**The Art of Cleaning and Upgrading a PC**

There's a bit of pitting on the cold plate, but that's just something that happens with age. That's why we use thermal paste to mitigate the issue. Despite this, overall, the cooler looks cleaner now, and it's been a pleasure to upgrade this system.

The fan is another story altogether. The underside is much cleaner, and all we had to do was blast it with our air duster to get rid of any dust or debris. The nylon bristles on the duster are anti-static, making it easy to scrub away at individual fins without damaging them. In fact, this is one of the benefits of cleaning frequently – you don't have to wait for years for things to become grimy and difficult to clean.

Re-paste and reassemble is the next step in the process. We need to put thermal paste on the chip first, but then we have to set the cooler in place. This can be a bit tricky, as we need to make sure it's aligned properly. Let's flip it over and line up the holes with the thermal paste on the chip again. It looks about right now.

Once we've got everything lined up, we can start tightening down the screws and securing everything in place. The fan is next, and this is where things get a bit tricky. We need to route the cables carefully so that they don't get tangled or caught on anything. One eternity later, and here we are – all prepped for reassembly.

The final piece of the puzzle is connecting everything up. This can be a bit fiddly, especially when it comes to wiring in the front I/O ports. But with a little patience and attention to detail, we should be able to get everything connected without any issues.

And there we have it – our system is looking brand new again. The dust has been cleaned out, and everything is running smoothly. This is what ITX builds are all about – packing as much power into a small space while still keeping things cool and quiet.

**The Importance of Routine Maintenance**

As we've seen today, cleaning and upgrading your PC can be a bit of a challenge. But the key takeaway from this experience should be routine maintenance. Don't neglect it! If you wait too long to clean your system, you might find yourself dealing with dust, grime, and even water damage.

I'm lucky that I only had to deal with a year's worth of dust buildup on this build, but others may not be so fortunate. In fact, if you don't clean your PC regularly, you might have to resort to scrubbing away at individual fins with Q-tips and IPA – not exactly the most enjoyable experience.

So remember, cleaning your PC is an essential part of maintaining its performance and longevity. Take a few minutes each week to air dust your system, and you'll be rewarded with a cleaner, quieter machine that runs smoothly and efficiently. And if things do get grimy or dirty, don't panic – just grab some compressed air and get to work!

**Putting it All Back Together**

And now, the moment of truth – putting everything back together in its proper place. This can be a bit tricky, especially when it comes to getting the system back onto the shelf without breaking anything. But with a little care and attention, we should be able to get everything safely stowed away.

I must say, I'm a bit ashamed of how I handled this – putting the system on the floor and then having to wrestle it back into its case. But with routine maintenance, it's all worth it in the end. The temperatures are stable, and everything is running smoothly.

As we finish up for today, take a moment to appreciate the complexity and beauty of your PC. It's not just a hunk of hardware – it's a system that runs on thousands of tiny components, working together in harmony to deliver the performance you need. And with regular maintenance, you can keep it running at its best for years to come.

**The Final Touches**

Finally, let's take a look at the front I/O ports. It's been a bit of an ordeal getting everything connected up here, but we're almost there! The last piece of the puzzle is connecting the cables to the system, and then we can start thinking about cable management.

I must say, I'm impressed with how everything has come together – it looks beautiful, even if it was a bit of a struggle at times. And with this RTX 3080 card installed, we're talking about a system that's more than capable of handling the most demanding tasks.

