Here we go--the biggie. As tempted as you might be to just blast compressed air all over the inside of the case, resist the urge at first. If you're going the compressed-air route, you'll want to move the system to an area that you don't mind getting a little messy (as in, not your carpeted office floor). You'll also want to blast spurts of air from the inside of the case on out. No sense spraying dust back into your system, eh?
Each heat sink tends to have its own specific way of detaching. In general, you'll probably have to twist and pull up four knobs attaching the device to the motherboard, or, depending on your CPU/heat-sink variant, you might need to unlock one or two larger retaining clips or levers. Once you've freed the heat sink, use the aforementioned rubbing alcohol to wipe away the thermal paste on the underside of the component. You can also use the liquid to clean dust off the heat sink as is--but whether you're wiping the heat sink or dunking it in a bath of rubbing alcohol, be sure that the heat sink is entirely dry before you try to use it once more.
Now you're probably asking yourself why I haven't covered cleaning other parts of a PC--such as the hard drives, the graphics card, or the motherboard itself. The same tactics you used to clean the fans and the heat sink will also work for cleaning everything else. If you're just looking to give your desktop system a once-over, then I recommend that you use a combination of a vacuum hose and a compressed-air canister: Blow the dust out of the graphics card's fan and cooler, the motherboard, or the hard drives, and position the vacuum hose near the plume of ejected material so that it troubles your PC no more.
No, I'm not crazy.
The alcohol doesn't conduct electricity, and, more important, its speedy evaporation will assist you as you work toward eliminating each and every drop of liquid from the board's nooks and crannies before you reinstall it in the desktop. This method isn't for newbies, but it will definitely make the motherboard look as if it were brand-new. I don't recommend that you try to clean hard drives in a similar fashion, however--not all PC parts can survive such a plunge.
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