Does Dust Slow Down Your Laptop?

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Does Dust Slow Down Your Laptop? – progamingear.com

With time, dust particles tend to flow into our laptops through the open vents into the internal components and settle down there. Most of the time, we don’t really worry about it.

But should we be worried? It’s just dust! What harm could it do?

Let’s find out…

In this article, we will discover if dust really slows down your laptop or not. If it does, how much does it affect the performance?

And what can you do to keep your laptop clean and avoid any kind of potential performance degradation?

Let’s dive right in!

How does dust accumulate inside your laptop?

There are several ways dust can accumulate inside your laptop.

One of the main ways is through the open vents that are designed to dissipate heat from the system.

The other ways through which dust particles can slip inside your laptop are—

  • The biggest ones, as mentioned above, are open vents on the sides or the back of your laptop, that are mainly designed to expel heat out of the system.
  • Port openings like USB ports, headphone jack, HDMI input port, etc.
  • There are additional vents in some laptops to allow air into the laptop. They also attract a lot of dust particles with time.
  • Gaps around the keys on your keyboard.
  • Small openings around the touchpad.

Does dust slow down your laptop?

Now, the big question—

Does dust really slow down your laptop?

The short answer is, yes, it does. “How’s that?”, You may ask.

It is because heat is the enemy of electronic devices, including laptops, and could damage the internal components gradually.

Dust particles hamper the airflow which results in trapped heat inside the laptop. And that heat slowly damages the internal components.

And with time, it sure slows down your laptop. Discover the reason behind it in the next section.

Meanwhile, if you’re still thinking if dust really slows down laptops, you can find many forums with people with this problem.

Here’s a thread posted by a user in MUO (Make Use Of):

Source: Make Use Of

Here’s more on electronic devices & heat, and how it affects your laptop

Electronic devices & heat

Most electronic devices including, laptops, PCs, smartphones, etc. produce heat while running.

They produce a lot of heat while running, and the components that help them run tend to get extremely hot.

So much so that they need cooling, otherwise they would start throttling (reducing the performance to decrease heat production).

The amount of heat production depends on several factors like the size of the device, power consumption of the components, heat dissipation system, etc.

It happens because electronic components have a threshold for heat, if the temperatures rise above that threshold, they start getting damaged physically, which is bad.

To protect these components, device manufacturers put cooling systems inside these devices.

We see them mostly in heavy-duty computational electronic devices like PCs, laptops, etc.

How to prevent dust from getting into your laptop (and also how to clean it from the outside)

Now that you know dust is a bad sign for your laptop, let’s learn how you can prevent dust from getting into your laptop—

  • If you live in a rather dusty area, consider closing your blinds/windows. Basically, don’t let the wind bring dust inside your room.
  • Try to blow away into your keyboard and other open vents every time you start your laptop. (Make it a habit, it will help keep your laptop fast for a long time)
  • To make your cleaning easier and more effective, you can also use tools to clean the stuff I mentioned in the previous point:
    • Tool #1View on Amazon ($9.89 USD, the price may be subject to change)
    • Tool #2View on Amazon ($11.99 USD, the price may be subject to change)
    • Tool #3View on Amazon ($49.99 USD, the price may be subject to change)
  • If you go out with your laptop for work or study purposes, make sure to keep it inside a laptop case.

How to sweep out the dust from inside your laptop

In the previous section, we talked about the prevention and cleaning of dust from the outside. In this section, we will talk about more ways to clean your laptop thoroughly from the inside.

If you have recently bought a laptop or PC, you won’t need to read this section, but I recommend that you do. You can use the information in the future.

We will learn about some techniques through which you can sweep out the dust that has been building up since you bought your laptop (or PC).

  • If your laptop is old and you’ve never cleaned it, the first thing you can do is take it to a computer repair shop and ask them to clean it thoroughly all the way. It’s not that expensive to get it done.
  • If you don’t want to go to a shop to get it clean, you can clean it by yourself too. You’ll have to be careful though. You should know a little bit about the internals of your device and where everything goes.
  • Do it yourself:
    • First, you gotta get your tools ready:
      • 80-In-1 Repair & Cleaning Kit: View on Amazon ($19.99 USD, the price may be subject to change) – This kit will help you open any kind of device like laptops, PCs, Mackbook, PS4, and more.
      • Cleaning Kit for Laptop, PC: View on Amazon ($13.99 USD, the price may be subject to change) – This kit will help you clean your laptop, PC, and other devices.
    • Next, you’ll have to pop open the back of your laptop (or your PC cabinet, if you have a PC).
    • Then you can start cleaning your laptop/PC with the tools you have. Make sure to clean as thorough as possible with specific tools that you have.
    • Take help of the guide that you will get with your toolkits.

Benefits of having a clean laptop

Let’s quickly go through the benefits of having a clean laptop—

  • Makes your system keep running smooth and for a longer period of time.
  • Less prone to damage of internal components including your hard drive, processor, etc.
  • Increases the longevity of your laptop/PC.
  • Keeps internal temperatures in control so you get better performance overall.
  • Lower temperatures mean better FPS in games as a result of little to no throttling.

Final thoughts

Hope you learned something from the article.

If you gained some value out of it, please consider sharing it with someone who could use help with the knowledge.

And if you have any suggestions/queries, feel free to comment down below.

Until next time, Adiós. 👋

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