Understanding SLI

The term SLI was first coined by 3dfx when they released their Scan-Line Interleave technology. This technology was introduced to the consumer market in 1998 and used in the Voodoo2 line of video cards. After acquiring 3dfx, Nvidia come up with a new technology that uses the PCI-Express bus to improve graphics performance, and named it Scalable Link Interface, in short, SLI.

With the same concept as the dual core CPU, the idea behind SLI is to split the work load to smaller pieces so that different GPUs can be used to process it concurrently. In a SLI setting, two (or more) graphics cards are connected in a master-slave setting via a SLI bridge. When rendering a 3D scene, the work load is split into half and each card will be in charge of one half of the work load. When the slave card is done, it sends its output to the master card via the SLI bridge, which then combines the two results into one and sent to the output for display.

In order to use SLI on your system, you have to fulfill the following criteria:

• Own a motherboard that is based on an Nvidia chipset (the only exception is the Intel Dual Socket Extreme platform which is based on the Intel D5400XS motherboard which supports both SLI and CrossFireX technologies) and have at least two PCI-Express 16x slots.
• Two (or more) nVidia SLI graphics cards of the same GPU

SLI is rather strict on the type of GPU used. While you can set up SLI with two graphics cards from different manufacturers, the condition is: they must be using the same GPU (and preferably same clock speed and memory). In addition, not all Nvidia’s graphics cards are SLI-capable. While the latest release of graphics cards are all SLI-capable, only a selected few from the past series can run SLI. It is important to verify this before buying the graphics card.

One year down the road after PCI-SIG announced the release of PCI-Express 2.0, we have started to see more and more PCI-Express 2.0 hardware appearing on the market. While it is still new, it is useful to understand what PCI-Express 2.0 is and how it affects you.

How PCI- Express works?

Just in case you have forgotten what PCI-Express is, it is a connection slot meant to replace both PCI and AGP slot. How PCI-Express works is based on the concept of lanes, analogous to highway lanes. The more lanes you have, the more traffic you can move. The number of lanes in a PCI-Express slot can start from 1 and a maximum of 16. The amount of traffic each lane can carry in a single direction is 250MB/s. This means that a PCI-Express 16x slot (16 lanes) has a maximum bandwidth of 250 x 16 x 2 = 8.0GB/s in dual direction. That is considered fast, compared to the previous PCI and AGP slot. Nowadays, most graphics cards are using the 16x PCI-Express to handle the heavy graphics processing and for 3D acceleration.

What has changed in PCI-Express 2.0?

In PCI-Express 2.0, the concept of lanes still exists. What has changed is that the width of the lanes has doubled. A PCI-Express 16x can now carry up to a 16 GB/s of data, up from 8GB/s in PCI-Express 1.x.

To fully utilize PCI-Express 2.0 and take advantage of the extra bandwidth, you will need both a PCI-Express 2.0 motherboard and a PCI-Express 2.0 compliant video card such as the GeForce 8800GT or the Radeon HD 4870. Luckily, PCI-Express 2.0 is designed to be both backward and forward compatible, which means that you can still use your new PCI-Express 2.0 video card on your old motherboard (or vice versa), although the speed will be restricted to the slower one.

Motherboards that support PCI-Express slot

PCI-Express 2.0 slot was first introduced with the short life Intel X38 chipset and is now being carried on by Intel’s X48, AMD’s 790/770 family and Nvidia’s nForce 7 series. Some great boards that support PCI-Express 2.0 include:

• EVGA nforce 780i SLI Motherboard
• MSI K9A2 Platinum Motherboard
• Asus Rampage Formula Motherboard

Do you really need PCI-Express 2.0?

With the extra bandwidth, one may expect a better PC and graphics performance. Sadly to say, that is not true, as yet. The situation is the same when Intel launched their quad core CPU. The technology is too fast for current applications to catch up. In the context of PCI-Express 2.0, most games are not designed to utilize the technology and even with both a PCI-Express 2.0 motherboard and graphics cards, you are not going to see huge improvement. At this point of time, it is not a ‘must-have’ feature, but if you are planning for a major upgrade of your system, then it will be worthwhile to include a PCI-Express 2.0 capable motherboard and video card in your plan.