So there you have it – our finished build is looking better than ever. I hope you've enjoyed this little journey through the world of PC building and maintenance. Don't forget to subscribe, like, and comment below – and I'll see you in the next video!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI've uh got a bit of a confession to make you know I preach about keeping your computers clean and whatnot trying to avoid the need for a deep cleaning which you've seen probably many videos of already on this channel but there is one PC that I have utterly neglected and I'm a bit ashamed so I'm gonna go ahead and apologize ahead of time for not practicing what I preach in this particular case and we're gonna see how bad it is because it's been uh over a year I believe since I've touched this thing and it's laying on the floor but hear me out so this is my racing Sim you've probably seen a few videos on this already including the steering wheel itself the the whole assembly we've even got the Odyssey Neo G9 monitor from Samsung here this Ultra wide Ultra curve panel works really well with this setup but you're wondering maybe where the computer is well it's it's um yeah it's it's under it's under there it's it's that box which my camera's not focusing on yeah it's under there and that's why I'm concerned about dust buildup because it's been there for like a year now you can probably see I've got this propped up at an angle and I did this so that the uh I think it's the graphics card on the far side I could pull in air unhindered from the carpet below now there are probably better ways to do this I just kind of threw it down there and was yeah more worried about airflow than anything else dust collection the fact that this is on the floor means that it's probably quite dirty in fact just the surface dust is pretty rough on this so let's go ahead and take this into the office and see just how bad it really is you might want a brace for impact you ready Stay With Me an annoying Windows activation Watermark head on over to VIP SCD key purchase a Windows 10 Pro OEM key for a fraction of the price of retail just see the secure payment method like PayPal enter your product key and your PC settings window and say goodbye to the watermark and be sure to use our offer code skgs for a sew wheat discount well here she is and uh I've gotta say I thought it would be a bit worse on the surface yeah it's uh is Dusty but I think the real culprit here is going to be in the CPU Cooler as you can see this is the top part of the case so when it was sitting in the racing Sim or underneath it I should say it was angled like this so it was actually pressed up pretty close to the pedal board and I imagine underneath is where we'll see well no it looks pretty clean under here it's really weird how the dust accumulated these these rubber feet are falling off I'll just re- stick these at some point anyway four screws here let's go and get the cover off and I've got to say I am very surprised that uh the underside of this case looks as clean as it does we actually still have dust filters here on the bottom I had to remove the dust filter over the CPU Cooler because of clearance issues which I'll show you in a second let's flip this back over yeah we're definitely going to be cleaning this case and a full disclosure I do have one pet Pepsi she's a cat probably actually probably seen her in a few videos um this actually isn't all that bad so after going uncleaned for a year um the only real dust with this case sitting on the ground has accumulated around the CPU Cooler that's pretty much it the underside of the power supply looks fine the 3080 looks really good no real dust concerns here this is isolated I'm kind of impressed so we're definitely going to be cleaning this and I'm going to go ahead and start by taking off the fan held in by a couple wireframe brackets there we go and yeah you know it's bad when you can see the fans like the Fan's Shadow made out of dust oof and to be honest because of where this case is positioned this small amount of dust here is likely to impact temperatures maybe a few degrees Celsius but still it does add up where you've already got a pretty minimalist CPU Cooler atop a chip that's pretty power hungry it's an Intel chip you really want to make sure that this stuff is cleaned up if it was a mid Tower probably wouldn't make much of a difference at all in fact this little bit of dust here you probably wouldn't even notice in terms of temperatures which is why I don't usually run before and after temp tests in our pcvc videos now I don't just want to take my electric duster and kind of blow this dust out because at that point we won't be removing the dust we'll just be moving it somewhere else it'll get trapped in these cables down inside the motherboard we don't want that so I'm going to remove the board outright flip it over that'll allow us to remove the cooler at that point and then we can get rid of most of this dust I'll take it outside and clean it out there now you might be wondering why you see us cleaning this up how we're able to keep our office clean and it's largely thanks to the void products like their air purifiers and these cordless vacuums this is the vortex iq40 and it has a ton of sucking power you know it's serious when it literally pulls up the carpet during use two-stage HEPA filters ensure that the recycle there is clean and keeps allergens down for those especially sensitive this is just some of the Dust I pick up from my office after a deep cleaning segment so you can imagine just how important having an exceptional vacuum is be sure to check out the levoit vortex IQ lineup by clicking their