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.
As a former smoker of 20 years and nearing 2 packs a day by the time I quit. Please do yourself a favor and try to quit. You will thank yourself.
Vaping got me off of cigarettes, it was the only thing that was going to be able to as I was hopelessly addicted. I always smoked regular cigarettes, but I found that I preferred menthol fruit flavors. The coolnes feeling made it feel more like a real cigarette.
I can get you off cigarettes in one to two week. All you need is a pen vape and a couple flavors of about .5 nic salt. Buy one pack of cigarettes.
First two days start vaping as much as possible whenever you have a cigarette cravig, but allow yourself a cigarette if you need one. After this try to skip one cigarette, by end of week you should still have a few cigarettes left. I kept two 9 years ago and I still have them in my truck dash kard. But seriously keep two on hand by end of week or second week. Keep them in vehicle house. I found that helped loosen my anxiety of not having cigarettes around physically. And now those two cigarettes are a memento that I won.
Bonus after a month or two of being strictly vaping. Quitting vaping cold turkey is much easier than normal cigarettes. I didn’t even have a problem quitting cold turkey. The only issue I had remaining is the physical mouth throat hit. So I got some zero nicotine menhol flavor. And would just take a light puff of that whenever that urge arrived and one would usually get me through the entire day.
Won’t it just evaporate super quickly? I’m sure I left the cap off some isopropyl alcohol once and when I came back to it half the bottle hand gone! I say no.
If it was acetone I would believe it. Were you alone? Are you sure nobody drank it? Half a litre of alcohol won’t evaporate in just a few minutes from a bottle. Evaporation is related to surface area and temperature. So unless it was 40 Celsius or the thing was in an open container (not bottle) then it would literally be impossible. Unless it was for several hours, but it sounds like you just left it for a couple minutes.
It was more like half a day and I’m sure it was a warm day but you’re probably right, I’m also painfully unobservant and chances are I’d only just noticed the bottle was half empty.
Okay, half a day is more believable.
I would, but evidence seems to suggest that is not a very good idea.
Wow at this point id more seriously consider to quit smoking or at least stop doing it inside.
You know nothing about my situation. I can’t do that. If I could I would.
Wrong.
You can. You just wont.
You are speaking with an addictive mind that is left out of control.
That is how addictions work. That’s your ‘situation’. And yea, i do know. I know enough to know when im being bullshitted. I know the bullshit language we use to convince ourselves.
You are only bullshitting yourself here. Thats the situation. Im not the one who needs to be convinced for you to continue. Because im not the one making you smoke.
Youre already taken that job on yourself. Every moment of every day. Youre chosing it.
That is your situation.
When I worked at an eltronics recycling center (we repaired and resold PCs and printers) we used isopropyl alcohol in spray bottles to clean pc parts. It worked really well. Don’t dunk anything! Just carefully disassemble, spray the part (let the run off fall onto a collection pad), and let it completely dry before reassembly. It may take a few rounds depending on how dirty the part is, resist any temptation to scrub off build up on electrical components. If contaminates absolutely will not come off use a circuit board cleaning “paint brush” with circuit board pcb cleaner to gently clear it or better yet, leave it be. The enemy of good is perfect.
WARNINGS: Wear gloves, eye protection, and a mask. Follow all ESD safety protocols to protect computer parts. If you disassemble the cpu add more thermal paste. DON’T SPRAY THE PSU, if necessary use alcohol on a wash cloth for the PSU exterior. You can speed up dry time by air blowing excess liquid off but be aware this may splatter dirty droplets around the space. Only clean your PC like this in a well ventilated space. Only attempt this if you are comfortable disassembling and reassembling your pc. However long YOU think your computer needs to be fully dry, double that time to be safe.
Also as a bonus. You can put non electric components in the dishwasher. No soap, no heat, as long as they fit and won’t get dinged up by moving dishwasher parts. SERIOUSLY DO NOT HEAT DRY OR WASH ON HIGH HEAT.
I also throw my mechanical keyboards in there but there’s always a chance they won’t work after - so far tho it’s been a success (obviously I make sure they are fully dry before I use them . If you attempt this - at your own risk.
I have an old mainboard from 1990 with emotional value and a leaked BIOS battery. And advice for cleaning that?
Wear gloves and eye protection. Remove that battery and dispose of it in accordance with your local laws.
Gently scrub off and any residual acid with white vinegar and a toothbrush. Brush away or blow off loosened residue until it’s gone, just be aware it’s acid and where you are are sending the particles.
