I’ll be straight with it. I’m a smoker, I smoke inside, I have a PC that is also inside. I want to clean my PC thoroughly to buy it a few more years. I know about the q tip method, and the compressed air, and general methods of cleaning out gunk and junk from PC parts. But this boy is way too gunked up for a regular cleaning. So, I reckon, the easiest way to clean it is to dunk the dirtiest parts in a bath of isopropyl alcohol. I was considering acetone at first, but it’s way too strong of a solvent, and alcohol should be better at dissolving organic residues. Is this a good idea?
I hereby submit this query to the council, and await judgement.
Why not submerge them and let the dirt dissolve? What is the danger in doing that?
Its not just the dirt that the alcohol will eat away. It’ll eat your thermal paste and any adhesives used in manufacturing. Pretty sure it will eat at basically any material if left submerged.
I’m mostly cleaning heat sinks, surfaces, and circuit boards. I can’t reach into some spots even with a q tip, so I’m looking for alternative solutions. I’m pretty sure 10 to 15 minutes submerged in 96% alcohol wouldn’t dissolve my PC like styrofoam in acetone. Although I could be wrong, I’m not an expert.
You could dissolve things off the board or mess up the microchips if there are any gaps that could be filled with liquid.
Liquid alone doesn’t kill electronics. You can actually have a computer completely submerged in mineral oil for cooling purposes.
It’s the dissolved minerals in water that causes electricity to go where it’s not intended that actually damages the components (pure water is an insulator)
You could wash your motherboard in a sink with soapy water as long as you pull the cmos battery first and fully dry it before powering it back on.
Mineral oil doesn’t conduct electricity. Isopropyl alcohol is 90% water, which does.