sponsor link below start first with the eight pin oh my gosh I can't even there we go and then 24 pin very very narrow clearance there we go USB 3.0 front panel and then we have one more here HD audio which I conveniently tucked under this Riser cable let's see if I can get this out now I was really proud initially of the way that this build turned out I thought it looked very clean especially with the custom cables we've got this Corsair sf750 which is supplying just enough wattage I think for an RTX 3080 and higher end yet older Intel platform I I think we can now remove the motherboard oh we've got one more USB drive there okay she'll slide on out and uh yeah as I expected not a lot of dust under the board most of it is trapped in the cooler just four more screws holding this back plate and I think good to go oh yeah actually a pretty clever way to install a uh hello low profile CPU Cooler so we'll set this aside and here we are this is our platform we can also take this time to repaste our CPU which may help with CPU temps even more in the long run there we have it all nice and shiny again the CPU in here is an i7 8700 I had to remind myself which generation I had in here 8700s are among the best performers obviously not the case use so you can't overclock but again I did this intentionally because this being such a small form factor build very tight spaces a small cooler I didn't really see the need to overclock anyway at the risk of even toastier temps and just a testament to how incredible ITX motherboards are look at how densely packed this one is now you think on the surface wow looks like less material ITX board should be cheaper than their ATX counterparts but that my friends is usually not the case for reasons like this here just how many smds are on the back side of this motherboard you can see I've actually got my storage drive here as well uh it's just all around a pretty impressive feat of Technology I'm gonna go and leave everything else as is the 8700 is fine our 3080 is driving most of what you see on screen at least in our case and I'm also going to leave the low profile ddr4 from xpg now we're outside and here's a reminder of just how dirty this thing is again not the end of the world I've seen much dirtier pctc playlist but uh just to start you imagine if we had left this for another year this might require a bit more than what you're about to see now it is important when you're using something as powerful as this electric duster here that you don't let the fans that you're cleaning over spin if they spin too fast you could trash the bearings this is also the case if you're using a can of air and this is also why I do not use a an air compressor an industrial compressor if you blast too much air at even a single fan blade it could cause it to snap with that much air pressure that you're using so you want to be very careful with that the last thing we're going to do is clean this up just a tad bit more I can see some dust residue lingering in the fins so we're going to take this under a soap and water bath just a bit of scrub-a-dub-dub it really helps to have a toothbrush or something similar to get in between these small fins and yeah I'm using some of my kids baby soap and just like that I am pretty dang proud of the way this turned out looks almost brand new there's a bit of pitting on the cold plate this just happens with age not the end of the world that's why we use thermal paste but uh overall yeah cooler looking a lot cleaner now and this here is what the fan looks like this is the underside much cleaner and all we had to do to clean this was uh just blast it with our air duster it's nice to have the nylon bristles anti-statics you can scrub really nicely sometimes I have to actually clean individual fins you've seen on the pcdc videos with Q-tips and IPA in this case didn't have to do that because they weren't super dirty and that's why it's important to clean frequently your rig versus waiting for several years it just means you're gonna have to do even more labor later to get this uh yeah back to back to looking as new as it could possibly can now we're going to re-paste and reassemble and this yeah this order of operation is a bit out of whack because well I've got to put thermal paste on the chip first but then we have to set the cooler like I forget which way I had it why don't I have it something like that there I think that looks about right so we're gonna flip it over and then I've got a line the holes with the thermal paste on the chip again just kind of hang in there this looks about right and then we will tighten it all down and uh yeah looking pretty good we'll get the fan situated I think I had the cable running uh it doesn't really matter which way we do this I'm just trying to think about it from a cable management perspective something like this here we'll tuck the excess in and then connect to the board via this header here and then just a couple of small wireframe brackets we'll quickly dust the remainder of this build it's not very dirty and here we are all prepped for reassembly yeah it wasn't so bad these cables out of the way don't want to snag any of these I gotta remember how I how I routed this HD audio cable I did it some fancy way before there's no wasted space okay what's the hold up this time there we go I think holy cow it is difficult to wire front i o in this thing one eternity later well here you have it she's looking a lot better now no dust that I can see maybe a few scuffs things we can clean up after the fact I can just probably just wipe it down with a of I don't know maybe a damp towel or something but all in all very satisfied with the way