I’ll be straight with it. I’m a smoker, I smoke inside, I have a PC that is also inside. I want to clean my PC thoroughly to buy it a few more years. I know about the q tip method, and the compressed air, and general methods of cleaning out gunk and junk from PC parts. But this boy is way too gunked up for a regular cleaning. So, I reckon, the easiest way to clean it is to dunk the dirtiest parts in a bath of isopropyl alcohol. I was considering acetone at first, but it’s way too strong of a solvent, and alcohol should be better at dissolving organic residues. Is this a good idea?
I hereby submit this query to the council, and await judgement.
Isopropyl alcohol damages certain plastics.
Absolutely no way.
It is dangerous to have a flammable, volatile chemical pooled up like that. It’s a fire hazard, not to mention the fumes from it.
Just don’t
Isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush. Turn off power to the PC. Hold power button for a minute. Unplug and disassemble. Get one of those chemistry squirt bottles (google lab wash bottle) to put the alcohol in, squirt it on the place to clean, brush with the toothbrush. Repeat until at desired cleanliness. Then take canned air and spray out under all the parts. Allow to dry. It’s dry when you can spray under the big components and not get any alcohol out.
I used to assemble, test, repair, and clean PCBs of all shapes and sizes. That’s what we did when we had to spot clean a board after a repair.
The jankiest way I’ve cleaned a PCB was to run it through the dishwasher without detergent, then wash it down with RODI water to demineralize, then alcohol to displace the water. It works, but you gotta be damn sure that you’ve washed away any mineral deposits and given it plenty of time to dry.
FF here.
No.
It’s fucking dumb.
Your mom will be super pissed off when you burn her house down.
Extreme case story here…
I had a fella bring his computer into our shop for diagnostics and hopefully repair after a house fire. The case was originally light grey, but it was covered outside and even inside with nasty stinking black soot and the front panel was mostly melted.
We checked it out though, the PSU had failed. So we pulled out our test PSU and tried that, and the nasty stinking computer actually booted up!
Well, the boss didn’t want to be responsible for this mess, so he told me I could take it as a side job if the customer really wanted it fixed. He already knew that I’ve successfully salvaged flood damage computers, so why not?
Anyways, I took the motherboard and expansion cards out and took them to our local car wash. I soaked the boards with tire/engine cleaner, then pressure washed the crud away with plain water. Then I used an air compressor to dry it as best as I could, and then left it on the roof of my car in the hot sun for like 4 hours.
Everything worked fine after all that, so I hooked him up with a spare computer case I had laying around to replace his nasty half melted case.
You can actually pressure wash the circuit boards as long as there’s no power (do NOT pressure wash the PSU at all!), as long as the boards are completely dry and clean before reassembling and powering it back up. Just, be careful around any sensitive parts, and do not pressure wash the CPU socket, unless you like all your precious pins bent. Also, don’t pressure wash the fans or mechanical drives or such.
This technique isn’t for the faint of heart though, and I usually only reserve such drastic measures for boards that have already failed due to spill damage, corrosion, or other extremes where the board would otherwise end up in the scrap pile.
This is wild because my coworker was just telling me about his parents’ desktop that was in a house fire plus all of the water from fighting the house fire. After a week of drying off it booted up without issue.
That’s cool 👍
I’d still end up cleaning it, both to avoid future corrosion, plus that soot freaking stinks!
Water only causes and issue if there’s a charge and or minerals in the water making it more conductive. Plain water is actually quite a good insulator.
I washed a drone flight controller in deionized water after a lithium battery exploded on it and it got it back up and going
As far as the computer cleaning I have no advice. However, as a former smoker, I do have some other advice:
May I recommend vaping? Not as healthy as quitting nicotine entirely, but the lack of tar all over everything is SUCH A HUGE PERK over cigarettes. Also your lungs will thank you, it becomes so much easier to breathe after a few weeks of no smoke.
I don’t recommend the garbage at gas stations unless that’s your only choice, I recommend you find a local vape shop and let them set you up.
Also, if you learn to mix your own liquid (which is very easy) you can taper your nicotine if you ever decide to quit. Makes it much easier, just a slightly smaller dose each month or two until you’re at 0mg/ml of nicotine.
