Many players have a computer system that may play Diablo III with no problems considering the wide range of configurations Blizzard Entertainment usually develops games for.

It doesn’t matter if you have a l33t computer, or an older system. All of these computer systems have a common enemy. An enemy more dangerous and unmerciful than Diablo, Mephisto or Baal. That enemy is [you].

That sounds harsh, but be honest. How often do you clean up your computer? This past year, I have cleaned my computer about three times. I have come to the conclusion that I need to clean it up more often than that. Once or twice a month shouldn’t hurt too much.

There is one factor that makes people decline to clean their computers. Which of these examples fits you?

  • Not everyone has a car to take the computer to a gas station to use the air blower.
  • I don’t have a car, and I’m lazy to order an air can online, or going to Radio Shack or other store to buy it.
  • Those darn air cans are too expensive.
  • I don’t have a vacuum cleaner
  • I have a vacuum cleaner, but I’m too busy and lazy.
  • I always forget.

I’m sure there are many other excuses or constraints that prevent players to clean their computer as often as they should. I’ll be nice and think these few are among the best reasons.

In my case, well, going to Best Buy or Radio Shack to buy an expensive air can ain’t too fun, and usually they don’t have enough pressure or last long enough to clean the entire computer parts.

Air cans can also give you a frostbite if not used properly.

You’d be surprised how much dust your computer might have right about now. Go ahead. Open the computer case and check it out. The computer case’s fans — those which bring air into its interior and the one that expels it out of your computer — do they have a thick crust of dust? Likely even your own hair or your pet’s hair. Everyone drops hair one way or the other throughout the month. This hair eventually lands on your floor, and it’s slowly pulled by the computer’s fans. When this hair accumulates on the outer-filters, or the grills, dust tends to clog there and prevent air from going in or out of the computer case efficiently.

This in turn makes the interior of your computer to build up internal heat that’s no longer dissipated.

Take a look at your CPU’s cooler sink and its fan. Are they full of dust and dirt lint? Some of it is also your hair — believe it or not. Check your graphic card. Do you see a crust of dust? Remove the graphic card from the PCI slot. What do you see in the graphic card’s fan? Yup, here’s the source of your video games losing FPS (frames-per-second), or graphic lag, Nvidia / ATI driver crashes, etc. etc.

A few days ago, I experienced some of those symptoms. I opened my computer case, and noticed an unusual amount of dust on the video card. The CPU fan, and the 120mm fans pulling and expelling air were also covered with hair and dust intermingled.

Using napkins to clean up is simply useless, and time consuming, and just silly. Air cans — I’m sorry, these are a waste of time and money. Air compressors can cost over $200, take a lot of space and do a lot of noise.

Pressurized air cans (known as disposable cleaning air dusters) sometimes come in packs of two or three 10-ounce cans. They range $13.59 – $19.99. Once the cans are empty, you need to replace them and need to spend more money. It’s better to invest in something more useful and lasting.

Update: A computer-savvy fan suggested to use the Metro Vacuum ED500 Electric Duster for cleaning. This cleans the computer case, the CPU cooler sink, the 120mm fans, and the graphic card in no time and thoroughly.

After cleaning the computer, I loaded EVGA Precision and the EVGA E-LEET Tuning Tool to monitor my CPU and the graphic card’s temperature.

The Intel Core i7-920 CPU was fluctuating between 83-86 degrees before cleaning the computer. After cleaning the computer you can see in the screenshot below the temperature is now 53 degrees. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the temperature of each individual core, but overall 53 sounds good.

My EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 285 GTX Superclocked was a pancake-griddle, literally. The EVGA Precision tool was reflecting over 60-70 degrees before cleaning the computer. Now as the screenshot below shows, it’s sitting at a nice 44 degrees.

I only have a CPU cooler sink I installed a few years ago, but no VGA cooler. I’ll experiment with that soon.

For now that’s pretty good to keep a healthy computer temperature to play Diablo III, or other CPU / GPU intensive video games without worry about cooking an omelet on your graphic card.

I’ll later share some cooling solutions for graphic cards and CPUs to lower the temperatures beyond what your stock CPU cooler sink and GPU fan do. Clean your computer often. If you experience driver crashes often, that’s a sign you need to. Don’t wait until that happens.

Sanctuary needs you to slay demons.

Note: Edited the product used to clean my computer, and added the Metro Vacuum ED500 DataVac suggested by a fan in our comments section. It’s a more appropriate tool to use. Here’s a video showing you the power of this blower.

Tips: You won’t want all this dust floating around indoors. Always clean the computer while outdoors and wearing a mask to cover your mouth and nose. Take a shower and change cloths afterwards. The cloths are contaminated with dust that might end up on your bed or sofa. In the comments, Marco Donghi suggests to hold the 120mm case fans, and the graphic card and CPU cooler sink’s fans before and while cleaning them to prevent them going backwards and causing damage to the rotator’s mechanical parts.