that this looks and and look ITX builds like these especially in cases that are about the size of modern day consoles can be very challenging they can also be very rewarding I mean look at just how densely packed all of this is this is also going to be more powerful than consoles because of this thing right here this RTX 3080 which would be a plenty for a majority of folks out there for years to come the the key takeaway from this should be routine maintenance it is important do not neglect it I mean look I waited a year and I've seen builds become very very very there's like Dusty dirty grimy after a year so in that sense I'm very lucky but you should make it a habit to at least air dust your system every three to six months otherwise you might be faced with challenges like the ones we've had to to deal with in our pcdc playlist when it gets really grimy you have to scrub with water you have to manually physically scrub things you can't just blast Air at that point because the dust has solidified and sometimes becomes sticky depending on how humid the environment is and it just doesn't come up with air alone so remember to clean your PCS folks now there's only one thing left to do let's put this right back where we found it I know I know I'm a bit ashamed it is technically on the floor and I preach against that and that's just another thing it's kind of self-inflicted here but with routine maintenance it's okay temperatures are okay with this I've measured long term and I like the fact that it's kind of out of sight out of mind it's not next to me pumping a bunch of hot air into my face or something like that so let's end the video with that throwing this thing back where she belongs yep always a bit of a struggle taking this thing in and out without breaking anything oh and I gotta wire it up oh my gosh hey we are locked and loaded all right let's see if I can get a good start God dang it already off to a horrible horrible start you know what I'll see you in the next video subscribe like comment and uh stay tuned for the next one my name is Greg thanks for cleaning with meI've uh got a bit of a confession to make you know I preach about keeping your computers clean and whatnot trying to avoid the need for a deep cleaning which you've seen probably many videos of already on this channel but there is one PC that I have utterly neglected and I'm a bit ashamed so I'm gonna go ahead and apologize ahead of time for not practicing what I preach in this particular case and we're gonna see how bad it is because it's been uh over a year I believe since I've touched this thing and it's laying on the floor but hear me out so this is my racing Sim you've probably seen a few videos on this already including the steering wheel itself the the whole assembly we've even got the Odyssey Neo G9 monitor from Samsung here this Ultra wide Ultra curve panel works really well with this setup but you're wondering maybe where the computer is well it's it's um yeah it's it's under it's under there it's it's that box which my camera's not focusing on yeah it's under there and that's why I'm concerned about dust buildup because it's been there for like a year now you can probably see I've got this propped up at an angle and I did this so that the uh I think it's the graphics card on the far side I could pull in air unhindered from the carpet below now there are probably better ways to do this I just kind of threw it down there and was yeah more worried about airflow than anything else dust collection the fact that this is on the floor means that it's probably quite dirty in fact just the surface dust is pretty rough on this so let's go ahead and take this into the office and see just how bad it really is you might want a brace for impact you ready Stay With Me an annoying Windows activation Watermark head on over to VIP SCD key purchase a Windows 10 Pro OEM key for a fraction of the price of retail just see the secure payment method like PayPal enter your product key and your PC settings window and say goodbye to the watermark and be sure to use our offer code skgs for a sew wheat discount well here she is and uh I've gotta say I thought it would be a bit worse on the surface yeah it's uh is Dusty but I think the real culprit here is going to be in the CPU Cooler as you can see this is the top part of the case so when it was sitting in the racing Sim or underneath it I should say it was angled like this so it was actually pressed up pretty close to the pedal board and I imagine underneath is where we'll see well no it looks pretty clean under here it's really weird how the dust accumulated these these rubber feet are falling off I'll just re- stick these at some point anyway four screws here let's go and get the cover off and I've got to say I am very surprised that uh the underside of this case looks as clean as it does we actually still have dust filters here on the bottom I had to remove the dust filter over the CPU Cooler because of clearance issues which I'll show you in a second let's flip this back over yeah we're definitely going to be cleaning this case and a full disclosure I do have one pet Pepsi she's a cat probably actually probably seen her in a few videos um this actually isn't all that bad so after going uncleaned for a year um the only real dust with this case sitting on the ground has accumulated around the CPU Cooler that's pretty much it the underside of the power supply looks fine the 3080 looks really good no real dust concerns here this is isolated I'm kind of impressed so we're definitely going to be cleaning this and I'm going to go ahead and start by taking off the fan held in by a couple wireframe brackets there we