Keeping a healthy computer

[Steklund]

Hi tech enthusiasts,

 

I was wondering if any of you have somekind of checklist you usually follow to maintain your pcs performance. This includes hardware as much as software.

 

Ive checked tutorials on youtube but they all seem either outdated or very shallow. 

 

Thanks in advance, gamer from Sweden. 

[kelvinhall05]

As long as you keep it clean and it's not being choked to death it's fine.

[Hugh54321]

feed and water it every day

[Juular]

Install CrystalDiskInfo to watch your drives status. Install HWiNFO in sensors only resident mode and setup alerts for CPU & GPU temperatures (around 85°C) so you'll be aware if CPU\GPU cooler fails suddenly. Of course you need to clean the dust out of your case, specifically heatsinks, at least once a year.

[NineEyeRon]

For the OS I think this was more of a thing back in the days of XP and windows 7.

 

Since then the windows OS has moved on to need less and less user maintenance.

 

Hardware maintenance is still a thing however, cleaning out dirt, dust and grime etc.

[Steklund]

16 minutes ago, comander said:

Occasionally de-dust the insides. Having dust filters and keeping the unit off of the ground can help. 

 

Annually or biannually reinstall the OS. 

 

Have at least one hot backup and one cold backup of your data, ideally with one copy being in a different physical location. 

 

 

Bonus points for running your own DNS cache, running script blockers and keeping online tracking to a minimum. 

Could you elaborate what you mean by having an "hot backup" and a "cold backup"?

[FloRolf]

I often monitor Temps, load, clockspeeds etc but other than that not a lot. Just don't visit sketchy websites and you won't catch any diseases, lol. 

[Roswell]

As far as physically keeping it healthy, there's more you can do beyond dusting. Making sure you're using a grounded outlet is super important. Additionally you can use a UPS to make sure you feed clean and stable power to prevent surges or dirty power from degrading components.

[Vorg]

Yea, you want to start at the power supply when protecting the computer because power surges can come at anytime. A good line regulating UPS will help a lot to protect your power supply against surges as well as help it regulate by pre-regulating against power spikes and drops. Sometimes during the hottest parts of the summer my ups will go into a boost mode when area (including ours) AC's kick on which I've seen cause the line voltage drop into the range of 105-108. The power grid does try to compensate and when all those ac's start shutting down, the voltage sometimes  goes a bit over 120 for a very short time. It's supposed to be at ~115-120.

[akio123008]

3 hours ago, Hugh54321 said:

feed and water it every day

Don't forget to make sure it eats his vegetables.

[Hugh54321]

Blocking dodgy URLs is prob the best thing you can do for malware protection. Also its free. https://pi-hole.net/ 

[Yogi_DaBear221]

Malwarebytes as my go to Anti-Virus, about once every couple or three weeks I dust the inside and outside of my computer, as well as take a little canned air to the fans, just a little bit though, and I'm trying my best to get my PC off the ground, but at the moment I'm stuck with where it's at until I can find a table for it. From time to time I open up Speccy and Cinebench and benchmark it to make sure everything is going good. Except I've got the Ryzen 5 and Speccy tends to make me think that it is running wayyyyy hotter than it really is.

[Mira Yurizaki]

On 11/30/2019 at 8:32 AM, Steklund said:

I was wondering if any of you have somekind of checklist you usually follow to maintain your pcs performance. This includes hardware as much as software.

Not really a checklist, but I have a mental list of things I do to keep my system working well

• Dust out the case regularly.
• Don't update system software unless it's needed, there's a security update, or it's severely outdated
  • System software includes BIOS/UEFI and drivers
  • Although I make an exception to video card drivers
• Limit tweaking the OS to things a Standard user account can access. If it requires elevated privileges (i.e., an admin account), understand what it's really doing and if it's really going to do anything beneficial before touching it.
  • Most developers have to assume the default system settings are used. So if you go around tweaking things that require elevated privileges, things may break and you can't figure out why.
• Don't install an app unless it can do something a built-in app can't. For example:
  • I don't install most motherboard utilities because what they can do can be done via BIOS/UEFI, which I rarely touch anyway
  • I don't install extra stuff drivers come with unless it can be useful and doesn't get in the way. For example, I never install GeForce Experience when installing NVIDIA drivers because I don't find it necessary
  • CCleaner is no longer really necessary because Windows's Disk Cleanup tool does a good enough job and CCleaner may be overzealous
  • I make it a point to not install anti-virus software anymore. The thing is, Microsoft has something at stake with regards to Windows Defender: they want to make their OS secure. Whereas anti-virus software in the name of finding threats, may break actual security features in the OS, which cynically may be a way to allow more malware in they can supposedly catch to prove they're needed.
• If the app has an entry in Control Panel -> Programs and Features, comb through it every once in a while to get rid of what's not used
• Make sure as few things as possible automatically start up when Windows loads
• Use browsers with script blocking extensions and white list sites as needed
• Don't go to suspicious websites if it can be avoided. And if the curiosity is too much, find a way to contain the browser.

Curiously my experience has been mostly positive and I rarely experience issues. I don't know what I'm doing exactly, but I like to think it's the above.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Mira Yurizaki