusting.