go and yeah you know it's bad when you can see the fans like the Fan's Shadow made out of dust oof and to be honest because of where this case is positioned this small amount of dust here is likely to impact temperatures maybe a few degrees Celsius but still it does add up where you've already got a pretty minimalist CPU Cooler atop a chip that's pretty power hungry it's an Intel chip you really want to make sure that this stuff is cleaned up if it was a mid Tower probably wouldn't make much of a difference at all in fact this little bit of dust here you probably wouldn't even notice in terms of temperatures which is why I don't usually run before and after temp tests in our pcvc videos now I don't just want to take my electric duster and kind of blow this dust out because at that point we won't be removing the dust we'll just be moving it somewhere else it'll get trapped in these cables down inside the motherboard we don't want that so I'm going to remove the board outright flip it over that'll allow us to remove the cooler at that point and then we can get rid of most of this dust I'll take it outside and clean it out there now you might be wondering why you see us cleaning this up how we're able to keep our office clean and it's largely thanks to the void products like their air purifiers and these cordless vacuums this is the vortex iq40 and it has a ton of sucking power you know it's serious when it literally pulls up the carpet during use two-stage HEPA filters ensure that the recycle there is clean and keeps allergens down for those especially sensitive this is just some of the Dust I pick up from my office after a deep cleaning segment so you can imagine just how important having an exceptional vacuum is be sure to check out the levoit vortex IQ lineup by clicking their sponsor link below start first with the eight pin oh my gosh I can't even there we go and then 24 pin very very narrow clearance there we go USB 3.0 front panel and then we have one more here HD audio which I conveniently tucked under this Riser cable let's see if I can get this out now I was really proud initially of the way that this build turned out I thought it looked very clean especially with the custom cables we've got this Corsair sf750 which is supplying just enough wattage I think for an RTX 3080 and higher end yet older Intel platform I I think we can now remove the motherboard oh we've got one more USB drive there okay she'll slide on out and uh yeah as I expected not a lot of dust under the board most of it is trapped in the cooler just four more screws holding this back plate and I think good to go oh yeah actually a pretty clever way to install a uh hello low profile CPU Cooler so we'll set this aside and here we are this is our platform we can also take this time to repaste our CPU which may help with CPU temps even more in the long run there we have it all nice and shiny again the CPU in here is an i7 8700 I had to remind myself which generation I had in here 8700s are among the best performers obviously not the case use so you can't overclock but again I did this intentionally because this being such a small form factor build very tight spaces a small cooler I didn't really see the need to overclock anyway at the risk of even toastier temps and just a testament to how incredible ITX motherboards are look at how densely packed this one is now you think on the surface wow looks like less material ITX board should be cheaper than their ATX counterparts but that my friends is usually not the case for reasons like this here just how many smds are on the back side of this motherboard you can see I've actually got my storage drive here as well uh it's just all around a pretty impressive feat of Technology I'm gonna go and leave everything else as is the 8700 is fine our 3080 is driving most of what you see on screen at least in our case and I'm also going to leave the low profile ddr4 from xpg now we're outside and here's a reminder of just how dirty this thing is again not the end of the world I've seen much dirtier pctc playlist but uh just to start you imagine if we had left this for another year this might require a bit more than what you're about to see now it is important when you're using something as powerful as this electric duster here that you don't let the fans that you're cleaning over spin if they spin too fast you could trash the bearings this is also the case if you're using a can of air and this is also why I do not use a an air compressor an industrial compressor if you blast too much air at even a single fan blade it could cause it to snap with that much air pressure that you're using so you want to be very careful with that the last thing we're going to do is clean this up just a tad bit more I can see some dust residue lingering in the fins so we're going to take this under a soap and water bath just a bit of scrub-a-dub-dub it really helps to have a toothbrush or something similar to get in between these small fins and yeah I'm using some of my kids baby soap and just like that I am pretty dang proud of the way this turned out looks almost brand new there's a bit of pitting on the cold plate this just happens with age not the end of the world that's why we use thermal paste but uh overall yeah cooler looking a lot cleaner now and this here is what the fan looks like this is the underside much cleaner and all we had to do to clean this was uh just blast it with our air duster it's nice to have the nylon bristles anti-statics you can scrub really nicely sometimes I have to actually clean individual fins you've seen on the pcdc videos with Q-tips and IPA in this case didn't have to do that because they weren't