How to Keep Your Computer Clean

Video Transcript

"Your computer is a big investment and you want to make sure it is around for a long time. Hi, my name is Charles Stewart Jr. and I am going to teach you how to keep your computer clean. One of the things with your computer that you want to make sure that you definitely keep it clean. Because if not, dust will accumulate inside of it and it will start to cake everything and basically cause everything to overheat, generates a lot of heat. By doing that you want to usually keep it either up, maybe on your desk, instead of on the floor, because obviously a lot of people keep it on their floor. Especially it is really bad on a carpet, because all that dust will generate down there and as it sucks in the air it is going to suck up all that dust that landed on the floor, and basically speed up the process of layering dust all over your computer. But, pretty much even if you have in your desk, you are going to accumulate dust. Just one of the things that happens over time. So, how you are going to do that? You are going to want to open up the case of your computer. Most computers, if you buy one from like Dell or HP, sometimes they will have a latch that you just push, and it will open up. But, this is a computer that I build, so it is just a generic case. There are usually screws, for the sake of our demonstration I've already removed them. So you just slide the case off. And now you can see the internals of the computer itself. Here is your processor. In order to clean it out, you want to get a can of compressed air. Or sometimes even an anti-static wipe. And the reason for that is, static is your computer's enemy. You want to make sure whenever you are doing stuff, touching components inside the computer itself, you want to make sure you are grounded to the case. And by doing that is you are touching it as you're cleaning it, or wearing a strap that attaches you to the case. Because one little spark of static electricity onto one of the components will totally destroy your whatever piece of equipment you are touching. So,the processor is definitely, it is like the brain of the computer, you know super calculator. It is going to generate the most heat. And usually you can find it, it will have like a what they call a heat sensor on top or a big fan sitting on some aluminum. And basically that fan is blowing on the processor to cool it down. So, that will definitely generate a lot of heat. So you just want to give it a couple of air bursts, you can see it is throwing dust out. And then, another place that generate some heat is your RAM modules. You will find it usually next to the processor, and you want to give those a little burst of air too. Again, dust acts like a blanket, it will keep coating and coating and instead letting the heat dissipate, the way it normally does, and the way it has been designed to do, it retains that heat and eventually it will cause your components to fail quicker. Eventually they all going to die, just you want to prevent that from happening, make them last as long as you can. And pretty much the other components is your graphics card. Your graphics card, nowadays they are pretty strong and usually have some kind of fan build onto them. So they are going to be sucking in air as well and pretty much coating dust. So, you want to give that a burst, and make sure there is no dust building up on that. And then also your hard drive which is usually located on the side or this right down here, I'm sorry, it is right here. That will accumulate a lot of dust too. Your hard drive is constantly spinning so it will generate a lot of heat, so you will want to knock that out. And pretty much after you've blown your case out and make sure that you got all the dust out as you can, that is pretty much one of the best things that you can do to keep your case clean. And again, keep it up on a desk or keep it off the ground and try to blow it out at least every three months, six months at the most. If you haven't done it, you'll probably be surprised when you open up your case because it just will be gray and caked with dust. So, that is the best thing that you can do to keep your computer clean."