Let it dry. If the rest of the board needs further cleaning you can use isopropyl alcohol to finish it off.
After it’s clean make sure to check for damage before you replace the battery. It’s likely fine, but if it’s been sitting in acid for a while it never hurts to give the board a look over for shorts, cracks, or solder points that lost contact. If it looks good replace the battery and see if she works.
If you decide to disassemble your board to make cleaning easier, I suggest taking a few pictures first. The old MBs don’t have helper notches to ensure parts are placed in the proper orientation and documentation may be hard to come by.
Thanks! The whole PC had a time (when its age was ~20 years) where it still booted, but with reset BIOS settings, followed by a time where it doesn’t boot up anymore. So I believe the most likely thing is that it leaked and caused damage. Retro computing community thinks that the most likely cause is battery damage.
Here is the exact model from someone else: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-3121-v3
Battery (top-left) already removed, but it shows that this one has leaked before as well. When you look closely, you see battery residue on the nearby 8-bit ISA (?), so it must have leaked a lot at some point and been cleaned up. Unfortunately, it came with a notorious Ni-Cd Battery; even for its time not the best.
But in all reality, spraying the PSU with high concentration IPA is fine so long as you remove it from the power source and mobo, and discharge the caps.
That’s true. I usually don’t suggest it because when I worked on desktops I developed a philosophy with PSUs of leave them alone if they work and replace them if they don’t. In my experience PSUs are extremely tough, and even in the worst conditions rarely failed. It caused more harm then good to mess with them unnecessary.
That’s definitely fair. They do tend to be the most robust electrical component in a desktop.
I think alcohol may dissolve somethings that aren’t supposed to be dissolved, I wouldn’t risk it. If it’s working don’t fix it. But if you have to I would use contact spray instead, it’s made to be nonconductive and noncorrosive.
Not to jump on the smoking hate train - I get it, smoking is very pleasurable and insanely addictive - but have you thought about just smoking outside?
I would never smoke in a room I spend any time in. It’s a funny mindset, as I used to smoke inside in my 20s, but when the ban in bars came along it just sort of became second nature.
These days I rarely smoke, but vape more than I should. The vaping is starting to give me a dry tongue that feels like a fading pizza burn. I plan to stop… Soon…
I haven’t been insulted like this in literal years. I did think of it. In fact, I would do it if it was possible.
You know what, I’ll just rant at you, because I can.
I live with two other smokers in an apratment that is around 28 square meters. I can’t convince them to smoke outside (I tried for years, actually decades). Me smoking outside would change nothing.
Just so you know, the two mentioned smokers are very upset to be mentioned here.
Smoke whatever you want wherever you want. Just don’t assume everyone’s situation is the same. I never asked for health advice, just tech advice. It is painful to read comments from all these self righeous pricks telling me how to live my life (no offense, your comment just happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back). If I want to die from lung cancer, that is my choice. If I want to smoke inside an apartment that is already considered a “hotbox” by most standards (even without me smoking inside), then you can bet your pretty face I will.
Thank you for your imput. Hope it goes well with quiting vaping. Cheers.
I promise you, your mindset is going to change. Near the time I quit I was getting constant sinus infections. Wake up every morning coughing my lungs out. I knew if I continued not only would I most likely be gone in ten years but it wasn’t going to be a fun way to go suffocating. I’d miss watching my daughter grow up and walking her down the aisle. I could literally feel smoking starting to affect my health after 20 years. Vaping got me off and I feel great now.
Fair play, man. Like I say, I used to smoke indoors and it’s weird that, once society in my country changed, it started to feel really strange to smoke inside.
I wouldn’t be feeling insulted. Your life, your choice bud.
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
Isopropyl alcohol damages certain plastics.
And metals
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
I take it you’ve probably never used isopropyl and definitely have never played with isopropyl fire. Few flammable things are safer than isopropyl. You should avoid paper with that mindset because at least the alcohol evaporates at a far, far lower temperature than that that causes autoignition. Even when I’ve lit pools of it on fire, it’s easy to blow it out. It’s a short-lived flame because, again, it evaporates as fast as it burns. It doesn’t get used as fuel for any normal heat source.
You realize IPA is used in all kinds of cleaners for both household and medical needs, right?
I am the danger. I worked with more volatile stuff. I’ve done things that would give an OSHA inspector a stroke, and I’m fine, because I’m not THAT stupid. But thank you for the concern.