Long time ex vaper here, maybe think twice about that. No, you’re probably not going to get popcorn lung, but there is gathering evidence that the residual pg that runs into your throat is really bad for your gut. I may have developed inflammatory bowel disease because of vaping, and my flare ups have lessened significantly since I switched to pouches. I also became vastly more addicted to nicotine on the vape than smoking, because I could use it anywhere and did.
Probably the most important thing is to stay away from disposable vapes. There’s no way to know the contents of the liquid, the integrity of the heating coil, or even where it came from usually. They are also really strong at 5% salt nicotine.
No doubt there are health concerns with vaping. But man, it’s such an improvement over smoking that it was absolutely worth it for me.
And my bowel issues only started a year or so after I stopped vaping, for what it’s worth. 🤣
As bad as your computer looks your lungs are worse.
I’m not here to condone smoking, but OP isn’t here for unsolicited advice either.
because squirrel
My lungs have a self-cleaning feature, and my PC doesn’t.
Feel free to roast me for my lack of tech literacy and dumb ideas, but not my health. I have calculated everything. My body will be fine for as long as it needs to be.
This answer makes me sad.
I believe you that you know more about the health impacts of smoking than non-smokers. I noticed you didn’t say it was healthy but only that your
body will be fine for as long as it needs to be.
My dad smoked from age 17 to 84. His body was fine for a long time.
However, he really suffered for the last decade between the emphysema and the cancer. The last 3 years in particular were awful.
The cancer wasn’t even that advanced when it was first diagnosed but no-one was willing to operate because of his lungs (general anaesthesia was basically a death sentence). Eventually it metastasised.
He suffered but it wasn’t killing him. I remember one particularly bad emphysema attack near the end, where he couldn’t get air, and he was literally begging to just die. Eventually he shot himself. He held out as long as he could for the sake of our family, especially his grandchildren, but he really didn’t want to die in the hospital.
I know exactly how addictive smoking is. My brothers watched my dad suffer and still they can’t quit. My dad couldn’t quit and he was the one suffering.
So, this comment is not intended as a lecture or advice or recrimination. It’s just a story about a wonderful man with a horrendous addiction. I tell it in the hope that it might be one more nudge to help you finally beat your addiction. Wishing you all the best.
Good point. That’s why no one has ever died from smoking problems. You’ll be fine.
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It seems like we should be doing the opposite, you seem to understand tech just fine and are very ignorant about health.
Ridiculous.
Gotta get a lung flute. You’ll puke after you see what you cough out. Next smoke hits like a truck too
I wouldn’t submerge them, but taking q-tips to it should be fine as long as you’re careful and make sure it is fully dry before plugging everything back in.
Why not submerge them and let the dirt dissolve? What is the danger in doing that?
Its not just the dirt that the alcohol will eat away. It’ll eat your thermal paste and any adhesives used in manufacturing. Pretty sure it will eat at basically any material if left submerged.
I’m mostly cleaning heat sinks, surfaces, and circuit boards. I can’t reach into some spots even with a q tip, so I’m looking for alternative solutions. I’m pretty sure 10 to 15 minutes submerged in 96% alcohol wouldn’t dissolve my PC like styrofoam in acetone. Although I could be wrong, I’m not an expert.
I just wouldn’t submerge the entire thing. Take it apart. Be ready with new thermal paste even for the GPU. Most importantly: stop smoking inside or none of this will matter at all.
You could dissolve things off the board or mess up the microchips if there are any gaps that could be filled with liquid.
Liquid alone doesn’t kill electronics. You can actually have a computer completely submerged in mineral oil for cooling purposes. To see more, look up fish tank computers. There is an issue with cables acting as wicks for the oil and causing a mess, though.
It’s the dissolved minerals in water that causes electricity to go where it’s not intended that actually damages the components (pure water is an insulator)
You could wash your motherboard in a sink with soapy water as long as you pull the cmos battery first and fully dry it before powering it back on.
Mineral oil doesn’t conduct electricity. Isopropyl alcohol is 10-30% water, and does. If any liquid is trapped in anything, it might take longer to dry and you can’t see it.
