45% of PC Gamer readers cleaned out their rig in the last six months and now I feel like a right grubchild for not remembering the last time I dusted mine
I don't remember the last time I actually took a duster to my own rig. But in my defence, I only recently upgraded my motherboard and that required I remove pretty much everything out of my PC in the process of ripping out an old ASRock mobo I could no longer trust in favour of an Asus. So, that basic action meant that I had cleaned my PC by proxy in the past couple of months, though without actively cleaning it…
45% of PC Gamer readers cleaned out their rig in the last six months and now I feel like a right grubchild for not remembering the last time I dusted mine
My, what a wholesome bunch you are.
I don't remember the last time I actually took a duster to my own rig. But in my defence, I only recently upgraded my motherboard and that required I remove pretty much everything out of my PC in the process of ripping out an old ASRock mobo I could no longer trust in favour of an Asus. So, that basic action meant that I had cleaned my PC by proxy in the past couple of months, though without actively cleaning it.
Which has me straddling both camps of PC Gamer reader, it seems. Because, while the biggest single majority of readers we polled can't remember when they last cleaned their PC, either, a healthy 45% of readers have actually given their rig a thorough once-over in just the past six months.
Now, I get that you have to change your bedding/towels/pants more often than that, but six months is but a mayfly's daydream in the life of your gaming PC. So, I applaud all of you taking rig maintenance so seriously.
This all came off the back of a recent weekly poll where we asked the question: When did you last dust/clean your gaming PC? Sure, over a quarter of you are living in filth, but I'm still proud of the rest of you.
Wholesome
When did you last dust/clean your gaming PC?
Votes (%)
Along with the 26% who can't remember, there are another 14% of readers who haven't lifted a finger to dust their PC in over a year. Then there are the paragons of virtue, the children of the light, the 5% who cleaned their PC only that very day they saw the poll. Blessed ones.
But if you look at the numbers in total, we are a culture in balance. There's a healthy 45% of readers who have cleaned their machines in the past six months, and on the other side another 40% of readers who haven't touched their PC with a duster in over a year, with a 15% fulcrum in the middle who have spent time cleansing their rig in the past 12 months.
Equilibrium is everything, but where do you sit on the cleanliness teeter-totter? And how important is it to you?
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
This week we want to know something else about good PC hygiene, but not of the physical variety, more of the firmware side of the equation. So we're asking: When was the last time you updated your main PC's BIOS?
1. Best overall:
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro
2. Best budget:
ABS Cyclone Aqua
3. Best high-end:
Corsair Vengeance A7500
4. Alienware:
Alienware Area-51
5. Best mini PC:
Minisforum AtomMan G1 Pro
6. Best for local AI:
Framework Desktop
Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.
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