Rob:
Use a brush or canned air. I will tell you something that will probably
start a riot, but motherboards, video and audio cards are waterproof and
you can wash the components in soapy water, rinse well in warm water and
allow them to dry thoroughly before reinstalling. I would use compressed
air on any recesses like ports, sockets, etc.
Yup. Over the last 20 years circuit board manufacturers have switched
from nasty solvents to pure water to clean the residue of
manufacturing. It's followed by blasts of hot air.
FIrst hand experience; I did disaster recovery planning for the
computer facilities for a big bank. Once I got to supervise the
cleanup of an office that was on the floor above a serious fire. Our
floor was soot-saturated. I called in a crew from a company that
specializes in computer cleanup. They came with a van loaded with
cleanup supplies. Here's what they did;
- They assembled a walk-in wet room with 2x4s and big plastic tarps.
- They had 5 Gal jugs of pure, de-ionized water and a mediuum pressure
preasure washer
- Outside the wet room they had a commercial sized kitchen
convection oven. You could cook 2 turkeys in it.
They disassembled everything to the circuit board level, washed each
board off, and then popped it in the on low heat-high airflow for a
couple minutes.
We did this for several PC servers and lots of PCs. It took a week
of long days.
