Ask Lemmy

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.

As bad as your computer looks your lungs are worse.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Disassemble. Use distilled water and a suitable sized ultrasonic cleaner, with one component at a time. Air dry with clean compressed air, canned not compressor. Leave it to dry for atleast a day after. Reassemble, fingers crossed.

Iso wouldn't be good for things like thermal pads or thermal paste. You could probably dunk most other things in it (though I wouldn't put fan motors in it).

If you know how to disassemble the graphics card, you could probably do that, save the thermal pads/note where the thermal paste goes and then submerge it. Though the best option for everything is probably a squirtbottle and a tooth/nailbrush. Just give it a day or two before powering it on to make certain that all of it has evaporated.