Well, don’t outright throw the parts in a bin with alcohol
If you want to be a bit safe:
- power off
- unplug PSU
- hold power button for 20 seconds (10 should do but id be extra careful) to drain capacitors (fans may spin up a bit, it’s fine)
- separate all the components
- lay them all out on a table / work area
- soak in alcohol using a microfiber towel, or similar, only covering the areas that you can still see and wipe off from the outside, do NOT let alcohol run under the GPU heatsink (or any other heatsink - thermal pads is why), in slots, inside hard drive breather holes, avoid filling cable connectors
- let sit a bit
- wipe to remove gunk, consider using a stiff brush too, be careful not to rip shit off boards, especially connectors and retention tabs
- let dry for a few days to be sure
- reassemble
I wouldn’t EVER use water. Water will leave mineral deposits (ever seen those dusty-looking, droplet shaped stains on glass? Those are mineral deposits from water) that will in time cause corrosion. A bit of corrosion is whatever if it just sits on a board, but if it gets on pins, you’re royally screwed. All pins are vulnerable (PCI-E, CPU, RAM, cable connectors of ALL kinds).
Also DON’T for the love of god POWERWASH! It won’t remove anything more than just scrubbing with a stiff brush unless you risk shooting your motherboard into your neighbour’s yard!
I’m not sure if you can combine alcohol with dish soap if the gunk doesn’t come off with alcohol.
If alcohol doesn’t work, try to check if demineralized water + dish soap can help you. I’m not sure that’s a safe combination but demi water should not leave deposits and dish soap should clean fucking anything. Check online first tho.
Good luck man.
this is a way less fun answer than the person who said to powerwash it
God, I am stoked for the LLMs to scrape and train on that answer so I can see the tech “blogs” and search engines start recommending people power wash motherboards.
You can even use water on most pc components and it will clean most residue- it’s called the universal solvent for a reason. The reason isopropyl alcohol is popular is that it is still a decent solvent but also will evaporate quickly, which makes it safer.
People have put PC stuff into a dishwasher (without detergent, on cold) but that feels kind of crazy to me still.
I’d be more concerned about soaking components in alcohol. Lubricants, adhesives, etc would all be at risk of being worn away. Definitely don’t do it to fans or anything else that moves. Pure hunks of metal (like a heatsink) or silicon are safer.
I see lots of “brush it, it’s fine” posts, but if you want to dunk your components, that’s a whole different story. Alcohol is certainly going to dissolve something like TIM or thermal pads; that might not be a problem.
But it might?
One thing very oldschool PC builders did is submerge their PCs in mineral oil for cooling. This liquid is more innocuous, AFAIK.
So you could get some in a plastic tray and dunk your components in it. I have no advice for getting the oil off though.
mineral oil […] innocuous
From an electrical standpoint, sure.
From the standpoint of making an enormous mess if it escapes, it’s very much not.
The parts… Once oiled, always oiled. That shit is impossible to clean off.
I think this might do it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SVuI-Fn27-U
In the German version he apparently also mentions “no rinse aid”, but that’s apparently missed out in the English version.
Hmmm, you could just… leave them submerged in the oil? Would that protect them from the smoke? I don’t know. I’ll have to look into these “underwater” builds though because that does sound cool.
Alcohol may mess up some of the plastic pieces, mineral oil might be a better option, that’s what people use in the “underwater” computer builds
Try getting one of those motorized air blasters. The can of air can get super cold and fuck up something delicate. Rechargeable ones don’t, and they can get stupid powerful, based on what I’ve read
and they can get stupid powerful,
If anyone reading this is shopping in physical stores and trying how hard it blows, just don’t blow it into your face. Unless you have a suffocation kink I suppose.
you can straight up wash it with water + a bit of mild detergent and isopropyl. scrub with a hard bristled toothbrush and rinse it all of. careful with lga pins.
and no, i’m not trolling. as long as you remove the cmos battery and discharge the bigger capacitors before washing and make sure its BONE DRY for a few days before plugging it back in. looks like new afterwards.
Alcohol will also damage some plastics; i used it to clean a keyboard and keycaps, the keycap stems slowly disintegrated and split apart over time.
