[SOLVED] What are important computer maintenance steps folks can do at home?

[SHaines]

With so many of us stuck at home and potentially using our home computers to work at home full time, systems are being put through more stress than normal.

What are some suggestions you have for folks who may need some help cleaning, or doing some routine maintenance, on their computers?

Pretty much any tricks to keep things running smoothly are appreciated. If you can arrange them in a numbered list of steps to take, that'll make it even easier for folks at home to squeeze the most performance out of their machines.

Thanks in advance!

 

[USAFRet]

Super simple. Turn your computer off when you are not using them. Having it idling all night hurts your performance. Don't just sleep it. Fully shut it down.

Of course, the counterargument to that is the inrush of power can be detrimental.

In all the decades of systems like this, there has never been a conclusive agreement either way.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I was saying that it had an issue and they solved it. You said about my comment, "you were making it sound like a tool that is known to be bad, so I took issue with that because it's not." All I said is that it had problems and they solved them, I even recommended that it be used for the purpose of the OP. Why would I recommend it if I thought of it as a bad tool as you accused me of saying?

Ah, right, sorry, I forgot the other guy said that. My bad, I'll edit it.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Oh, I dunno, maybe wash your hands and don't always eat or touch your face/hair while using the PC.

The guy with the nastiest keyboard at my office doesn't always do the first, and routinely does the rest. I even complained to my boss, when I saw him go #2 and walk right out of the men's room without even going near the sink. On multiple occasions. It seemed to do the trick, because he's always pointedly washed his hands since then, at least when I'm in the rest room (I have wondered if he knew I'm the one who ratted on him).

Anyway, whenever I've had to touch his keyboard, I immediately wash my hands before I touch anything else. I mean, for the years that we actually worked together, back when there were these things called office buildings and people would work together inside of them.

But, every 2 years? That's nuts!! I routinely get about 5 years, or more, out of decent mice or track balls. And I've used the keyboard I'm typing this on for about the last 15 years. Just buy decent equipment and take care of it. It's really not that different from your point about quality fans paying off, over time.


First, the boring but sound advice is to backup anything you don't want to lose. If you can't afford to backup everything, just backup the stuff that's more valuable to you than the price of the backup media. If you're having trouble deciding, imagine you lost it and ask yourself how much you would pay to get it back. Incidentally, I use a similar strategy for deciding how much to bid on ebay auctions for items without a well-established market value.

As for failing disks, check the SMART stats and look for error messages. You can also run the drive's own self-test, though a lot of drives seem to periodically self-test themselves, these days.

As for warranty terms, I just had a disk fail after < 100 hours of use, even though it was sold as an "enterprise" drive with 5-year warranty and supposedly 2M hours MTBF. You can't entrust your data to a warranty. Still, the warranty is perhaps reasonable assertion about the expected service life of a disk (i.e. how long you should plan to use it, before replacement). In spite of that, I just got nearly 10 years out of 5 disks (100% survival rate) with a 5-year warranty, but they spent about 85% of the time powered down.

Try working in a construction company. You want a dirty keyboard there it is. Especially in say a crushing plant or asphalt hot plant/QC lab. They will be working with that stuff and then touch the equipment without cleaning their hands and everything becomes a crusty, sticky mess of dust, oil and other stuff.

 

[USAFRet]

Try working in a construction company. You want a dirty keyboard there it is. Especially in say a crushing plant or asphalt hot plant/QC lab. They will be working with that stuff and then touch the equipment without cleaning their hands and everything becomes a crusty, sticky mess of dust, oil and other stuff.

My ex father in law and brother had a printing company just outside London.
They had a PC...IBM jr. IIIRC, whose sole duty was to transfer data (print files) from 5.25" floppies to 3.5" floppies. Late '80's.

I had to write them a little menu for it because the original software died.
In doing so, I took the cover off the case....the entire inside was a dust bunny.
The volume and density you'd find in a dryer lint trap after a year.

And of course, printer ink all over the outside and keyboard.

 

[madartzgraphics]

With so many of us stuck at home and potentially using our home computers to work at home full time, systems are being put through more stress than normal.

What are some suggestions you have for folks who may need some help cleaning, or doing some routine maintenance, on their computers?

Pretty much any tricks to keep things running smoothly are appreciated. If you can arrange them in a numbered list of steps to take, that'll make it even easier for folks at home to squeeze the most performance out of their machines.

Thanks in advance!

