Especially if you're new to the world of PC gaming, keeping your machine clean can seem tedious or even downright intimidating. It's not hard to gently wipe down a controller, dust off the top of a console, or dislodge the odd crumb out of a laptop, but your PC is a different beast. 

This guide will walk you through the basics of cleaning your PC, keyboard, mouse, and even your mousepad. Remember, we're talking about premium electronics! Common sense dictates that if something is expensive and delicate enough to need cleaning, then it's worth doing it right. We'll go over why you should make the time, as well as some common mistakes to avoid. With just a little care and maintenance, you won't need to worry about gross devices or the preventable hardware issues that dirt and dust can lead to.

The cleaning supplies you'll use
Before going through the trouble of opening up your PC or taking apart any accessories, be sure to gather up the things you'll need to do a thorough clean. It's better to be prepared for a dirtier job than you expect. Key items include:

• A can of compressed air duster
• Isopropyl alcohol
• Cotton swabs
• Paper towels or disposable microfiber cleaning cloths
• A surgical mask or particulate respirator
• (Optional) A vacuum
• (Optional) An anti-static wristband for involved disassembly
• (Optional) A keycap puller
• (Optional) Dish soap
• (Optional) Any screwdrivers or other tools necessary for disassembling your case

One more step: Before you clean any part of your PC, turn it off completely. If you're just taking a moment to clear dust from a filter, leaving the PC plugged in is OK, but for more involved tidying you should always disconnect the PC from power.

How often should you really clean a PC?
Unfortunately, the question of how regularly you should clean out your PC and degrime your peripherals doesn't have a hard and fast answer. It depends on where you've got your PC situated, your habits when using it, and how clean your home is. 

Every six months (at least) is a good guideline though, regardless of whether your home is spotless and sparkling or routinely needs a tidy. For performance and longevity reasons, it's not ideal to wait much longer than that. When you open up a PC after six months of moderate-to-heavy use, you're going to find some dust in there. That dust is better off outside the case than in. In fact, if your PC overheats or crashes and you rarely or never clean it, doing so may even fix the problem entirely. Dust buildup affects a PC's ability to dissipate heat, which can lead to performance loss over time and shorten the lifespan of components like your CPU. 

You may not notice any issues with your PC after a year of neglect, but your machine could end up requiring extra care and cleaning in the long term.  It's easier (and potentially cheaper) to give it a nice once-over two or three times a year.

Of course, there are also circumstances where you should clean more regularly. If your PC sits near a carpeted floor, is in a room where pets roam around and shed fur, or is placed somewhere doubling as a workshop—basically, if it's in an area where particulates, fibers, or fuzz float around—six months may be pushing it. If you open up your case and the inside resembles the dog dander-filled tower that professional PC builder Jay Langevin cleaned up, consider checking again in just a few months to see if you need to clean yours more often.

The simple part: dust filters
I remember cleaning my first PC as a teen. It sat in my bedroom tucked into a desk alcove. Maneuvering it out was a pain and the one dust filter it had could only be reached by removing the entire front of the case. Imagine if you had to take apart your dryer just to get the lint out!

Thankfully, modern PC cases usually have easy-to-remove dust filters situated where you want them most: at the main fan intakes and near the power supply. Look at your case, acquaint yourself with where the filters are, and learn how to take them out and put them back in. As mentioned above, your PC will likely require more frequent cleaning if it's in a dusty or fuzz-heavy area, but clearing out the filters can go a long way. 

To clean a PC's dust filter, remove it and either wipe away the built-up dust or vacuum it off. A disposable cleaning cloth or a paper towel dampened with a little water should work well for pulling dust off of the filter—but if the filter gets wet be sure to let it dry completely before reinserting it and turning on your computer.

Inside your PC case
Here's where it gets serious: opening your PC case and exposing the components, along with any filth or fluff that's gotten in there.

Once more, for safety: Before you take off any side panels from the case, remember to turn off and unplug your PC. Attempting to clean out the PC while it's in use greatly increases the risk of damaging something, particularly moving parts like fans.

If you can, I'd also recommend taking your PC outside before opening it up. Be mindful of the weather, of course—dust may be bad, but getting rain or snow on a PC's innards is worse. But at the very least you want to take the PC somewhere well ventilated, a room where the dust you're going to blow out of the case won't simply float around and then find its way back into your PC. A patio or stoop is a great place to start dusting.

You should also wear a respirator or mask while cleaning dust out of your PC, even if you're outside. This is an absolute must if you know you're sensitive to dust or have respiratory issues, but it's the safe and healthy thing to do regardless. You don't want dust in your electronics and you don't want to breathe a bunch of it in.

Most of the time, a can of compressed air should be your go-to tool for PC cleaning. Do not reach for a vacuum at the first sight of dust inside your case, as vacuuming runs a risk of electrostatic discharge that could damage sensitive PC components. Is it extremely likely? No, and you might vacuum out your PC or even directly handle components after building up a charge on your body and, zap or not, discover everything works just fine afterwards. You're relying on luck though, and who wants to risk (or stress about) damaging an expensive graphics card or processor? 