Most people upgrade their PC in the hope of having a faster system. What they didn’t know is that no matter how good their hardware is, if they allow a lot of memory intensive applications to choke up the OS, the performance will still be slow.

If you are using Windows Vista, here are some tips to help you optimize for faster performance.

Image by Skenmy

1) Delete programs you never use

In addition to occupying storage space, miscellaneous programs can also take up a lot of memory space. The more programs you installed, the slower your PC runs. If you have the habit to install lots of programs, then it is time for you to clean up your system now.

• Go to Start->Control Panel
• Select Programs->Programs and Features
• Select the program that you have no use for and click Uninstall.

2) Reduce number of startup programs

The more programs that Vista has to run during startup, the longer the startup process takes. Reduce the number of startup programs and you will see improvement in the boot up time.

The easiest way to check out your startup programs is to look at the taskbar (Right bottom corner). For the programs that you have no need for, right click on the icons and select “Do not load during startup”. If the program does not provide such a disable feature, you can disable it via the Windows Defender.

• Go to Start-> All Programs->Windows Defender.
• Select Tools-> Software Explorer.
• In the Category box, click Startup Programs.
• Select the program that you want to prevent from running, and then click Disable.
• Click Yes to confirm that you want to stop that program from running.

3) Turn off visual effects

Unless you have a really powerful PC, there is always a tradeoff between the visual effect and the performance. If you opt for better performance, you will have to disable some (or all) of the visual effect.

• Go to Start->Control Panel->System and Maintenance
• Select the Performance Information and Tools.
• Click Adjust visual effects.
• Click the Visual Effects tab, click Adjust for best performance, and then click OK. (For a less drastic option, select Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer.)

4) Disable services you don’t need

Vista runs more than 100 services in the background during startup, and this doesn’t include the services that come with the applications that you have installed. These services usually run when the computer starts and end only when the computer is shut down. While some of these services are essential for the running of the OS, some of them are redundant and can be removed

• Go to Start and type services in the search field.
• Select Services.MSC. Within it, you’ll see a list of services. There’s a Description column and a Status column that indicates whether the service has been started. The Startup Type shows how the service starts:
  • Disabled means the service will not start under any means.
  • Manual means the service will start if another service calls for it.
  • Automatic means it starts when Windows Vista starts.
  • Automatic (Delayed Start) means it starts a little while after Vista starts.
• You have the power to change the status and startup type of most of the services. You can right-click any service, click Properties, and choose whether to start or stop the service and select its startup type.

For more detail on configuring the services, you can download the Vista_Services word doc on services, provided by Microsoft.

5) Adjust indexing option

If you enable the indexing option, it will be constantly running in the background, waiting, scanning and indexing all the files and folders in the hard disk. While this can help you find what you want easily, most of the time you will not need 95% of the indexed files. What you can do is to adjust the indexing option so that it only focuses on those files and folders that you commonly use.

• Go to Start->Control Panel->System and Maintenance->Indexing Options.
• Click Modify. To remove a location, clear its check box in the Change selected locations list, and then click OK.

In addition, hardware performance deteriorates over time. Frequent benchmarking can inform you about the health of your system (or hardware) and whether it is time to upgrade your hardware.

Benchmarking your CPU

Cinebench is the benchmarking software that we recommend for testing and evaluating CPU performance. What it does is to use a 3D scene file to render a photo-realistic image. The scene makes use of various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders. In the first run, the benchmark only uses one CPU (or CPU core), to ascertain a reference value. On computers that have multiple CPUs or CPU cores and on those who simulate multiple CPUs, Cinebench will run a second test using all available CPU power.