As simple as it may seem, many people don't clean their PC... on the software side. They think cleaning the hardware makes your PC fresh, but actually no. Not really. It can withstand even heavy dusts and dirts and overusage 24/7. What it cannot handle are clutters, gigabytes of trash and thousands of virus.

Download:

1. USB Disk Security - to avoid getting infected through flash drives.
2. Rkill - killing suspicious tasks running in the background so you can run your AV scan properly without a miss.
3. Malwarebytes - best on uncovering thousands of virus and malwares. Even StuxNet has no chance of survival on this based on my experience.
4. Avast - run it side by side for real time protection.
5. Ccleaner - can help you clean your browser and whole PC, even the registry, uninstalling unwanted programs, stopping autoruns in startup, deleting garbage files on your disk drives and whole lot more.
6. Google Backup and Sync for real time back up and cloud storage just in case you got infected or your PC crashed without any warning.

My machine is a decade old athlon ii x2 255. Still alive with no problems and slow downs.

 

[madartzgraphics]

That had to be a false positive, which the more aggressive AVs are known for. I use CCLeaner pretty much weekly followed by Malwarebytes and Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit and never once have I had spyware from CCLeaner.

It was the backdoors found actually by Avast. They bought the company piriform and did some audits. But they found out some hackers are hijacking the automatic updates CCleaner served to their customers. They've already sorted that out. It was due to the bad service of the former Piriform management.

 

[Frag Maniac]

It was the backdoors found actually by Avast. They bought the company piriform and did some audits. But they found out some hackers are hijacking the automatic updates CCleaner served to their customers. They've already sorted that out. It was due to the bad service of the former Piriform management.

Yeah, but honestly, although I used to use and trust Avast, it's become notorious for false positives and incompatibility with W10. I actually just use Windows Defender anymore and Malwarebytes. The days of Avast being widely used and trusted are long gone, but it's largely due to MS stepping up the built-in security of W10.

 

[scodd]

Once a year at least I like to re-image or do full new install of OS and apps including drive format and a full dust out, even check and replace fans and filters on all the PCs. I only use Defender now for Windows. I really don't think you need anything else unless you are a half-wit. Figuratively speaking, I guess. Might be fooling myself but I have been working in and with IT security for almost 25 years so I am pretty confident. Encrypt everything, add a pi-hole at the house or wherever you can and you'll be sailing smooth. Probably, in my opinion.

 

[bit_user]

You want positive airflow in the case. That means more air going into the case then exiting. If you fill the case with air it'll push air out of the cracks and keep dust out. If you put all fans as exhaust or pushing out it hauls air through the cracks and dust along with it. Remember that the PSU and Video cards exhaust air outside the case, so you need enough fans bring air into the case to counter the PSU and video card, and some more to create that positive air pressure.

If you have dust filters keep those clean.

No, it's not: "positive pressure ...and BTW clean dust filters, if you have them".

The correct way is: "If you have dust filters on your intake fans, then make sure you're running positive pressure".

The point with positive pressure is that you want all air coming into the case to pass through a dust filter. Positive pressure simply avoids dust seeping in through any other cracks or holes. However, if using positive pressure without dust filters, you'll still get the same amount of dust in your case as if you run neutral or negative pressure without them.

And is there any way to know how much air GPUs can push out of the case? I've not particularly looked for that information, but I also don't recall ever running across it. Even if you know what fans it has, you still can't easily know what fraction of the airflow is routed out of the case.

The proposition is a little easier with PSUs. If they don't come out and say what its airflow is, then good teardowns will report what fan they use and you can search for its specs. Since the fan is at the back of it, basically 100% of that air is exiting, if top-mounted. If bottom-mounted, we don't know exactly what fraction of its air is from inside vs. outside of the case, but you can probably assume most is from outside.

Anyway, I don't stress about case pressure going a bit negative under extreme load, because for me that's only like a couple % of the time my machine is on. However, you still need some margin on your intake fans: first, because they're pushing air through dust filters, which will reduce airflow; second, because airflow through the dust filters is going to be even further restricted, as the filters collect more dust.

A UPS is never a bad idea. It'll eliminate all power surges and if you have a brown out for a second your computer will stay on instead of shutting down midway through a process like saving a file.

True. Worst case, you could experience filesystem corruption, potentially losing far more than whatever data was being written at the time power was lost.

