PC maintenance questions

Hello! I ordered a Vanquish 4 level 3 two weeks ago, and have been excitedly thinking about it all the time... and I have some questions on how to take care of it once it arrives.

I have to confess that I've never been good with maintaining my PCs, but I've only had cheapie ones so I don't feel that bad. :P My main question is about cleaning. How often should I physically clean the inside of the PC? How often should I clear internet cache or use CCleaner? How often should I defrag? (Though I did some searching on the forum, and learned not to defrag an SSD.)

Also, when I was a kid I used to turn off my computer when I was done using it for the day, until my uncle said it was bad for the computer to turn it off and on all the time. Is that true? Since then, I've basically always kept my computer on unless I went on vacation or the weather might cause a power outage. I wonder if that has been a mistake all these years...

And finally, I've always used regular ol' surge protectors... I didn't even know UPS's existed until I was looking around this forum! I went on Amazon to choose one and a few reviews I found said that sometimes a UPS isn't compatible with a power supply, and it won't work. I saw APC recommended on this forum, so I'm going to assume it will be compatible with the power supplies DS uses? If I want to be on the safe side, how do I test that it's working? I read that you can test a UPS by plugging a lamp or something into it and then unplugging the UPS from the wall. But that won't help if the UPS isn't compatible with your power supply, and it seems kind of risky to unplug the UPS when your PC is plugged into it. Ahhh I feel kind of paranoid, but I want to make absolutely sure my PC will be protected for sure!!

Thanks for any advice you can give! :D
(Also... anybody else looking forward to Dark Souls 3!?! I can't even remember the last time I played a PC game on the release date! So excited!!!)

I wholeheartedly agree with ArkansasWoman on everything she's posted above, with one minor exception.

I turn my machine off every time I am done for more than 2 hours. I have disabled all "sleep" and "hibernate" functions because they did not play well with my peripherals.

But, back to AW777's post, that "Metro-Vacuum" she recommends is absolutely worth its weight in gold.

Originally posted by aaronw Good thing I saw this, how is a SSD maintained other than defray since I see from the topic that's not advisable?

Anymore SSDs are taken pretty well care of by Windows itself. In the past you needed to manually run the TRIM command on them, but recent versions of Windows do this automatically on a schedule, or you can disable that and do it manually.

In Windows 10 the OS smart detects the kind of drive and so when you click "Optimize" it either defrags or TRIMs.

See here for more info.

Thanks for the input everyone! The Metro-Vacuum does look pretty awesome, I'll have to grab one at some point! Good to know turning off the computer or not is up to preference... I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.

Also, my Vanquish shipped today! Woo!! :D

We turn all the computers off when not using them. They really suck the power up.
Use the Metro Vac. Its fabulous. Dust(time permitting)once a week.
I check the fluid levels on my LC every month.
Learned so much from these forums.