Benchmarking your Graphics Card

There are two ways to benchmark your graphics card – via actual game play or using synthetic benchmark. Whenever possible, I would strongly recommend using a 3D game to do the benchmarking. Games such as F.E.A.R, FarCry, Crysis, Doom 3 and Call of Juarez provide a benchmarking function for their demo, which you can use it free of charge.

For some reasons that you can’t run a game demo, you can download 3DMark 05 from Futuremark. This synthetic benchmarking software can stress your graphics card with numerous tests and generates a test score. You can compare the score in numerous websites and forums to see how your graphics card scores against the others.

Benchmarking your system as a whole

If you got a new PC and wish to find out its performance, you can use COSBI OpenSourceMark to generate a benchmark score. This open-source program runs a series of applications (such as file compression, audio encoding, spreadsheet calculation and image editing) and generates score according to your hardware performance. You won’t get a very nice user interface, but it is simple enough for anyone to use it.The program detects multiple cores and automatically reconfigures the benchmarks to take full advantage of your hardware.

Conclusion

With all the software (both free and paid) around that make benchmarking task a breeze, there is no reason why you haven’t done it yet. If you have not done any benchmarking for your system, after reading this article, I would advise you to start right away.

RAID is the acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. It is a method that utilizes multiple identical hard drives to exceed the performance of a larger and more expensive hard drive.

There are several forms of RAID, but the one that can give you the best performance boost is RAID 0, also known as Disk Striping.

What RAID 0 does is simply dividing the data evenly between two or more drives so that the workload is spread out among the drives. Instead of one hard drive doing all the work seeking and finding information, copying and moving it, there are two or more drives now sharing the workload.

In RAID 0 setup, a file is divided into many small parts (by default, each part is of size 128Kb). When the system writes data to a two drives setup, it will write the first part to the first drive, the second part to the second drive, the third part to the first drive, fourth part to the second drive and so on until the entire contents of the file have been written. If there are more than two drives, the data writing will be split among the drives evenly.

By utilizing multiple drives, the system can now write and retrieve data at a much faster speed. A two drives RAID 0 setup can increase speed up to 25% while a three drives setup can boost speed about 33%.

While using RAID 0, it is best to use two identical hard drive of the same storage size. Keeping in mind that the workload is being balanced, the computer can only deal with data as big as the smaller hard drive. If you have an 80 GB and a 120 GB drive in RAID 0, the computer can only treat them as two 80 GB drives, ignoring the extra 40 GB of space on drive two. You don’t want to spend money on storage size that you can’t use.

A drawback to RAID 0 is that if any one drive happens to crash, all your data are lost. If you value your data, you can include RAID 1 in your setup.

RAID 1, also known as mirroring, provides the backup feature for your hard drive. When two hard drives are set up in RAID 1, the exact data are written to the two hard drives. One hard drive is use for operation while the other hard drive serves as a backup. If the main hard drive is to fail, you still have the second hard drive to fall back on. To achieve RAID 1, you need to have two identical hard drive operating at the same time (for RAID 0, it is not necessary). The only downside is that you are halving your disk drive dollar to pay for this redundancy. Two 80 GB hard drives in RAID 1 give you only 80 GB of storage rather than 160 GB.

RAID 10 (or RAID 0+1) is the integration of both RAID 0 and 1. By using 4 identical hard drives, two in RAID 0 while another two in RAID 1, you can achieve both speed and stability. While this is really the ideal configuration, the cost of buying two extra hard drives that cannot be used at all may be a price too high for some to pay. Based on your needs, you may want to judge for yourself if you want to go for RAID 0 or RAID 10 setup.

Sometime, it pays to be extra careful. You can make use of this computer motherboard monitoring software to find out if your gaming computer is too hot. Motherboard Monitor monitors and reports the temperature inside your computer case. When your computer parts reach a critical temperature, it will alarm you and automatically shut down your computer before anything gets damaged. Else, it will just quietly sit in the system tray of your desktop.

This software does not work with all motherboards, but for those that work; this is a useful software for anyone who is concerned about the health of their computer.

Download Motherboard Monitor here.