super dirty and that's why it's important to clean frequently your rig versus waiting for several years it just means you're gonna have to do even more labor later to get this uh yeah back to back to looking as new as it could possibly can now we're going to re-paste and reassemble and this yeah this order of operation is a bit out of whack because well I've got to put thermal paste on the chip first but then we have to set the cooler like I forget which way I had it why don't I have it something like that there I think that looks about right so we're gonna flip it over and then I've got a line the holes with the thermal paste on the chip again just kind of hang in there this looks about right and then we will tighten it all down and uh yeah looking pretty good we'll get the fan situated I think I had the cable running uh it doesn't really matter which way we do this I'm just trying to think about it from a cable management perspective something like this here we'll tuck the excess in and then connect to the board via this header here and then just a couple of small wireframe brackets we'll quickly dust the remainder of this build it's not very dirty and here we are all prepped for reassembly yeah it wasn't so bad these cables out of the way don't want to snag any of these I gotta remember how I how I routed this HD audio cable I did it some fancy way before there's no wasted space okay what's the hold up this time there we go I think holy cow it is difficult to wire front i o in this thing one eternity later well here you have it she's looking a lot better now no dust that I can see maybe a few scuffs things we can clean up after the fact I can just probably just wipe it down with a of I don't know maybe a damp towel or something but all in all very satisfied with the way that this looks and and look ITX builds like these especially in cases that are about the size of modern day consoles can be very challenging they can also be very rewarding I mean look at just how densely packed all of this is this is also going to be more powerful than consoles because of this thing right here this RTX 3080 which would be a plenty for a majority of folks out there for years to come the the key takeaway from this should be routine maintenance it is important do not neglect it I mean look I waited a year and I've seen builds become very very very there's like Dusty dirty grimy after a year so in that sense I'm very lucky but you should make it a habit to at least air dust your system every three to six months otherwise you might be faced with challenges like the ones we've had to to deal with in our pcdc playlist when it gets really grimy you have to scrub with water you have to manually physically scrub things you can't just blast Air at that point because the dust has solidified and sometimes becomes sticky depending on how humid the environment is and it just doesn't come up with air alone so remember to clean your PCS folks now there's only one thing left to do let's put this right back where we found it I know I know I'm a bit ashamed it is technically on the floor and I preach against that and that's just another thing it's kind of self-inflicted here but with routine maintenance it's okay temperatures are okay with this I've measured long term and I like the fact that it's kind of out of sight out of mind it's not next to me pumping a bunch of hot air into my face or something like that so let's end the video with that throwing this thing back where she belongs yep always a bit of a struggle taking this thing in and out without breaking anything oh and I gotta wire it up oh my gosh hey we are locked and loaded all right let's see if I can get a good start God dang it already off to a horrible horrible start you know what I'll see you in the next video subscribe like comment and uh stay tuned for the next one my name is Greg thanks for cleaning with meI've uh got a bit of a confession to make you know I preach about keeping your computers clean and whatnot trying to avoid the need for a deep cleaning which you've seen probably many videos of already on this channel but there is one PC that I have utterly neglected and I'm a bit ashamed so I'm gonna go ahead and apologize ahead of time for not practicing what I preach in this particular case and we're gonna see how bad it is because it's been uh over a year I believe since I've touched this thing and it's laying on the floor but hear me out so this is my racing Sim you've probably seen a few videos on this already including the steering wheel itself the the whole assembly we've even got the Odyssey Neo G9 monitor from Samsung here this Ultra wide Ultra curve panel works really well with this setup but you're wondering maybe where the computer is well it's it's um yeah it's it's under it's under there it's it's that box which my camera's not focusing on yeah it's under there and that's why I'm concerned about dust buildup because it's been there for like a year now you can probably see I've got this propped up at an angle and I did this so that the uh I think it's the graphics card on the far side I could pull in air unhindered from the carpet below now there are probably better ways to do this I just kind of threw it down there and was yeah more worried about airflow than anything else dust collection the fact that this is on the floor means that it's probably quite dirty in fact just the surface dust is pretty rough on this so let's go ahead and take this into the office and see just how bad it really is you might want a brace for impact you ready Stay With Me an annoying Windows activation Watermark head on over to VIP SCD key purchase a Windows 10 Pro OEM key for a fraction