I am a little concerned with the inside of my case and all the components. Is it common for like dust and crap to get inside of cases or can this be avoided? Reason I ask is because I noticed on some friends' computers there is alot of built up stuff on their fans and components.
If this cant be avoided, is there a safe way to clean everything off? I'm not anal or anything I just want to take of my stuff and it took alot of time and effort to get my Comp the way it is.

Thanks for any help/suggestions!

Yes this is normal. At least for me and everyone's computers I see around here. As far as avoiding it, I am not sure if there really is a way to do it. You can just clean it every once in a while.

I have a vacuum cleaner where the main metal long pipe bit can be removed, and you just get a nice friendly plastic nossle - I clean it out with that about one per 6 months or so. Do you get a lot of that crap in there. By the way, a lot of that is old skin cells from YOUR body.

Whenever I decide to clean mine I take it outside and blow the dust off. Just get youself one of those cans of air if you want to be more precise. I just normally blow on it myself, just be sure you don't spit on it

If you’re looking for a good way to get rid of the dust, I would recommend some canned air as I like to call it; compressed air is probably the real name. All it is really, (if you didn't know) is a can just like a deodorant can, only filled with compressed oxygen; you can just spray it onto any of your components (basically anything in your case). You can usually find it in your local computer store; once you have dusted all your case out, some fan filters wouldn't do any harm to help keep it dust free.

I typically use a plastic brush and just give it a good dusting from time to time. Then I blow out the air with either compressed air or my own two lungs.

Compressed air is a good way to remove loose dust from your case but the fact is your going to have some nice dust build up inside your case especially on fan blades. I noticed on my old 900mhz system when I went to ditch it by buying my current system (gave it to my parents who cant even turn it on) that the fan blades were caked in dust and you can NOT remove it by using compressed air. Dust tends to get literally caked in some places inside your case and you have to brush it off with something so your going to need more than compressed air to keep a case clean. Do like someone here mentioned and get on of those brushes that come with the vacum cleaner.

I recommend that you REMOVE the fans from the case before cleaning them with anything. You dont want any static electricity reaking havoc inside your system. It just isnt a chance you want to take, and when using something like a vacumm cleaner it just wouldnt be wise to try it without first removing the fans then doing some good cleaning. Maybe even take some window cleaner or something like that to the fan blades and clean it (dont spray it ON the fan, spray it on the cloth then wipe the fan off).

Trivia: The canned dust-off stuff is the same as a can of freeze-it except the freeze-it has a stem down into the bottom of the can where it picks up the liquid. If you turn it upside down freeze-it becomes a can of dust-off because the stem is now out of the liquid and venting the vapor pressure, conversely if you turn dust-off upside down it becomes a can of freeze-it.

I think freeze spray usually is cheaper than dust-off so I buy freeze spray and turn it upside down to blow out dust.

The best way is still 125 pound compressed air from a compressor. It really gets down into the nooks and crannies and makes fast and thorough work of cleaning out the box, power supply , fans and heatsink fins.