Never forgot someone in a PC shop blaming his wife calling here a myriad of insulting blame filled names stating it was her that had broke his PC “she’s hoovered it out stupid b@tch now it’s f@cked!!! silly c@w!!!” so all I said was you sure it isn’t the power switch on the back of the PSU?
He then says “oh…didn’t know there was one…sorry to me wife for that”
Lol I flipped the switch and it instantly booted fine, hence there was no charge for him so no harm no foul I guess…unless his missus beat the sh@t out of him when he got home…who knows?
Thankfully they have made components allot more resistant to Static Discharge than when I started working with computers, but at least allot of attachments they make with them these days are static resistant.
Still, use canned air until you can buy a decent powered blower and you will be surprised at the uses you will find for it. Some even double as a small handheld vacuum so you are not pulling out the big thing to clean up small messes. Reminds me I have to get a new one soon or pick up some canned air.
I have litterally released air out of a compressed air can in mid air and watched the water driplets pour off the end of the thin hose attachment the best one is a simple plastic bristle paint brush it’s much safer and it gets into stubbon heatsink fins and in between and around small surface mounted components, many pros just use those mate. But never ever once have I seen a pro anywhere use a Hoover to clean a PC out not online or in person and thus it’s an inherintly bad idea to do so and is not clearly permitted in professionnal repair for good reason.
The drops you see coming off of canned air is the accelerant and condensation, which evaporates instantly. You shouldn’t use it on a running PC because it is mildly flammable. As for the vacuum being used I was speaking of the safer way someone could use it at home, not at a shop. At the shops I worked at they all had Data Vacs which are dedicated suck/blow vacuums, along with various various anti-static attachments. They also had compressors. The use was depending on the job and cleaning up after the job. I would sometimes use the Data Vac as a way to keep the dust I would kick up with the compressor down. Then agian I have washed really bad computer motherboards to get oils, tars, or other stuff off the board to get it clean, and then give the boards an isopropyl bath to get them clean. The motherboard and air cooler has to be absolutely disgusting before I get that far into it.