A vacuum isn't a great tool for a tiny PC case anyway. You'd have a hard time removing dust from crevices with a regular vacuum hose, as opposed to the tiny straw nozzle included with a compressed air can. Work safer and smarter. Don't shake or invert the can while dusting, as it might expel liquid propellant instead of air. You may also need to take off more than one side panel to make it easier to blow loose dust out of the case instead of around its insides.

Proper fan service
One area to exercise caution around when using compressed air is your PC's fans. Even if you're good about regularly cleaning your PC, you may find that they're the one component you need to get hands-on with.

PC fans have a habit of accumulating dust along the edge of the blades, another static electricity quirk to be mindful of when cleaning. Simply blowing on a fan in an attempt to remove the dust probably won't work well—it gets stuck on there while the fan spins, after all—and risks damaging the fan or whipping the dust into your case.

Especially for smaller fans, I recommend using a cotton swab and isopropyl alcohol. With the swab saturated in isopropyl, gently run it along the fan's blades (and any other dusty parts of the fan enclosure) while using a finger to keep the fan from spinning.

Is disassembly necessary?
After cleaning your filters, blowing out the case, and wiping down your fans, you may still find that some dust stubbornly remains inside the PC. Even so, it may not be necessary to start taking out components. If it's a spot you can easily reach inside the case, using isopropyl alcohol and lightly swabbing should be sufficient. 

But if dust or grime is really caked on to a component, removing it for a more thorough cleaning is an option. Just as with building a PC, it's a good idea to use a wired anti-static wristband if you've got one. Plenty of PC owners don't, myself included. Just take care to regularly touch the bare metal parts of the case while working, which will safely dissipate any small static charge that your body has built up. That said, if you're commonly experiencing static shocks around your home (maybe you live in a dry climate or just love shuffling along a carpet in socks) then you should definitely exercise caution and invest in an anti-static wristband. Again, don't rely on luck.

Once you've got a dirty part removed, don't deep clean it too aggressively. Delicately scrubbing with isopropyl is still the game plan here. And if a component looks quite dirty and you're considering breaking things down further, be careful: Consult manuals or other documentation from manufacturers when taking PC components apart to clean them. PC power supplies in particular should rarely if ever be opened up for cleaning, and it's good to avoid touching exposed contacts or cylindrical capacitors on parts like graphics cards or motherboards. 

Tidying your typing tool
Cleaning a keyboard that's seen heavy use can be a nastier and more labor intensive process than giving a PC a good dusting. Thankfully, whether you've got a fancy mechanical or cheap membrane keyboard, there's generally less need to worry about breaking something.

Isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs, and compressed air will continue to serve you well here. If your keyboard has gotten dusty enough to need a blow out, going outside and using a mask is still recommended. 

Swabbing on top of and in-between keys with isopropyl alcohol should be sufficient to lift grime from oily fingers, dead skin cells, and such. One note of caution on using isopropyl: If you've tricked out your keyboard with decorative keycaps, you'll want to double check the materials. Acrylic, for example, is very susceptible to damage from isopropyl alcohol.

If your keyboard has gotten really gross or if you'd rather avoid using isopropyl alcohol on a deep clean, taking off all the keycaps and cleaning them in a bowl of warm water with a little dish soap is a good option. As a bonus, removing the keycaps on a mechanical keyboard enables you to easily get at the spaces between switches with a swab. 

Remember to let everything dry before reassembling, of course. Most keyboards are pretty tough—the folks at Linus Tech Tips once stuck a variety of mechanical and membrane keyboards in a dishwasher and all of them worked just fine after they were given a week to dry. You shouldn't have to wait that long. Giving your keycaps a short soak and then spending a few minutes scrubbing the board with fast-evaporating isopropyl alcohol while the keycaps dry completely is a quick and efficient way to get back to clean click-clacking.

Mouse maintenance
In the days of trackball mice that seemingly vacuumed up stray hairs and promotional rubber mouse pads prone to discoloration, keeping things clean could feel like a losing battle. Thankfully, most gear today is much easier to deal with—a quick wipe down with isopropyl alcohol or even a small amount of soapy water should be enough to get surface grime off a mouse, and the same goes for plastic (hard) mouse pads. Just let the moisture evaporate off and you're good to go. Mice with a lot of additional buttons may need some extra attention. Clean out those gaps and crevices with a swab and some isopropyl.

Cloth mouse pads are trickier. If you have a cloth mouse pad in serious need of cleaning, don't rush things. Scrubbing with water and a bit of soap and then letting the pad air dry is the recommended course of action. Machine drying is a bad idea, as it could damage a mouse pad's rubber or plastic components. Likewise, setting a mouse pad out to dry in the sun could fade or discolor any artwork printed on the material, so keep it indoors. Modern mouse pads aren't just there for protection. Sitting beneath both mouse and keyboard and sporting LED strips along the sides, they tie the look of your whole PC setup together—so take care to keep yours looking like new!

Source : https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/how-to-clean-dust-from-your-pc-and-peripherals-inside-and-out?fbclid=IwAR255j4POG6clOJ8dDyPMvr3D2B3zJ6s06pVrVVNdVHyyoeXc-_EkfUuLJs