of the price of retail just see the secure payment method like PayPal enter your product key and your PC settings window and say goodbye to the watermark and be sure to use our offer code skgs for a sew wheat discount well here she is and uh I've gotta say I thought it would be a bit worse on the surface yeah it's uh is Dusty but I think the real culprit here is going to be in the CPU Cooler as you can see this is the top part of the case so when it was sitting in the racing Sim or underneath it I should say it was angled like this so it was actually pressed up pretty close to the pedal board and I imagine underneath is where we'll see well no it looks pretty clean under here it's really weird how the dust accumulated these these rubber feet are falling off I'll just re- stick these at some point anyway four screws here let's go and get the cover off and I've got to say I am very surprised that uh the underside of this case looks as clean as it does we actually still have dust filters here on the bottom I had to remove the dust filter over the CPU Cooler because of clearance issues which I'll show you in a second let's flip this back over yeah we're definitely going to be cleaning this case and a full disclosure I do have one pet Pepsi she's a cat probably actually probably seen her in a few videos um this actually isn't all that bad so after going uncleaned for a year um the only real dust with this case sitting on the ground has accumulated around the CPU Cooler that's pretty much it the underside of the power supply looks fine the 3080 looks really good no real dust concerns here this is isolated I'm kind of impressed so we're definitely going to be cleaning this and I'm going to go ahead and start by taking off the fan held in by a couple wireframe brackets there we go and yeah you know it's bad when you can see the fans like the Fan's Shadow made out of dust oof and to be honest because of where this case is positioned this small amount of dust here is likely to impact temperatures maybe a few degrees Celsius but still it does add up where you've already got a pretty minimalist CPU Cooler atop a chip that's pretty power hungry it's an Intel chip you really want to make sure that this stuff is cleaned up if it was a mid Tower probably wouldn't make much of a difference at all in fact this little bit of dust here you probably wouldn't even notice in terms of temperatures which is why I don't usually run before and after temp tests in our pcvc videos now I don't just want to take my electric duster and kind of blow this dust out because at that point we won't be removing the dust we'll just be moving it somewhere else it'll get trapped in these cables down inside the motherboard we don't want that so I'm going to remove the board outright flip it over that'll allow us to remove the cooler at that point and then we can get rid of most of this dust I'll take it outside and clean it out there now you might be wondering why you see us cleaning this up how we're able to keep our office clean and it's largely thanks to the void products like their air purifiers and these cordless vacuums this is the vortex iq40 and it has a ton of sucking power you know it's serious when it literally pulls up the carpet during use two-stage HEPA filters ensure that the recycle there is clean and keeps allergens down for those especially sensitive this is just some of the Dust I pick up from my office after a deep cleaning segment so you can imagine just how important having an exceptional vacuum is be sure to check out the levoit vortex IQ lineup by clicking their sponsor link below start first with the eight pin oh my gosh I can't even there we go and then 24 pin very very narrow clearance there we go USB 3.0 front panel and then we have one more here HD audio which I conveniently tucked under this Riser cable let's see if I can get this out now I was really proud initially of the way that this build turned out I thought it looked very clean especially with the custom cables we've got this Corsair sf750 which is supplying just enough wattage I think for an RTX 3080 and higher end yet older Intel platform I I think we can now remove the motherboard oh we've got one more USB drive there okay she'll slide on out and uh yeah as I expected not a lot of dust under the board most of it is trapped in the cooler just four more screws holding this back plate and I think good to go oh yeah actually a pretty clever way to install a uh hello low profile CPU Cooler so we'll set this aside and here we are this is our platform we can also take this time to repaste our CPU which may help with CPU temps even more in the long run there we have it all nice and shiny again the CPU in here is an i7 8700 I had to remind myself which generation I had in here 8700s are among the best performers obviously not the case use so you can't overclock but again I did this intentionally because this being such a small form factor build very tight spaces a small cooler I didn't really see the need to overclock anyway at the risk of even toastier temps and just a testament to how incredible ITX motherboards are look at how densely packed this one is now you think on the surface wow looks like less material ITX board should be cheaper than their ATX counterparts but that my friends is usually not the case for reasons like this here just how many smds are on the back side of this motherboard you can see I've actually got my storage drive here as well uh it's just all around a pretty impressive feat of Technology I'm gonna go and leave everything else as is the 8700 is fine our 3080 is driving most of what you see on screen at least in our case and I'm also going to