Keep Those PC’s Clean!

Instead of compressed air, I use a large blusher brush. It works just as well for me. Obviously don't go 'borrowing' your wife/girlfriend's blusher brush. Just ask her nicely if she can pick one up for you.

ID, your cablegami could do with working on. Don't know if that's how it looks now, but you'll get much better airflow if your cables are tidied out of the way.

I like to keep mine tidy too.    

Yep! One should clean out their PC at least every 3 months IMO, more often is even better though. I use a small air compressor to clean mine out, buying those cans of air is way too expensive in the long run.  

More often for some depending on if you have pets, your cooling system etc. I do mine once every month or 2.. 2 cats.. non filtered fans. If i was running positive air pressure I would have to do it even more often.

move the page file, libraries, and temp folders to a platter drive. also, disable hibernation.

Ditto, x3 cats.  

I've got 35.5 left on my 120GB ssd.

40 gig user folder, compliments of game data.

lol.....using a unused brush would be recommended. adding foundation powder to your system might be counter productive

Please elaborate. I've lost track of what Mikey calls the mishmash of functions, but I've long relied on being able to put my (non-mobile) rig to bed and wake it up with my desktop just where I left it.

The only problems that I've noticed are with resource hogs like a game and picky network stuff like an Outlook connection to an IMAP server. Am I unknowingly choking my swap file, cluttering my registry, or something like that?

My main concern was someone having a pissed off wife/girlfriend after they discovered their blusher brush covered in fluff. But you also make a valid point, lol.

Cleaning your laptop is also a good idea (although it is a lot of work (damn screws) to do).

My 2 year old lappy was on the verge of a "baked" CPU before I gave it a cleaning with compressed air. Now it's as cool as it was when new.

My sister-in-law brought me her desktop PC when she thought it was broke. It wouldn't start or anything. I took the cover off.

She'd had it about 5 years or more.

She also has 3 (maybe four cats) and a dog.

I could have made a whole other cat from the hair I found inside the tower. Everything was coated, matted, and covered with it.

If that wasn't bad enough, I grabbed my can of air.....

I don't know what I was thinking.

I really don't.

The first blast was like...it was like the feline version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You know at the end when all that stuff comes swirling out of the ark like a nightmare tornado? Picture it with nothing but cat hair, dust, and dander. And I'm the guy standing right over it with his face practically in it.

After cursing the cats and myself I went and got my industrial back-pack vacuum cleaner.

I will never own a cat.

I used this guide here.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows-7-and-ssds-setup-secrets-and-tune-up-tweaks/2910

No one ever does -- cat's own people.  People don't own cats.

I have to drag my desktop into the garage and turn loose the air compressor on it about every 3 or 4 weeks. The HAF932 moves a lot of air and the dust builds up quick. I regularly do my laptop as well but so far I haven't pulled it apart to do it.

so true

You just made my argument for me.

Cats.

phht.

Despite the mask, Smedley (aka "The curmudgeon of the cul-de-sac") is caught polluting the atmosphere in SC... creating "Dusty Faces, Polluted Places".

Also a good time to make sure all those little fans are actually still spinning if you don't have software rpm monitors on any of them.  (Don't go sticking anything in there while the machine is plugged in though... )

If you have an UPS you'll likely NEED Hibernation [I do]...and the hiberfil.sys is 9 gig.

I have the page limited to 3 gig.  It's apparently preferred to be on the sys drive [the quicker one].

Leaves me with 4/5ths of eff-al left in 60gig....so my next one will be 256 ..... that way I can also dump all my FSX scenery files, etc on and reduce some stutter.

Removing bottlenecks always shows up more.  The GTX590 isn't one...but drive reading is....;p

jafo, having the page file on a platter drive does no harm. with the amount of ram you have, you'll notice no difference having the page file on a drive other than the sys drive. also, i have a UPS and hibernation isn't needed here.

speaking of your 590, i just got off the phone with a guy who is buying a rig that is the best one i've built yet. intel i7-2700K, 32 gigs of corsair vengenace ram, 240 gig corsair force gt ssd, 2 wd black 2 tb hdd's, corsair obsidian 800D case, asus maximus iv Z68 mobo, corsair H80 cooler, and 2 radeon 7970 vid cards. that's going to be one fun rig to build.  $3950 worth of fun.

he bought one from Cyberpower in December. they're supposedly one of the better online companies to buy custom rigs from but if his rig was an example of their work, they aren't that good. his rig wouldn't power on when he took delivery. plus, they charged him $100 for a "custom wiring" job that looked like a 5 year old kid did. he sent it back and got all his money returned except the $100 wiring fee.

I need to clean my PC sometime soon. I don't remember the last time I actually opened it. I think it was January or Feburary in 2011. Man I wonder how much dust has accluminated in there.

Mine needs it though...;)

If I dump all my FSX onto the C I expect to see performance improvement [as people whine it even MUST be defragged]....but that's about 100 gig at the moment [I have 'one or two' planes] ...;)

My UPS died recently, but I've used them since the late '90s. They're irrelevant in why I use the sleep/suspend/hibernate/calm-down-and-wait-til-i'm-back features.

Please explain why/how disabling the nap-time functionality is part of keeping a clean rig. 

It's not.

It's what you need to consider when your 'C' drive is only 60gig.

My use of Hiberfil is for 'safe' shutdowns without data corruption in a black-out/brown-out.... not for some snooze capability...;)

...and protection from spikes...;)

what jafo said!