Suck or blow? What's better for dust?

You can use both. Before ditching my desktop collection, I used to clean them using a six-gallon air compressor and a vacuum. Compressed air is much better at dislodging dust. As Nanne said, though, don't get your fans spinning too fast or you'll be generating current to be sent to your mobo. I usually use a finger to hold the fan in place while blasting it with air.

Anyway, unless you have a space away from where the computers normally live to clean their insides, you'll want to use a vacuum to suck up all the dust dislodged by the compressed air. Otherwise you're just going to end up with a bunch of dust in the air which the computers will pull right back into the chassis after you've powered them back on. I use short blasts of air to give the vacuum time to get the dust.

Without a vacuum, though, just use compressed air in a different, non-computer room.

Edit about the vacuum: You don't want to get it close enough to zap electronics; as others have mentioned those nozzles (plastic especially) can generate charge enough to zap things. You just want to capture the dust kicked up by the compressed air, not clean the components directly. Thanks to everyone who pointed that out.


Do not suck. A vaccuum cleaner will produce a static charge, with all bad effects. Buy a can of pressurized air, and blow the dust out. Indeed, take care not to start turning your fans to hard, but that problem would also be there when sucking.


A vacuum might be alright for slightly dusty computers but I use compressed air. Not those silly overpriced little cans, which do a poor job at the best of times, but from a proper air compressor. To protect the fans I hold the blades while blowing into or very near the fan.

Just one thing to be careful of when using compressed air, don't hold the nozzle too close to the computer. I keep it back about a foot or so. Get too close and you can unseat most components, including RAM and CPU.