 

[bit_user]

Sure, positive pressure ... has the poorest cooling of the three. Moreover, positive pressure can create hotspots inside the PC since there aren't enough fans to remove heated air within PC.

I recall seeing an article analyzing these aspects, many years ago. I forget even what site it was on (I recently searched this site, but maybe I missed it?). Anyway, they found quite the opposite, IIRC - better heat removal and fewer/less-extreme hot spots.

If anyone has links to possibly that or other articles/videos examining the subject, please post.

... PC cases have bottom mounted PSU. ... PSU doesn't interfere in any way with PC's cooling since it has it's own airflow system (bottom mounted and fan facing downwards).

Not exactly. In my experience, PSUs typically have more intakes than just at the bottom. But you're right that bottom-mounted PSUs probably aren't a major factor in case airflow.

ONLY blower style GPUs contribute as exhausts. Open air style ... GPUs doesn't exhaust air outside of the PC

I've seen a lot of axial-cooled GPUs with some air vents in the brackets that mount to the rear of the case.

the tower style CPU air coolers (e.g Freezer 33, NH-D15). Those also contribute getting air out of the PC and are considered as exhausts as well.

True. However, it's not atypical to have an exhaust fan behind them, in which case you know more or less what its airflow is.

Vacuum cleaners are great source of static electricity

Even when you don't have a rotating brush? Why is that?

 

[bit_user]

Try working in a construction company. You want a dirty keyboard there it is. Especially in say a crushing plant or asphalt hot plant/QC lab. They will be working with that stuff and then touch the equipment without cleaning their hands and everything becomes a crusty, sticky mess of dust, oil and other stuff.

I think I've seen specialty keyboards for those sorts of industrial applications.

Anyway, you can almost certainly still get those soft plastic keyboard covers like they (used to?) have in libraries. You could even spill liquid on the ones I've seen and it'll just run off the edge of the keyboard instead of going in between the keys. They're a little weird to type on, but usable (and washable).

 

[gondo]

Air passing by nylon bristles of a vacuum will create massive static. Electro Static Dissipation (ESD) safe vacuums have a metal sleeve inside the wand and brush that conduct and remove static.

Moral of the story, your heatsinks and radiators for liquid cooling clogged with dust will increase temperatures bigtime. Poor airflow will increase temperatures but not to the point of a nuclear meltdown. You may not be breaking overclocking records but it's not going to harm your system. Just vacuum out the heatsink. You can get a micro electronics attachment kit for a vacuum for under $10 and it's great for cleaning your fans, heatsink, and filters. Just don't go running it over your circuit boards and motherboards and you'll be fine. You'll know if your system overheats because the motherboard will shut down. It's designed to shut down at a certain upper temperature limit to prevent damage.

 

[bit_user]

Air passing by nylon bristles of a vacuum will create massive static. Electro Static Dissipation (ESD) safe vacuums have a metal sleeve inside the wand and brush that conduct and remove static.

Thanks.

Just vacuum out the heatsink.

Or just use a positive pressure setup with dust filters.

My preferred way to clean the dust filters is to pop them out and run water through them in the sink (ideally, in the opposite direction as the airflow). Then shake & let them dry completely, before re-installing.

The ones I have are all nylon mesh. So, they don't take long to dry.

 

[Nickjoshuablock]

If you have a spare thermal paste from your last build, you can use it to repaste old computers. I reposted my old laptops and the fan speeds slowed down and were not as hot as before. My GPU can stay in no fans mode for longer too.

 

[bit_user]

If you have a spare thermal paste from your last build, you can use it to repaste old computers.

Yeah, that's one aspect of thermal compound that a lot of folks don't consider - longevity. One thing I like about MX-4 is that it's got good longevity, even if it's not the highest-performing compound out there.

I have a machine using it from about 10 years ago. It hasn't been on for that entire time, but temps are still fine when I use it.

 

[Aeacus]

If anyone has links to possibly that or other articles/videos examining the subject, please post.

Tom's Hardware Airflow 101: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq...-fans-and-keeping-your-computer-cool.1542215/

And visual show of different airflow pressures as well:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh6F2eccMec

PSUs typically have more intakes than just at the bottom.

Consumer grade ATX/PS2 and SFX PSUs have the fan close to the one side with fan facing outwards of the PSU, acting as an intake fan and creating positive pressure inside the PSU. The gaps/grille PSU has are for exhaust.