I’m fine, because I’m not THAT stupid
Famous last words
I haven’t died yet. And I did a lot of things that would be considered dangerous. You kind of seem like a killjoy. Not only am I fun at parties, I also still have all my fingers and toes. Can you say the same?
Lol smokers
Lol non-smokers
Ngl, I do enjoy smoking. But I just don’t because it’s so fucking bad for you. I do tease, but my heart goes to you. Seriously, if you can ever manage, do quit as soon as you can. If you must suck something regularly that’s much healthier and more fun, I suggest a nice clean dick.
Thank you but no thank you. Back where I’m from this would be seen as an insult, but I get the sentiment.
I should really switch to something else. I’ve been considering crack and meth, but that’s expensive. Although looking at the price of cigarettes these days, it might be a viable alternative soon. Cheers.
Real talk: have you seriously thought about a therapist? There are therapists that will do it for free or very very little money. Or you could reduce the amount you smoke, and spend that money on a therapist instead. Instead of 1-3 packs every few days and smoking whenever you think about it, only have a cigarette at most every three hours.
Also, do NOT start crack or meth. Those are not drop pits easily escaped, and starting either of those at all have dire, insidious, very real consequences. Take back power over your life in a more constructive way, like drinking orange juice and brushing your teeth and not smoking. Regain that frontal lobe control clarity that’s in there by getting your shit together. Take real steps that you’ve gotta do. Make changes, no matter how small or large. You can do it, nothing is written in stone and you have so much more power over your life and surroundings than you currently know. Take a deep breath, look deep down inside your heart and soul, and see the happy healthy future you that you know you are, and forcibly make that your reality. Fucking do it and don’t take pain as an answer. It’s never too late to stop, let it all slide off, realize this is not what you want, and take yourself in a totally different direction. You just gotta stand up and move your feet. And even if you don’t do it right now, know that you have, and will always have this power over yourself. Change is inevitable and the only constant of the universe.
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.
I want to clean my PC thoroughly to buy it a few more years.
You can buy yourself and your electronics a lot of years by cutting the smoking :)
Technically you could submerge parts in isopropyl alcohol. The concern with liquid is primarily corrosion and causing shortages. If there is no stored electricity in the capacitors, the isopropyl alcohol shouldn’t cause any corrosion. It would not be the best way to clean it, in reality, but you could probably do it. I would just spray some on and gently clean it with an old toothbrush.
Smoke, especially cigarette smoke, gets onto everything and is awful to try and clean. I won’t buy used electronics used in a smokers home, or much of anything for that matter.
When I used to do computer repair for work I had a hard limit against working on stuff from a smoker’s household or office. Not only am I too asthmatic to enjoy spending time in such a place, but the thick sticky crud in every nook and cranny of the machine made any hardware job far more trouble than it was worth to me.
I’m still willing to occasionally be the “computer guy” for certain friends and family, but smokers can figure something else out because I’m not touching it. (And yes, weed smoke counts.)
Okay. That does not answer the question. I mean, good for you, I guess.
Thank you! You’re nice.
As a guy who’s cleaned far too many smoker fucked PCs.
99% Isopropyl and a tooth brush is what you need. It won’t be fast, but you need that kinda precision and attention to make sure you got everything.
You might also consider just replacing any fans. I don’t know if you have a laptop or a desktop, but a laptop fan is a bitch to clean
Thank you. But why would I replace fans? They work fine. It hasn’t even been a decade.
Or do you mean replace as in with liquid cooling?
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.
You gotta be pretty dense or insane to think you can make a post on the open internet about smoking so much indoors that your computer needs to be submerged in solvent or something to get it clean, and not expect more than half the replies to be addressing the reason it got that way in the first place.
Not dense, just not very well adjusted. Thank you.
because squirrel
I dead ass though they were smoking ribs inside…
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.
My lungs have a self-cleaning feature, and my PC doesn’t.
😂
Ending addictive behavior starts with admitting to yourself where your brain is lying to you about your habits and how gullible you are to accept those stories it sends you. You are not your brain.
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.
70 years is more than enough for me. Not planning to spend more with my physical body.
But thanks for the story. I’ll make sure to try and remember it.
Just as a clarification. How much did he smoke a day? Was it more than up to five cigs a day? Because that is my limit and has been for years. So I could have more than 70 years in me.
Yeah, I’m reading this, and with what I’ve seen it checks out. I’m from NC and my family is as well, and the number of deaths that I attribute to smoking in my family is pretty high. Even if you don’t die, you often have issues either later in life or for the rest of your life.
