Best way to clean Heatsinks and parts

[SweetDreamz]

Use rubbing alcohol with one of those cloth used to wipe glasses/lenses/diamonds.

[BeSStia]

i´m not sure what rubbing alcohol is, is it by any chance the same as isopropylic alcohol?
haha i don´t know if i spelled it correctly

[kylekwan]

I'm not sure what i'm doing is correct or not, i normally use my vacuum cleaner to clean it up. I give it a clean vacuum and if there's still remaining dust stuck there, i'll pull the host from the vacuum side and plug onto the blower side and give it a good "blow".

I think this will only be my opinion, what you guys think?

Thanks.

[SweetDreamz]

I think I misread your question then. You want to clean the heatsinks while it's still on the board right?

If so, then just use compressed air or something similar. Vacuum is usually not recommended due to static.

[BeSStia]

hahaha i was thinking of getting a compressed air bottle, i would be intrested in finding out what kind of pressure that has, and what circuit boards can take, even though the bottle says made for cleaning computer parts. Even so, the vacuum thingie seems a good place to start, i´ll gice it a shot, if your parts are ok then it means you´re not doing anything wrong one would guess. i´ve also seen some bottles with some kind of product in them, though i don´t know if THOSE are for boards, or just keyboards.

[lots]

I'd go with a can of compressed air. It will provide enough force to get all the dust out of the system. Dont worry about air pressure, electronics can take MUCH more pressure than what the compressed air cans can dish out :P I mean have you seen how much pressure you need to put some heatsinks on? :P

Just dont spray upside down, the quick change in temperature could be damaging :)

[SweetDreamz]

In the summer, I would just take the comp. outside and use a leafblower on it. Everything is nice and clean after that.

[singularity2006]

In the summer, I would just take the comp. outside and use a leafblower on it. Everything is nice and clean after that.

leaf blower... wtf?! hahaha.... geez, i'd blow the capacitors right off the board. Anyhow, I actually take a Q-tip or paper towel to the heat sink with alcohol gel (purell or whatever). It works wonders. Goo-gone is great for removing the crap that comes with OEM parts too to make way for AS5. Q-tip and alcohol gel is great for cleaning CPU dies too.

[lots]

I should clearify, that the compressed air approach is to dust the computer. If you are trying to clean the goo off the surface of the heatsink that makes contact with the CPU, then the rubbing alcohol and lent-less cloth recommendation from earlier will work. The advantage of the rubbing alcohol is that it evaporates quickly and breaks down most of the goo left over by old thermal paste or pads.

[neuromancer1978]

I always used unused soft paintbrushes. I have a whole range of them from big and bushy for general dust coverage removal, to small semi stiff for getting inside the heatsink for detailed removal. I am not sure if they generate static, but so far I have not experianced any kinds of problems. Compressed air is also a good choice but can get expensive if you do regular cleaning. Regular cleaning is a must!!! I lost my graphic workstation last summer because I kind of put it off for months and months, and one day right in the middle of rendering an image the computer fried...complete with that ozone smell. I lost everything, CPU, MB, RAM, Graphic Card, and the worst....my hard drives were fried...lost all my data. Backups were not recent either, at least 3 months gone. The fault?? Dust bunnies caused an electrical fault in the power supply. That is another thing.... clean EVERYTHING! Open the power supply and clean out that gunk.

Clean the slots, clean the connectors, clean the surfaces... everything is better than missing something and someday losing your $2000 system. Some of us learn this the hard way ;)

[BeSStia]

i just finished cleaning everything, i myself used brushes too, natural hair, not sintetic cause those DO generate static electricity... let me tell you that the heatsink from the vga card was disgunstingly dirty, so that was making some sort of greenhouse effect (?) raising temps a lot, i also removed the fan from the heatsink and cleaned it, also used some WD40 on it to lub a bit. The only thing i dind´t clean was the power source, should i open that up??? never done it before. and yeah that damn compressed air can be expensive for regular use, anyway i´m about to purchase a compressor and an airbrush cause i need it for other things as well so in the future i won´t need to purchase anymore of those cans fortunately.

