Advice on cleaning? my older card(s)

[JackWithThe1070s]

It is well past time for me to make some PC upgrades, and for me that means a clear move up from my Nvidia 1070 to a 4070. I'm interested in selling my 1070 (not on this webside), but I need some advice. I work from home making jewelry, for several years, one of my PCs was in my work shop. My workshop has buffing wheels that put off ungodly levels of dust and oil compounds. And I often would game with my 1070 and so on. Lets just say that while it works excellently, it has been caked in more dust than your average smoker who works in a denim factory could ever produce in several lifetimes. I'll attach a picture. 

Again, it works fine (im sure the thermals are not as good as new). My goal is to try to clean it somehow enough to be sellable. I know it isn't worth much in 2024, but every little bit helps. Any advice on how you would try to clean this bad boy up? Vacuum? Air dusters? Disassembly? Burning in the pits of hell? Will people buy it? What would you sell it for, cleaned vs uncleaned?

It's just a bare bones Founder's edition 1070 (I have 2 more with less dust that I will also eventually sell). At one point I had 6 between 3 PCs, i was really experimenting with SLI at the time. 

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, JackWithThe1070s said:

Any advice on how you would try to clean this bad boy up? Vacuum? Air dusters? Disassembly?

Take an air duster to the fan and a damp rag to the shroud as a whole. If you want to go further, take off the plexiglass and clean out the heatsink itself (pretty sure it's the front 6 screws to get it off, though I haven't taken apart a 10 series FE in a while so my memory is a bit hazy) with the same can of air duster. As long as you're not a smoker, that should be all you have to do. 

 

4 minutes ago, JackWithThe1070s said:

Will people buy it? What would you sell it for, cleaned vs uncleaned?

Some people will buy it, I'd expect it to go anywhere between $70 and $100 US depending on how competitive your used market is. Cleaned would probably go for a bit more, though not by that much and admittedly it has never really been a factor to me in determining what to pay for a used GPU (except for if it's from a smoker's house, nicotine is really hard to get fully cleaned off). 

[JackWithThe1070s]

12 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Take an air duster to the fan and a damp rag to the shroud as a whole. If you want to go further, take off the plexiglass and clean out the heatsink itself (pretty sure it's the front 6 screws to get it off, though I haven't taken apart a 10 series FE in a while so my memory is a bit hazy) with the same can of air duster. As long as you're not a smoker, that should be all you have to do. 

 

Some people will buy it, I'd expect it to go anywhere between $70 and $100 US depending on how competitive your used market is. Cleaned would probably go for a bit more, though not by that much and admittedly it has never really been a factor to me in determining what to pay for a used GPU (except for if it's from a smoker's house, nicotine is really hard to get fully cleaned off). 

Thank you so much for your reply. I think I will try to clean it. Although there was never any tobacco smoke around it, I am sure other types of smoke passed through. 

[Needfuldoer]

11 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

(except for if it's from a smoker's house, nicotine is really hard to get fully cleaned off). 

An apartment I rented was formerly occupied by someone who smoked like a chimney, and while the landlords did a good job in general, the insides of the light fixtures were still caked. I tried 409, Fantastik, Scrubbing Bubbles, Windex, Simple Green, and even Zep tile cleaner.

 

The only stuff that cut the smoker residue was Oxi-Clean water on a rag.

[SImoHayha]

take apart, clean with a clean paintbrush, just dry brush it, replace thermal paste with fresh ones. There you go.

takje

[RONOTHAN##]

29 minutes ago, JackWithThe1070s said:

Thank you so much for your reply. I think I will try to clean it. Although there was never any tobacco smoke around it, I am sure other types of smoke passed through. 

Tobacco smoke is the one that's impossible to clean. If it was near a kitchen, there might be some grease build up that's annoying, but it's no where near as bad as tobacco smoke.