Nothing lasts forever - especially hi-tech items like a personal computer. However, your computer can definitely last for quite a few years if you know how to treat it well. Both PC and laptops are subjected to this - if your device breaks down more often than it should, there is a slight chance that you are the one who made that happen due to some extremely bad habits. In the guide below, we would list out some of the worst things you can do to a PC or laptop unintentionally.
1 - Overheating problems
This is your personal computer's biggest enemy. If the compartments get too hot, the life span of the inside hardware would be reduced, along with their effectiveness. The most affected components would be processor, battery, and fans - they would make your computer become super loud and very hot in touch.
For Desktops, the solution to solve this problem is rather simple - you ought to clean out the inside of the PC with some compressed air once in a while. This is to clear out the dust that would inevitably get inside the case and reduce the heat mitigation of your heatsink. Open your case for heat reduction is fine, but you have to be sure that the location your PC is stored in is clean or with relatively little dust. Do not store the case in a box - the thing needs to get enough air to flow in and out of it.
Laptops, on the other hand, is harder to take care of. Their portability leads to a lot of bad habits -users sometimes put the thing on plush surfaces like a top of a blanket. This is actually very bad, as the airflow under the device is often blocked - and sometimes even the fan vents, as the rubber feet of the laptop can only keep it up on hard surfaces. If possible, makes sure that the air vent and the bottom vents of the laptop are not covered. Laptop desks are a good idea as well.
Outside of the things mentioned above, you must also keep both types of PC far from external heat sources like sunlight or other machines - these can damage your devices more than you believe.
2 - Disassemble the machine for cleaning too often
Too clean is also a problem. If you take the components out too many times, there would be risks that the gold layer of the contact point would be damaged. This would eventually lead to poor contact and transmission - this could ruin the parts of your PC or even cause a short circuit and burn the whole thing down. The trick here is: instead of disassembling your rig, its best to prevent it from getting dirty in the first place.
3 - Poor/Carelessly handling of laptops
While the desktop is relatively safe due to its bigger size and otherwise harder to damage compartments, laptops usually have to face a lot of abuse from owners. Some of the more common thing people often do are to pick the laptop up with its display, open the hinge too far or too much force, or even tossing the laptop or placing a drink on top of it. Despite the fact that the laptop is made to be portable - and therefore pretty durable, the more you abuse it, the more likely that something could be damaged.
Force applied to the screen could cause visual problems to the display, drinks placed on top of a laptop could spill into it and inside the keyboard... and more. The worst thing that could happen, however, is when your laptop has a traditional HDD instead of an SSD - the excessive force applied on the laptop could make the drive to be dislocated and wipe all your data.
4 - Wasting your time on unnecessary maintenance
Back in the day when the hardware is limited, PC maintenance software might have made some differences. However, today's optimization is already enough for these older fix to have no effect whatsoever. Because of that, it is pointless to install those applications - some can even make the problem worse by deleting files that you might actually need.
Prioritize using built-in tools of Windows to do any maintenance, such as the Disk Cleanup application, as they are free and less likely to further damage your computer or data. If your computer is still inexplicably slow on tasks or startup, you might want to remove background/startup programs in Task Manager, uninstalling some applications, or upgrade your hardware.
5 - Using too many cracked software
While these free software and games are essential sources of entertainment, if you are not careful, your device could be infected with a lot of malicious software from the internet. A lot of cracked games require you to run a .exe file, and in a lot of cases, they would be installing something else in addition to the game into your computer. Sometimes, only a full data wipe would do the trick, as some particularly hard to detect stuff such as the crypto miner could elude detection from scanning software rather easily. If you are going to play cracked games, prepare some other anti-malware applications such as Malwarebytes or Windows Defender.
This is the end of our guide on how to remove all the bad habits that could damage your PC. Interested in more of our articles related to PC games? Please check out the PC-Console tag on Gurugamer.
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