leave the low profile ddr4 from xpg now we're outside and here's a reminder of just how dirty this thing is again not the end of the world I've seen much dirtier pctc playlist but uh just to start you imagine if we had left this for another year this might require a bit more than what you're about to see now it is important when you're using something as powerful as this electric duster here that you don't let the fans that you're cleaning over spin if they spin too fast you could trash the bearings this is also the case if you're using a can of air and this is also why I do not use a an air compressor an industrial compressor if you blast too much air at even a single fan blade it could cause it to snap with that much air pressure that you're using so you want to be very careful with that the last thing we're going to do is clean this up just a tad bit more I can see some dust residue lingering in the fins so we're going to take this under a soap and water bath just a bit of scrub-a-dub-dub it really helps to have a toothbrush or something similar to get in between these small fins and yeah I'm using some of my kids baby soap and just like that I am pretty dang proud of the way this turned out looks almost brand new there's a bit of pitting on the cold plate this just happens with age not the end of the world that's why we use thermal paste but uh overall yeah cooler looking a lot cleaner now and this here is what the fan looks like this is the underside much cleaner and all we had to do to clean this was uh just blast it with our air duster it's nice to have the nylon bristles anti-statics you can scrub really nicely sometimes I have to actually clean individual fins you've seen on the pcdc videos with Q-tips and IPA in this case didn't have to do that because they weren't super dirty and that's why it's important to clean frequently your rig versus waiting for several years it just means you're gonna have to do even more labor later to get this uh yeah back to back to looking as new as it could possibly can now we're going to re-paste and reassemble and this yeah this order of operation is a bit out of whack because well I've got to put thermal paste on the chip first but then we have to set the cooler like I forget which way I had it why don't I have it something like that there I think that looks about right so we're gonna flip it over and then I've got a line the holes with the thermal paste on the chip again just kind of hang in there this looks about right and then we will tighten it all down and uh yeah looking pretty good we'll get the fan situated I think I had the cable running uh it doesn't really matter which way we do this I'm just trying to think about it from a cable management perspective something like this here we'll tuck the excess in and then connect to the board via this header here and then just a couple of small wireframe brackets we'll quickly dust the remainder of this build it's not very dirty and here we are all prepped for reassembly yeah it wasn't so bad these cables out of the way don't want to snag any of these I gotta remember how I how I routed this HD audio cable I did it some fancy way before there's no wasted space okay what's the hold up this time there we go I think holy cow it is difficult to wire front i o in this thing one eternity later well here you have it she's looking a lot better now no dust that I can see maybe a few scuffs things we can clean up after the fact I can just probably just wipe it down with a of I don't know maybe a damp towel or something but all in all very satisfied with the way that this looks and and look ITX builds like these especially in cases that are about the size of modern day consoles can be very challenging they can also be very rewarding I mean look at just how densely packed all of this is this is also going to be more powerful than consoles because of this thing right here this RTX 3080 which would be a plenty for a majority of folks out there for years to come the the key takeaway from this should be routine maintenance it is important do not neglect it I mean look I waited a year and I've seen builds become very very very there's like Dusty dirty grimy after a year so in that sense I'm very lucky but you should make it a habit to at least air dust your system every three to six months otherwise you might be faced with challenges like the ones we've had to to deal with in our pcdc playlist when it gets really grimy you have to scrub with water you have to manually physically scrub things you can't just blast Air at that point because the dust has solidified and sometimes becomes sticky depending on how humid the environment is and it just doesn't come up with air alone so remember to clean your PCS folks now there's only one thing left to do let's put this right back where we found it I know I know I'm a bit ashamed it is technically on the floor and I preach against that and that's just another thing it's kind of self-inflicted here but with routine maintenance it's okay temperatures are okay with this I've measured long term and I like the fact that it's kind of out of sight out of mind it's not next to me pumping a bunch of hot air into my face or something like that so let's end the video with that throwing this thing back where she belongs yep always a bit of a struggle taking this thing in and out without breaking anything oh and I gotta wire it up oh my gosh hey we are locked and loaded all right let's see if I can get a good start God dang it already off to a horrible horrible start you know what I'll see you in the next video subscribe like comment and uh stay tuned for the next one my name is Greg thanks for cleaning with me\n"