How I keep my PC and desktop clean with cuddly cats all around me: a $20 handheld air blower

I have two roommates that don't clean up after themselves, eat my plants, yack on the floor, roll around on my desk, scratch everything, and use my PC components as personal heaters. Worst of all, they cover my desktop in thousands of black and grey hairs. Not great for someone that spends a considerable amount of time photographing PC accessories and components on said desktop—spotted a hair in one of my reviews? Thank my roommates.

Of course I'm talking about my two cats. And I'm not mad at them for their follicular folly—they demand hugs throughout the day that see hundreds more hairs scattered across the faux-leather desk mat and betwixt the keys on my gaming keyboard. But I did have to find some sort of solution that didn't involve attempting to painstakingly pick up each hair one-by-one or wrestling my actual vacuum onto my desk, which works but is a hassle to do multiple times per day.

Then there's the dust. A perennial problem for PC gamers, dust seeps into PCs through cracks and gaps in our PC cases despite our best efforts to keep it away. For years, I've relied on compressed air cans to get rid of dust lying between capacitors and between hard to reach areas, and it works a treat. However, it's pretty wasteful, requiring throwing away a metal can after a few goes. It also chills your hand and, if the can is inverted at all, blast your components with an eerie fog. While it's kinda fun to do that last one, alas, I'm in need of a better, less disposable alternative.

The solution to both of my problems: a handheld air blower.

I picked up a basic handheld vacuum from Aliexpress, for which I paid the grand sum of £16.79, which works out to around $23.

I won't drop the exact recommendation because 1) I don't review air blowers and I have absolutely no other context whether mine is actually any good compared to any other 2) I threw away the box and the unit itself has no brand names or model codes to speak of. So, if you're interested, go find one for yourself. There are many available on Amazon, though you might pay more than Aliexpress for more or less the same thing, but good luck with returning a faulty unit on the latter. I took the risk and so far my unit is still going strong.

It's a pretty basic device. It has two buttons: one to turn it on, which also cycles through three power modes; and one to turn on or off the integrated, albeit practically useless, light. The power modes are indicated by three small lights on the side of the unit, and that's about all there is to it. There are a selection of nozzles in the box, though there are two important ones: the blower nozzle and the wide vacuum nozzle, which works in tandem with the vacuum chamber attachment.

Yeah, it's a two-in-one, blower and vacuum, though that sounds more grandiose than it is. It sucks in one end and blows out the other. And I have to do my best not to accidentally Tobias Fünke with this wording but, boy, does it blow hard.

Crank this bad boy up to tier three and it'll knock the socks off a tuxedo cat. My test rig has never looked better, with dust no longer accumulating within its nooks and crannies. That had been a particular issue for the Thermaltake P5 I'm using for this open bench set-up, as it lacks any sort of dust protection. My personal PC also avoids the gradual build up of dust across its many filters and a quick razz of the blower on the inside of the case keeps it looking clean without any hassle.

And, of course, my cat hair problem is no more. Well, I still have to vacuum my desktop multiple times a day, but it doesn't take a second to get it all cleared up. Plus, the vacuum attachment keeps all the hair inside it, rather than blowing it into the air only to land back on my things. My only regret is I didn't get one sooner.

Best PC build 2025

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1. Best CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

2. Best motherboard: MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi

3. Best RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32 GB DDR5-7200

4. Best SSD: WD_Black SN7100

5. Best graphics card: RTX 5070 Ti or RX 9070 XT (whichever is cheaper)