Though, there are some PSUs (e.g flex ATX and PS/2 mini redundant) where the fan is at the back of the PSU, facing inwards and thus creating negative pressure inside the PSU. In these PSUs, any gaps/grille PSU has do act as intakes.

I've seen a lot of axial-cooled GPUs with some air vents in the brackets that mount to the rear of the case.

Yes, many open air style GPUs have grille at the back, where video ports are. However, those small gaps doesn't contribute to the whole PC's exhaust. Moreover since the airflow path in open air style GPUs isn't funneled at the back of the GPU, as blower style GPUs have it.

 

[bit_user]

Tom's Hardware Airflow 101: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq...-fans-and-keeping-your-computer-cool.1542215/

Thanks, but it only has a brief point on positive pressure, with no citations or evidence substantiating the author's claims.

And visual show of different airflow pressures as well:

Doesn't seem very scientific. How do we know the fog machine's output is the same, between the different tests? More imporantly, why didn't they post any temperatures?

Regarding hot spots, I recall seeing a thermal image, in the analysis I'd previously read.

Consumer grade ATX/PS2 and SFX PSUs have the fan close to the one side with fan facing outwards of the PSU, acting as an intake fan and creating positive pressure inside the PSU. The gaps/grille PSU has are for exhaust.

Though, there are some PSUs (e.g flex ATX and PS/2 mini redundant) where the fan is at the back of the PSU, facing inwards and thus creating negative pressure inside the PSU. In these PSUs, any gaps/grille PSU has do act as intakes.

Yeah, I'm old enough to be thinking of AT PSUs, and the machine right next to me didn't help, as it has a fanless ATX PSU.

Yes, many open air style GPUs have grille at the back, where video ports are. However, those small gaps doesn't contribute to the whole PC's exhaust.

I know they don't channel the majority of the GPU fans' effluent, but they certainly handle some.

 

[TheThingIsThat]

Just always clean your PC via an Air Compressor or Air spray.
Change the thermal paste (at least) every year.
Clean all the fans in the system.
Put the PC where it can breathe and where the environment it's chill.
Have an Antivirus installed.

 

[william p]

Yeah, my employer had me using a Dell Optiplex with a Pentium D. It had an enormous (at least 140 mm) front fan, funneled into a tower-style heatsink. That cooled the thing pretty well, without making much noise.

The Optiplex Pentium D sounds like an Opti 745. That can actually be modded pretty far.
Since your looking for "tricks" here they are for that old relic.
1- BIOS update and 65nm 266fsb Core 2 Extreme.
QX6800 SLACP is king of the hill due to G0 stepping, but cheaper QX6800 B3 ,QX6700 B3, and 2 core X6800 B2 can be used.
The G0 runs cooler and clocks higher, but with single thread apps. the 2 core can keep up.
2- The Pentium D cooler is good to go if it's the 6 pipe D9729. If not get one.
3- Now you can overclock it. Throtllestop 6.0 can unlock the multiplier and raise Voltage in Windows and save the settings. It also has a benchmark and thermal testing utility included. expect about 3.73Ghz with the 2 faster CPUs. 3.45 or so with the others. Heatsinks on the 6 VRM MOSFETS always help
4- Actual RAM capacity is 8GB. but the 745 chipset will only allow 667 speeds. Dell needs low density x64 RAM.
5- Optional fan mod. The stock fan should be a Delta or Nidec 120x38mm 1.3A fan. It will get loud when overclocking. Mostly due to waiting too late to speed up. HWInfo 64 can custom tune the fan profile. But the real solution is to pull the fan and fan shroud assembly and install the bare 150x50mm 1.8A 256cfm fan from the 2 CPU workstations. Delta AFC1512DG. NC466, or DG168 are the Dell # for it. This fits all the MT size BTX Optiplexes. A little velcro and duct tape will do it.
6- GPU for the MT- The Zotac GTX1050 2GB Mini is a drop in solution. The Zotac GTX 1050Ti 4GB Mini works but in a very few situations the 8GB RAM is not enough. If it's running a 32bit OS then the 1050-2GB with 6GB system RAM is the way to go.
7- if you have the nerve to chop up a newer GPU to fit an old BTX computer the MSI GTX1060 3GB OCV1 is for you.
Remove the bracket and cut it in 1/2 to make a single slot card. Trim both ends of the plastic cover about 1/2" in. The front should end even with the circuit board. The rear is to allow the hot air to turn and go out the rear vent. A PSU upgrade to get a 6 pin PCI is needed. Dell T3400 375W BTX PSU will work, or aftermarket ATX of your choice. But these need a lot of 5V. power so watch that spec. on aftermarket parts.
8- If you add an SSD turn off auto defragmentation in system tools. Of course the OS has probably been uograded a couple times already so this may not be on by default the way Dell sets them up.
To keep it simple a BIOS update and X6800 with an overclock will get you going pretty good. Cost about $20.
The 80W X6800 with OC is well within the 130W design limits of that system.

