7 Essential Gadgets Every PC Repair Guru Should Own

We spend a lot of time working on or upgrading PCs around here and suspect many of you do too. Whether you're the local expert in your friend group or your family's resident tech guru, there are some gadgets and tools that are effectively must-haves for repairs, maintenance, and diagnostics. For more specialized repairs or upgrades, specific items and particular tools or equipment not listed below may be required, but what we'll be presenting here will be a great start.

Before we dive in, if you happen to find cheaper or better alternatives, please comment below and help everyone out. The picks we've included here are tailored to our experiences, but if you'd rather spend more (or less) on a well-known, branded iFixit toolkit instead of the Strebito kit listed below, we won't fault you.

We do, however, recommend having an array of power, disassembly and cleaning tools in your kit to cover a wide array of potential issues. After all, you aren't opening up laptops or GPUs without a generous set of screwdriver heads, and hopefully you'll be doing it with some degree of electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection as well.

#1. Thermaltake Dr. Power III Pro ($49.99)

The Thermaltake Dr. Power III Pro is the latest in a line of great power supply testers from Thermaltake. The Dr. Power III Pro is designed to test the latest and greatest ATX 3.1 power supplies, and can even verify whether or not the PSU can properly support PCIe Gen 5 GPUs, like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090. Plus, if you assemble or repair PCs with any degree of regularity, having a trustworthy PSU tester on hand will help to quickly troubleshoot a myriad of potential power-related issues.

#2. STREBITO 191-Piece Repair Kit ($38.99)

The Strebito 191-Piece Repair Kit costs just under $40, and it's fairly exhaustive for the price. Two different screwdriver handles are included, as well as various tools that'll help you open up just about anything from a phone to a console to individual PC components. There's even an anti-static wristband included, which we recommend using when assembling or opening up any sensitive electronics, lest you risk ESD damaging your components.

#3. HPFIX Anti-Static Mat ($19.94)

Another worthwhile tool of the trade is an anti-static mat. While an anti-static wristband will usually do the job just fine on its own, more delicate work (especially involving phones or larger PCBs of any kind) calls for a larger anti-static mat. The HPFIX Anti-Static mat costs only $19.94 on Amazon at time of writing, which has made it an extremely popular option for small repair operations and DIY enthusiasts. For the money, it's pretty hard to beat. If the HPFIX Anti-Static Mat saves you from catastrophe just once, it basically pays for itself.

#4. WOLFBOX MegaFlow Electric Air Duster ($39.99)

We'd be remiss to make this list without including the Wolfbox MegaFlow Electric Air Duster. Anyone that owns a computer is going to want to periodically dust it out, and having to buy compressed air cans on a regular basis is not only an environmental problem, it's a huge waste of money. The Wolfbox MegaFlow Electric Air Duster  solves that problem, and includes four nozzles for a variety of use cases, allowing it to be used for dusting more than just your PC.

The WOLFBOX MegaFlow Electric Air Duster is also a good bit stronger than your typical can of compressed air. Just remember that you should always hold fans still when blasting air through them to prevent damage to the fan's ball bearings.

#5. Anker Desktop Charger Hub ($39.99)

Another handy item is the Anker Desktop Charging Hub. This device is a 6-in-1 charging station with 3 USB-A and 3 USB-C ports, with a total of 112 combined Watts of charging power. Per-port, it offers up to 30W through each of the USB-C ports and 18W through the USB-A ports. For the price of just $39.99, it's much more capable than the competition, and should help keep various devices and/or gadgets like the ones listed above always in reach and ready to roll.

#6. Ordilend Keyboard & Laptop Cleaner Kit ($16.99)

The last two essential picks are focused on vital cleaning utilities for virtually any electronic device. The Ordilend Keyboard & Laptop Cleaner Kit is an exhaustive multi-tool gadget which includes a variety of cleaning brushes, picks, and more to help you keep PCs and peripherals clean. I've personally made use of this kit on several occasions to clean both my own mechanical keyboard and the laptops of friends and relatives. Noisy fans, overheating, intermittent contact and a multitude of other issues can be caused by dust or dirt settings in places it doesn't belong, so do yourself a favor and keep all of your tech clean.

#7. EVEO Screen Cleaner Kit ($14.97)

Which brings us to the Eveo Screen Cleaner Kit. The kit incudes a large, black microfiber cleaning cloth and a generously large bottle of screen-safe, alcohol-free cleaning spray. Technically, I only bought the full kit once, back in 2022, but that's just because I've never needed anything else to keep my screens clean. This stuff works great and a little goes a long way.

Both larger and smaller EVEO screen cleaning kits are available to scale to your needs, though, whether that's just a refill on the screen cleaner or more of those nice, dense microfiber cloths. For everything from TVs to large monitors and even glasses, I've found the Eveo Screen Cleaner Kit gets the job done and it's mild enough to use on other surfaces as well.