Computer Maintenance
Disassembling and maintaining a PC
It is surprising that I still see and hear about people working in IT, but have very little knowledge of how to maintain their PC properly. generrally a lot of people being very good at maintaining it on the software side, but have little knowledge when it comes to maintaining hardware & cleaning it appropriately. This post is going to a quick breakdown of disassembling a system & cleaning it along the way, as well as some best practices when doing so. There a lot of good resources covering this out there on the internet already but I always found having to jump between different ones and write my own notes on it. This can be useful if your computer is running at higher temperatures and slowing down, as well as increase longevity of the PC’s components.
And since my background in IT is system building and maintenance, here’s everything i’ve learned over the years !!
The PC i will be working on is a system i built for a friend a while ago. It had been a two years since it was last looked at so it was time to clean it up. I will be disassembling this system and cleaning it, and documenting the process. The computers parts are;
- CPU ◦ AMD Ryzen 3 2200g quad core processor
- Memory ◦ 16gb (2×8gb) Corsair vengeance LPX DDR4 3000MHz
- Motherboard ◦ Asrock B450 PRO4 ATX Motherboard
- Storage ◦ San-disk 500gb SSD ◦ 2x Western Digital Blue 1TB 7200RPM Mechanical Hard Drive
- Video Card ◦ Asus DUAL AMD Radeon RX 580 8gb card
- PC Case ◦ Corsair SPEC-05 ATX Case
- PSU ◦ EVGA 600W 80+ Bronze Power Supply
The above picture contains the tools needed for the disassembly. These include:
- Number 2 Philips head screw driver for most if not all screws used in the system
- Anti-static wrist strap
- electrical tape & cable ties for cable management on reassembly
- tweezers for picking up loose screws
- anti-static brush & blower for cleaning dust
- Cable cutter for cutting previously installed cable ties
- Isopropyl Alcohol & cotton ear buds for cleaning CPU thermal paste
- Arctic silver thermal paste
- Mouse Mat (using as anti-static mat)
- Motherboard manual
- small container for screws
Before beginning it is important to make sure to have an anti-static wrist strap on and attached to a grounded metal object. UK plugs contain a grounding pin so I’ll will be attaching the strap to the power supply whilst plugged in and turned off. This will protect of electrostatic discharge (ESD). A radiator will also do the trick if your country’s plug sockets do not have a grounding pin.
Once we are ready, first is to remove the side and front panels of the case by removing the thumb screws holding the side panels in place and then remove the front panel by pulling on it from the bottom. Once these are removed we can now get a better look at the internals of the PC. To start i will be removing all connections going to the motherboard and removing the power supply first, as this will remove most of the clutter of wires in the system and give us more room to work with. The connections being removed are circled in the below picture. They include;
- 24 pin motherboard connector
- all fan headers including CPU fan header
- 8 pin CPU power connector
- PCIe power connector for video card
- SATA Data & power cables for storage drives
- front panel i/o connectors (including USB3)
The power supply is ready to be removed. The cables will need to be taken out that are connected to the power supply. In this case there was cable ties so i needed to cut them before removing the cables. I will leave this to my side plugged in as i will still use it for the anti-static wrist strap.
Next, remove the case fans. I need to take out the front fans to remove the SSD anyway so i decided to remove all the fans now. In this case there is two front intake fans and one rear exhaust fan. These are removed by unscrewing (usually) four screws on each fan that attach it to the case.
Once the fans are removed, next i will remove the storage drives. I prefer to always leave the motherboard and anything on it until last, as this is what i would do first if i was assembling this system. The SATA cables have already been removed. The SSD will need to be removed using a screwdriver on this particular case. This can vary depending on the case. The mechanical hard drives can be removed from the drive trays by sliding them out and popping them out of the trays.
Before i remove the motherboard, the last thing to remove is the video card. Most cards will need to have screws removed from the expansion ports on the back of the chassis. This keeps the cards in place and provides extra support.
Next is to press the latch on the PCI-e slot that the card is attached to. This should be a snap pin on the far right side of the slot (usually). The card can now be removed.
Now we will need to remove the motherboard. This can be done by removing the screws on the board itself that are holding it in place. This one has 6 screws & can vary depending on the board’s form factor (ATX, micro ATX etc.) or even the case you are using itself. You can find more info about the make and model through the board’s manual. There is always an online version also.
With all screws removed the board should be safe to lift out. Usually you will need to slide first and then lift to release from the motherboard I/O panel attached to the case. It’s possible to damage the ports on the board if forced out.
We should now lay the motherboard on a non-static clean surface to remove the rest of the components. Next to go is the RAM. This is removed simply by pressing the latches on the side of the sticks and sliding them out. It is important not to touch the gold connectors for contaminations sake. If there is heat sinks on the RAM its good to remove them by holding these parts.
One of the last things to do is remove the CPU cooler to clean and reapply the thermal paste. The removal process can vary, this one is simply just unscrewing four screws on each corner. The motherboard manual will have info on this.
The cooler can now be removed. Note that you may need to use some force as the thermal paste can be quite sticky, especially if the pc had been on recently previous to disassembly.
The latch on the CPU can now be opened and removed for cleaning. Its important to handle the CPU at the sides to not damage the pins on the bottom. The processor will be cleaned using isopropyl alcohol and the thermal paste will be re-applied when re-assembling.
The pc has now been completely disassembled. All that is left then is to clean the components and reassemble the system by reversing the steps just taken. The whole disassembly went well as this corsair case is surprisingly really nice to build in considering it’s a low budget case.
When it comes to cleaning products, this really depends on what you have and what your’e willing to spend. I use a anti-static brush from a pc maintenance kit i got off Amazon a while ago as well as an electric dust blower. I will leave some great resources for best practices when cleaning.
Here’s a quick picture of the inside of the case after it has been dusted off :
Resources
How to deep clean a pc : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y51yZE18qus
Maintaining & cleaning PC hardware : https://www.newegg.com/insider/how-to-maintain-and-clean-pc-hardware/
How to deep clean PC fans : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhRgBE6qgaU