One more thing i´ve always wondered... what´s the effect of cigarrete smoke on system? i supose none, since i´ve always smoked when working... i know it must sound pretty obsesive from my part... but i´m prrety obsesive when it comes to stupid facts like this, the more useless trivia i know the better i feel (?) :P

[lots]

Opening a PSU can be dangerous (electric shocks, which can injure you, and maybe more depending on how much of a charge has been built up..). PSUs will keep a charge for quite a while after you've shut them off and unplugged, so unless the system has been down for like a week or you've got a way to discharge the high capacity capacitors on the unit, I'd leave the innards alone. It also voids the warranty when you open up most units. The best solution here would be to use the compressed air cans with the straws to direct the airflow into the vents of the PSU (while off) to get all that pesky dust out. I find this works well on heatsinks and hard to reach corners of the case as well.

In fact I just use compressed air for pretty much everything ;P

[DaForce]

Quite simple.
Get this stuff
http://www.articsilver.com/arcticlean.htm
Its amazingly good for cleaning of thermal gunk. Acutally i just think its a bottle of orange oil type goo remover and the other bottle is similar to rubbing alochol.
But either way it works wonder.
As for cleaning the rest of the heatsink/computer... a bottle of compressed air is ideal!!
And a quick blast or 2 in the back of the PSU will clean that out nicely.
And as lots said... dont turn the can of compressed air upside down as it will blow ice cold air and probabaly water vapour/moisture as well, which aint so good.
Just be carefull not to blast air onto the fans and make them spin really fast, as this can often lead to them spinning much faster then what they were designed to do and cause them to wear down rather quick.
The compressed air is also good for cleaning out the filters on the front of your case.

Yeah and dont use a vacuum cleaner way to much risk of static and as for using a leaf blower.... thats just crazy you would end up blowing so much other crap INTO the case that it wouldnt be worth it.

[daraeill]

hahahahaha...leafblower....hell...just dunk the card in sulphuric acid...im sure it would remove the dust at least...LOL

[neuromancer1978]

Yeah, well when I said clean out the PSU, I didn't imply it was SAFE :D. LOL! I only did that a couple of times, when I looked inside the grills and didn't have a can of air. Trust me, I was seriously nervous, my parents were electrical enginners for the Navy and told me plenty of horror stories involving shocks.

As for cig smoke? Well the accumulation of dusty crap will increase more rapidly than a "clean room". I smoked around my computers, and they all needed regular cleaning because of it. Remember that a computer sucks everything through it eventually and even smoke has mass, and enough of it will collect.

[DaForce]

And not to mention your computer then stinks like shit!!

I do alot of tech support and often get "smokers computers" coming and they smell real bad and are often very very dusty.

[SweetDreamz]

hahahahaha...leafblower....hell...just dunk the card in sulphuric acid...im sure it would remove the dust at least...LOL

It works and I don't have to pay for compressed air cans...they're expensive. While this isn't sulphuric acid, it's close enough. (http://www.markusleonhardt.de/bilder/rechner11.jpg)

[whallz]

buy some pure isopropilic alcohol (not the alcohol-acetone mix)
and put the heatsink under that for a couple of minutes
you can conserve the isopropilic alcohol for another time, but
be careful to close it hermetically so it don't evaporates.
if you can't find isopropilic alcohol use some cotton and
common ethanol alcohol to clean it, this method requires some
patience to clean up all the different holes and parts of the heatsink.
if the heatsink it's still mounted onboard you could use
isopropilic alcohol but in a can, and you spray it quickly, but be sure
not to buy the one with acetone!

[DuttyFoot]

man my pc is so dusty its not even funny. i need to get me some of that compressed air once the semester ends. really cant afford a fried anything right now.

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