I have a 3950x and a rtx3090 on a rog strix motherboard in a derbauer case my issue is I need to clean my AIO and I’m just having a hard time with motivation to tear into it. I’m in NC and would be open to paying for help. I might be able to get away with air cooling however I’m not a skilled enough wizard to figure out how.
Welcome to the forums!
This is mostly a kind of self help kind of forum. What I would do is to contact the customer support of the AIO you are using and maybe ask if they offer paid cleaning support.
Another alternative is to maybe ask around in something like a craigslist or facebook marketplace if there is someone that could be hired to do professional cleaning for you. That could be a hit or miss because for the AIO, while commonly available, not everyone has experience of cleaning it properly.
Welcome!
What makes you think that your AIO requires cleaning?
1 Like
Dunno man, the rads might be dirty/dusty and OP may not want to touch it.
Also if there is gunk inside the AIO, maybe the service center might clean/sell a new one as well.
Well, I can imagine a range of symptoms and issues with AIOs. But I don’t know what made the OP come to the conclusion a cleaning is in order.
I am asking partly for my own benefit. All my AIOs don’t have customer serviceable parts and look and perform like new. While they’re not terribly old, yet, I am interested in what I need to look out for.
1 Like
If it’s just the radiator that has a bunch of dust then you can just grab a vacuum and go to town with it. Personally I use a shop vac for that sort of thing but any vacuum should work fine.
For a more complete clean you just need a screw driver and you can remove the radiator from the case to vacuum it better. However you can probably get most of it while it’s mounted in the case.
Just be careful with the fan(s) you’ll want to hold on to the blade while you vacuum around it so that it doesn’t spin. You can cause excessive wear on the bearings if you get it spinning beyond it’s designed capabilities with the vacuum.
If you are thinking the internals of the AIO need cleaning, that’s not really an option.
Regarding air cooling, that shouldn’t be a problem. In fact I would almost always recommend air cooling over AIO water cooling. The “cooler master hyper 212” is my go-to for budget coolers and for a more high end solution I like Noctua. The Noctua NH-D15 is what I use, but it is huge and won’t always fit in every case. Noctua NH-D14 is a slightly smaller version of the same thing. Whatever your size limitations there is a Noctua cooler for you.
There are many, many youtube videos that can walk you through how to change out coolers. It’s really something anyone can do so long as they believe they can.
1 Like