PC New Year Resolutions That You Probably Won’t Keep!

It’s 2021 people! So just in case no one has said it to you yet, Happy New Year! – Yes, we’ve finally seen the back of 2020 and I think most would agree that we depart it with a firm handshake and a good riddance. In terms of new year resolutions, however, have you got around to making any yet? – Because if not, perhaps you should consider some of these to try and keep your PC as happy as possible throughout 2021!

Physically Cleaning Your PC!

I would hope that your gaming PC is designed under the basic principles of airflow. You know, cool air in, hot air out. With all that movement, however, and the general detritus that floats around your home (no offence), systems can often get very dusty very quickly. And the more dust you have, the less efficient the air flow is and the hotter your PC generally tends to run. Yes, a generalization, but pretty accurate none-the-less.

As such, it is always beneficial every now and then to get your system out, open up the side panel, and give those fans and components a bit of clean. – Let’s be honest though, how often do you do this?…

Ideally speaking, if you regularly use your PC and want it to remain (at least in a physical sense) in top condition, a good clean out every couple of months is always beneficial. Owning an air compressor is definitely advantageous as what I tend to do is just open up all the panels on my case and blast away until I stop seeing little flecks of dust flying around.

If you don’t have options like that available though, at least try and get in to give those fan blades a wipe as, more often that not, this is where the dust tends to accumulate!

Cable Management – Inside and Out!

It can often be very tempting when you get a new piece of hardware (or peripherals such as a keyboard/mouse) to be more interested in getting it hooked up and working than actually trying to create some order out of the cable chaos. – Touching again on the earlier point surrounding airflow, however, having good cable management in your system is a vital component of this. Put simply, the more crap you have lying around, the less freedom the air has to move.

So why not commit this year to maybe making sure that those cables are always neatly organized? – And I’m not just talking about the inside of your PC either. Take a little time to try and make sure those cables that lurk behind your desk (and mostly out of sight I hope) are well arranged so what when you pull on your mouse, you don’t end up yanking the keyboard and speakers around with it too!

Keeping Your Desktop Tidy

I have to admit to being pretty anal about keeping my PC desktop tidy and organized. I have a corner for games, a corner for my document folders, and, overall, no more than about 40 icons present (with half of those being gaming shortcuts). My wife, on the other hand, has a desktop that to me looks like a mosaic of Hades.

I honestly don’t know how she finds anything on there and, quite frankly, it’s one of the few things that I really feel compelled to tidy up when I see it. If I did dared to move anything on my wifes PC though, I already know she’d go nuts at me!

Yes, I admit that it’s often easier to just save something to your desktop for the convenience of finding it again, but for the love of God, please don’t do it to the point that it’s an assault on the eyes and, more so, that your background image is mostly comprised of the icons sitting on top of it!

Backing Up Your Critical Files

I’ll freely admit, this is the one that I’m probably the worst for. Over years of PC ownership, however, I daresay that we all acquire documents and files that, quite frankly, we’d have a lot of trouble replacing or indeed replicating if they ever did vanish. – As such, keeping a regular back-up of your most critical data is exceptionally important. Yet ironically, it’s probably one of the most overlooked aspects of general ‘good’ PC maintenance.

With USB flash drives becoming exceptionally affordable in large quantities, therefore, a quick copy/paste of your key files once a month could well prove to be exceptionally useful. Like car insurance, it’s there not because you want it, but because one day you might be exceptionally grateful that you have it!

Yes, hard drives are a lot more reliable these days, but they’re certainly not invulnerable!

Time to Say Bye To Those Games You Don’t Play Any More!

I cap this list of, again, with one key point I’m personally not very good at. Quite frankly, I have a lot of games installed on my PC and, when I particularly enjoy a title, I often find it difficult to take the steps to remove it. A great recent example of this is Death Stranding which I completed (and last touched) about 3 months ago, yet for some reason, I can’t bring myself to uninstall it!

So, for 2021, I’m going to try and keep my data a bit more free by being a little bit more proactive in actually removing games I know for a fact I’m exceptionally unlikely to play again (if at all) in the near future! – I mean, worst-case scenario, I can just reinstall them later!

Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – New Year Resolutions – What Do You Think?

So, there we have it, 5 bad PC ownership habits you could look to try and improve for 2021, but what do you think? – How many included on this list do you think you’re not very good at? If there an even bigger one I forgot to mention? – Let us know in the comments!

Oh, and once again, Happy New Year!

If you enjoyed Mikes Rant, you can check out more via the link here – Alternatively, for more of his Christmas-related rantiness, check out the link here! They’ll be a new rant (nearly) every day between Christmas and New Year!