Regular computer maintenance is important. Obviously keeping an eye on the software is important. If you let viruses and malware onto your machine you’ll have to clean it up and at worst re-image your computer – wipe everything off of it and install the operating system from scratch. Hopefully most of us do that.
Another important piece of maintenance is removing dust from your computer. Think of it like a car wash. Regularly washing your car helps protect your clear coat and your paint – and it keeps rust away. This is more important in the Northeast and Mid-West where there are harsh winters and they salt the roads, than in the West where they don’t. Similarly, if your computer is in a dusty environment you need to be cleaning the computer more often. If you’re a smoker, this can cause additional particles to enter your PC.
Failing to clean your computer can not only makes it dirty – it will impact performance. Computers need to stay cool to operate. The more they work (the more calculations they do) the hotter they get as more electricity is running around their circuits. Users will push their custom gaming PC to the limit as they want the highest resolution and FPS, so their custom computers get really hot. PCs need air to circulate to get them to cool down. Most often fans push air around heat sinks – pieces of metal that are connected to hot components like CPUs. These heat sinks have lots of slots and prongs to increase the surface area and allow them to take heat away from components better and faster. If dust builds up in these heat sinks they won’t be as effective and can heal to overheating components.
Just like a car, overheating is bad. Your PC will start to slow down and components could even fail if they get too hot. Similarly, dust can build up around the grates behind or in front of a fan, cutting off all air circulation. This is bad. You don’t want to be the person who needs to buy a new computer because you didn’t clean the dust out.
If your computer is in a cabinet it’ll get less dusty than a computer that’s just on the floor. Some computers these days even have dust filters that make it easy – just make sure to regularly clean the filters. Otherwise you’ll need a dust blower to remove the dust inside your computer. Be careful with vacuum cleaners as they create static electricity which can damage your computer.