you have never used compressed air???
There are 7 Wonders of the modern world and Air in a can is one of them - Suggest you go buy one post haste!
I use a brush too if i find some dust hard to get to and needs to be 'dislodged' before i blast it with the Compressed air. but I usually got my pc outside in the garden on a sunny day or standing by with the hoover when im cleaning out my pc indoors so i dont really give a toss if i just blast everything inside my case.
Compressed air is really powerful stuff. A friend of mine bought in a 1st generation P4 rig (Willamette) not long ago complaining of the computer shutting down for no reason.
He's not the most tech savy guy in the world and he hadnt opened up the pc once since he got it to clean inside.
opened it up. there was as much dust at the bottom of the case as the sahara has sand. and the dust on the heatsink was packed so tight it was like a spongecake. the dust was packed up all the way up the fins on the HSF right to the fan so any air that was being pushed over the HSF wasnt hitting the HSF at all.
Took the fan off the cooler. and gave that mofo a good blast of compressed air, managed to clear all of it no problem.
Bro had enough dust in his case to shorten everyones life in the vincinity exponentially and give them cancer. it wasnt even funny.
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Dont overlook compressed air. some day you will come to a laptop or a PC with corners and other tight places where you cant get to and clean. the only answer is use compressed air
It's not like i will not use it or think it's not good (i got my mom to start buying it so her computers can be safely dusted), it's just i have never had a reason to do so even when cleaning laptops as i just take them apart (only cleaned ones out of warranty) thus it's super easy to use a paintbrush, i would happily use it if i had a reason to but even my scythe ninja was easy to handle with a brush.
It would likely do very well at cleaning my filters but once again the brush only takes a couple of seconds, honestly i would love a good reason to use air but i think i enjoy taking things apart to dust and maybe replace thermal paste too much
Hmm, i wonder how over the top complicated it would be to add a refillable compressed air container to a card that is computer controlled to let a blast out every now and then blowing the dust out the back... yes i know silly but i bet it would work much better than the reverse fan feature and sound very scary when it fails and leaks,