Computer Maintenance Question

[Northbridge]

All,
newbish question I know. I have had my PC for approximately a year or so and I am not sure how often I should clean out the inside as preventative maintenance. It is located on a hardwood floor low dust and no High shedding pets. what Is the recommended time period to clean out the inside ?
Thanks ahead of time for the help!

[AOD_TheQuagmire]

If you're running just fans and nothing water cooled (AIO) then depending on a few factors you typically want to clean out the case of any dust/blockage. Either with a vacuum or co2/air duster. Always hold the fans in place when cleaning them.
Ultimately it never hurts to repaste the cpu/gpu or use the new paste pads for easier heat transfer. I recommend using CPUID to check your hardware sensors for heat temps, so you're much more aware of what your idle/under load temps are like, and if anything is running too hot that needs to be monitored.

[AOD_Darkwhip]

As a technician I recommend a dust off every 6 months or so, depending on how dusty the environment is, but personally the main fan you don't want blocked is your CPU, since it does everything in your PC, so I just monitor my temperatures constantly, both CPU and GPU, I find out their max temps by checkng their specific model, then if I get too close or past it with frequency I know it's time to clean. I never really kept time, but I live in a pretty dusty environment with a dog that sheds a lot, thankfully the PC is above a high table so it doesn't get much fur, but dust is everywhere.
There's three components to watch for, CPU, GPU and PSU, your power supply needs to be kept under max operating temperature as well and the vast majority use a fan so that's the only silent one I check from time to time manually, CPU and GPU thankfully have internal sensors that I can check without opening anything, In addition I also use my PC open so it's covered in dust anyway.

[AOD_hawkinson]

I almost never clean my computers, live with multiple animals, and my PC is on the floor. I tend to do it every year or two when I get under the hood to upgrade. The machines that suffer the most from this lack of care are the ones using air cooling on the CPU, the heat sinks get grossest, but the case fans also accumulate nastiness. I've seen 6 months as a reference multiple places, probably should do it more frequently than every year. Definitely shouldn't follow my terrible example.