 

[bit_user]

The Optiplex Pentium D sounds like an Opti 745.

Indeed.

That can actually be modded pretty far. Since your looking for "tricks" here they are for that old relic.

Tip of the hat, sir. I'm in awe of your Dell-modding expertise.

The thread is certainly about improving PC performance, but I stopped using that particular machine, long ago. I had it probably from about 2006 to 2010.

My current office Windows PC is a 6-core Haswell-EP workstation. While that might sound like overkill, the IT department has enough crap running in the background that it ends up being just fast enough. Those guys have a unique skill for bogging down decent hardware, as I've been learning with Skylake i7-6820HQ laptop they gave me.

1- BIOS update and 65nm 266fsb Core 2 Extreme.
QX6800 SLACP is king of the hill due to G0 stepping, but cheaper QX6800 B3 ,QX6700 B3, and 2 core X6800 B2 can be used.

Now that's a CPU upgrade. It would be like swapping out a Bristol Ridge APU with a Ryzen 3800X.

 

[Aeacus]

Doesn't seem very scientific.

A more scientific video:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jitCQtP4npY

I know they don't channel the majority of the GPU fans' effluent, but they certainly handle some.

It is very time consuming to test it since each open air style GPU has their own unique shroud, heatsink design and fans that all change the airflow path within the GPU. You'd need to test each and every GPU design and even then, how are you going to measure how much air escapes or is pulled in from that small grille at the back of the GPU?

 

[bit_user]

A more scientific video:

Um, no, I don't see any temperature data.

The whole idea of using a fog machine is built on a bad assumption that the fog represents hot air. It doesn't. It does represent air from the intake. In that sense, you actually want more even distribution throughout the case, which both this and the previous video show.

However, temperature data is still needed for any kind of objective comparison.

 

[Aeacus]

Um, no, I don't see any temperature data.

I'm happy with the visual evidence of airflow path in different configurations. Negative pressure removes any hot air as soon as possible, keeping the PC internal temp as close to the ambient as possible. While positive pressure keeps the PC internal temp higher than ambient. Logic dictates that operating component (e.g GPU) in a hotter environment results component's higher operating temps. But since you aren't happy with my findings and want to see temps , it's up to you to find relevant data from the interweb.

 

[bit_user]

I'm happy with the visual evidence of airflow path in different configurations.

You can't even see airflow, in the positive pressure scenario.

Negative pressure removes any hot air as soon as possible,

How do you know there's not a hot spot in the area of the GPU?

While positive pressure keeps the PC internal temp higher than ambient.

And where did you get that? I didn't see any temperature data. Did you?

Logic dictates that operating component (e.g GPU) in a hotter environment results component's higher operating temps.

Duh.

Logic also dictates that foggy intake air doesn't represent internally heated air.

But since you aren't happy with my findings

My disappointment is in your not-foundings.

I suspect those guys are just "blowing smoke" at you. Are you not the least bit suspicious they included no temperature data? I mean, that's cooling 101, right? What kind of cooling review doesn't even have temperature data?

 

[william p]

The thread is certainly about improving PC performance, but I stopped using that particular machine, long ago. I had it probably from about 2006 to 2010.

I recently had a user here from Bosnia who needed to use an Opti 745 in this day and age. He got the GTX1050 2GB and 8GB RAM for it. He was too afraid of customs duty or theft of parts to run a C2X. I guess there are no old ones available there, and buying online stuff is risky. I'm still running an Optiplex 380 -X5470 Xeon swap with 8GB DDR3 RAM and a GTX1060 3GB with the PSU, fan swap, and cooler mentioned above. I paid $20 for it with a Win 7 license. The rest of it I had sitting around.
The CPUZ link at the bottom of my sig. is the same era Dimension E520 with a 4GHz QX6800 overclock. It was 2nd or 3rd there for a couple years after I did that in 2015. It's still a top 10 ranking.