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Are you facing a thermal throttling issue on your desktop? Dust and grime are some of the main reasons behind it! If you don’t clean your motherboard at a proper time interval, then it might become a serious issue, and it can even damage the components, also. So, are you thinking of how to clean your motherboard? Don’t worry; we will guide you. Today, in this tutorial, we will discuss how to clean a motherboard.
When you go without cleaning your system for over a year, and your case or cabinet does not have great dust prevention measures, maybe the dust filter is not in place, then the motherboard or other components are covered in dust. Dust also covers the VRM heatsinks, chipset heatsink. Even, you will get dust on top of your PCI-Express slot; it gets fairly excessive. If you find something like this or maybe even dirtier, you might want to consider cleaning, and that is what this blog is for. No matter whether it is a cheap motherboard or a high end one it requires cleaning.
So, you should start first with the VRM heatsinks and the Chipset heatsinks. You might have more than one VRM heatsink because if the heatsinks remain covered with dust, then it will be unable to dissipate the internal heat. If you have any plastic cover over the rear I/O ports, you should also remove that because this can get very grimy. But now the question is that how do you clean these things? What do you use? Well, we have discussed this in detail below.
For very basic cleaning purposes, air spray or air blower or the usage of compressed air is effective because it can clean most of the dry dust from any surface easily without damaging or affecting any of the components.
Now, you have to disassemble the parts that include removing the CPU and RAM; these are the two easiest things to remove on motherboards. After removing the CPU from the socket, you should reuse the socket cover if you have it because it will keep your socket clean. The next thing to remove will be the PCH heatsink. In your board, if there are any more heatsinks, then you can remove that also to deep clean, or if you are unable to dismantle the heatsinks from the board itself, then you can leave it as it is.
Well, you should start with some isopropyl alcohol. This stuff will be your friend for the entire process. It is not going to damage any of the components because there is no water. This alcohol evaporates very fast, and it is not conducive.
For cleaning larger surfaces or the internal layer of the cabinet, you can use paper towels or soft cloth. Sometimes, even toilet paper can be used for cleaning those things.
To deep clean your desktop, you need to keep in mind a few things. These are:
First, open the back panel and remove the battery from the laptop. Then remove the heatsink pipe and the cooling fan, clean all these properly. Then take a brush and try to clean the board. Don’t forget to clean the vent for heat dissipation and the sound system. Now you are done with it.
Don’t use tap water to clean any electronic device. If there is any type of moisture present in the board and you plugging it into the power supply, it can permanently damage your system.
Yeah, you can use an alcohol bath.
We have described all the processes in detail. Please read our cleaning tutorial it will help you.
If you can dismantle all the parts and the motherboards yourself, then follow this above-mentioned step to keep your desktop clean. You should follow this cleaning method at least once a year. If you want then you can use the vacuum cleaner to clean as well. You will be amazed to know that this cleaning process will help you to increase the performance of your entire system because dust and grime in the heatsinks may cause thermal throttling.
If you have any kind of doubts, feel free to comment down below and also let us know if the article has helped you or not.
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