Good point. That’s why no one has ever died from smoking problems. You’ll be fine.
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You sound like my father, until he died from complications of COPD from smoking.
It seems like we should be doing the opposite, you seem to understand tech just fine and are very ignorant about health.
I studied medicine. I have a diploma. I know nothing about the tech accept that it’s made of metal and crystals and plastic. And it has lightning in it.
Did you study it in kindergarten and nowhere else? Because whether or not your lungs are “self cleaning” or not has absolutely nothing to do with how dangerous smoking is.
Ridiculous.
I completely agree.
Gotta get a lung flute. You’ll puke after you see what you cough out. Next smoke hits like a truck too
I don’t know what any of this means, but I can think of a much more effective solution for smokers.
I’d like to hear it. Does it work for other addictions?
Actually sure, if we’re going to be earnest I do recommend some tactics for beating addictive behavior.
The most important thing you will ever learn about yourself and reality itself is the sheer amount of delusion your brain puts you in, no matter who you are or how smart you think you are.
We think of our brains as logical, calculating machines inside our heads where all our will and thoughts and ideas come from, but this is an illusion, you are not your brain, you’re not even your language center. Your brain’s primary and only job is to assemble your feelings into a narrative story. That story doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to connect things so your feeling makes sense.
What this means for addictive behavior is that you can find the point where your brain starts reasoning things out that it wants, and cut it off because you know it’s not you, it’s another entity inside your head trying to get a thing it wants. Drugs fire off unnatural pleasure associations which your brain will make up a lot of excuses to keep getting, so learning to identify the stories your brain tells you to engage in behavior you don’t want is key to reducing that behavior.
A huge part of this is preparing ahead of time for when you get worn out trying to argue with yourself and setting specific boundaries for your future-self. Get rid of the stuff you want to quit taking, make sure there’s none in the house. Lock your money and credit card in a timed safe after a certain part of the day, because you will have a harder time resisting the “reasoning attack” as it gets later and later in the day, and resist the urge to think about tomorrow or how miserable you’re going to feel as the night, week and year go on. This is why they say “one day at a time” because your brain will wear you the fuck down with debate and “ideas” and bargaining, and if you anticipate that lasting on and on, you will break easier.
All of this requires being very honest with yourself and examining the habit you want to quit, such as looking up the actual risks, the actual data about dangers and the actual amount of money you’re spending on it, and all that stuff your brain really doesn’t like incorporating into it’s mental story-telling.
Understanding your brain isn’t you and it will actually be your worst enemy and will childishly sabotage your whole life to get what it wants, and that it talks to you in your own internal voice so it’s hard to resist, these ideas will be your best mental strategy for quitting because at least you have your actual enemy identified.
So it’s nothing new. I was hoping for something new.
I could just quit cold turkey. I have that type of mental fortitude. But smoking is literally one of the… I think three joys that I have in my life. So I’m a bit apprehensive about giving up one of the few things that makes me less miserable.
And before you ask, all of my “joys of life” can be classified as addictions.
Maybe that’s the problem… I literally have nothing that makes me happy and is healhy. I’ll look into that. Thanks for making me think about it.
That’s a very good and honest answer and that can also be worked with, you have an outline for effective change right there:
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Work on better mental health, starting with non-smoking activities, ideally getting out of the house and trying new things, preferably at first in spaces where you can’t even smoke if you wanted to. Consider talking to a therapist. Change your environment, don’t stop at your computer, clean your whole living space and change things around. Change your career (I know, I know, I gotta throw it out there.) If you are in a rut, change what you can and change how you feel about the things you can’t change. Find something of value you can start tackling in your life like raising a pet, a plant, a new routine like forcing walks.
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Understand that the addiction is also diminishing your happiness. I like to use porn addiction as the best example of this part, because people often misinterpret why pleasurable addictions are harmful even if they had no health effects - which is, as you engage with activities that boost your pleasure responsonses, your brain will reinforce those pleasure paths and all the other pathways in your brain diminish and wither so that it’s harder to feel happiness from other things. Think of the things you do and think about like roads and highways, the more you pave them and use them, the easier it is for your thought-stream to get on an onramp to flavortown and indulge in the vice, whereas the offramps to other things that used to make you happy start to erode and fade.
So whichever you tackle first, understand that this takes time.
(I never was a smoker, but I did beat a level of alcoholism that took the lives of most of my family, it took a long time and many attempts.)
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