How To Improve CPU Speed And Performance By Cleaning It

You've formatted your computer, reinstalled the operating system but still no go!!!Your PC continues to respond slowly and freezes at times . Well in such cases its not an issue with your software but your hardware . As time goes by your CPU would definetly have a lot of dust particles in it which starts collecting in the heat sink of the CPU . This blocks the gap between the CPU and the CPU fan thus preventing flow of air and hence the CPU temperature increases , which inturn reduces CPU performance , which inturn slows down your system making it slow to respond and also could freeze it at times . So the solution here is to clean your CPU including the Heat Sink . So here's how you do it :

WARNING : I do not recommend this to those who havent opened up the cabinet before and who havent seen whats actually inside a pc . THis is because the CPU is the last area you would want to play with . As any silly mistake like not placing the CPU fan back properly could lead to a burnt CPU . So please be very very careful!!

Note : This process can be done once a year . As a lot of dust collects in the heat sink area during a period of 1 year.Also this is something that i have done and tried with my machine which has yielded positive results . It may or may not be the same for you as you may have a different configuration!!

Step 1 : Shutdown Your Computer , Disconnect it From the Power cable and leave it idle for a while (like 10 minutes ) for the CPU to cool
Step 2 : Now Remove the casing of the cabinet
Step 3 : You should see the CPU fan at the center of your motherboard.

Step 4 : Unscrew the CPU fan.

Step 5 : Now you should see the heat sink and most of the dust particles which is probably collected.I had a lot of dust particles collected in my CPU heat sink.

Step 6 : Here i used a vaccum cleaner , mine came with two outlets , one which would suck up air and the other which would blow air.

Step 7 : I first used the outlet which sucked up air and removed all the dust particles which were light and remained on the surface of the heat sink
Step 8 : i think used the other outlet to blow air into the CPU which removed all the major dust particles from the heat sink . By now most of the dust particles were removed , but there were still some heavy dust particles which still had to be removed.


Step 9 : For this i used forceps , something like your divider in your geometry box or thin small scissors.
Step 10 : This removed all of the dust particles.I had a lot of dust particles collected. Here's how much i removed at the end of it.



Step 11 : Then insert back the CPU fan on the heat sink ( ensure that the fan is fixed back well)

Step 12 : Do a final cleaning similar to step 7 and step 8. Ensure that no other component in your cabinet has any dust particles!!

Step 13 : Close the case of the cabinet .
Step 14 : Fire up your Machine.

This helped me a lot and it not only improved system performance but also reduced the CPU temperature by almost 10 degrees . Here's how you can check CPU temperature in linux . Hope this helps you as well!!Happy cleaning!!!