Final Words

There is no better way to damage your gaming computer than seeing it burning up in flames. Cooling it down is the only way to save your computer. With an efficient cooling strategy and some effort to maintain it, you can have a peaceful mind to play your game with the top quality.

Case cooling is the next important thing of the whole cooling process. With all the heat piling up inside the computer case, there is a need to purge the hot air out and replaced it with cool air.

Case cooling involves more than just adding cooling fans. It requires careful planning and paying attention to small details. Here are some useful ways to cool your computer case.

1. Tidy up your wires

Remove any unused wires and cable inside your computer case. For wires and cables that are too long, use a cable tie to tie them up. Ensure that the wires and cables do not block the fans and the way of airflow. If they do, re-route them to provide a clear path for the cooling fans. IDE cable is usually big in surface area and takes up lot of space. If possible, change your hard drive interfaces to SATA. This can be easily done by upgrading to a SATA hard drive or use a SATA adaptor.

2. Cooling fans

Most computer cases come with two cooling fans, one at the front and one at the rear of the power supply. The usual way is to direct cool air in from the front and hot air out from the rear. For normal usage, the two fans are sufficient, but for gaming, heat build up much faster and additional fans are needed to improve the airflow.

When placing the additional fans, it must be placed either in the front to blow cool air in or at the rear to direct hot air out. Since hot air rises, it is important for a gaming computer case to have a large air intake in the low front of the case and powerful fans blowing out from the top rear of the case (see diagram).

When choosing a case cooling fan, it is advisable to choose a 120mm fan over an 80mm fan. 120mm fan move a large volume of air and produces less noise. An 80mm fan will be useful if you are mounting it at the side panel for additional cooling.

3. Case fan controller

A case fan controller works by measuring the temperature of your case interior and allow you to control the fan speed when it gets too hot. Although not a ‘must-have’ item, it does come in handy and giving you more control over your gaming computer.

4. Regular maintenance and cleaning – Keep the dust out

You can’t see it, but it is there. What I am referring to is the dust particles that are quietly gathering in every part of your computer. These dust particles seem to have a mission on hand – to clog up your fan motor and obstruct the air from flowing through.

The way to combat these dust particles is to regularly clean up your computer.

Schedule a two hour session every two weeks to maintain your computer. Open up the side panel of the computer case. Use a can of compressed air to blow air around all the computer parts, giving extra attention to the CPU (heatsink and fan), graphics card GPU (heatsink and fan), RAM module and power supply fan. Be careful to keep the nozzle four inches away from the machine, as great pressure from the compressed air could damage the components.

If you find that the expansion cards are exceptionally dirty, remove each card and clean its contacts with isopropyl alcohol.

Lastly, use antistatic wipes to clean up the dust inside the case, particularly the area where air flows in and out (around the case cooling fan area).

Next >>

The RAM can get very hot when it is loaded with heavy application. This is especially true when insufficient memories are installed in your computer. Overheating also occur when you overclock the RAM. When the RAM overheats, you will start to experience hanging screen, sudden blackout or the famous Windows blue error screen. Whatever it is, it is definitely not a good experience.

Nevertheless, it is easy to protect the RAM. A RAM cooler will usually do the trick. The RAM cooler is a simple metal housing for the RAM. The metal surface is in contact with the chips on the RAM module to effectively dissipate heat away. It is sold rather cheaply in the major computer retail store, with price ranging from $3.99 to $19.99 in TigerDirect.

Different types of RAM cooler

The conventional RAM cooler	RAM cooler with extra fans	RAM cooler that uses liquid cooling technology

If you require a more efficient cooler to cool your RAM, there are coolers with a built in fan to increase the airflow and dissipate heat away from the RAM.

Protecting the Hard Drive

Hard drive overheating is never an issue in the past. This is because hard drive transfer rate is not as fast and the disk spinning speed is relatively slow. However, things have changed. With the hard drive now spinning at fast as 7200rpm, cooling has become an important issue.

When a hard drive is overheated, its performance will not be affected. This means that it will not spin slower or transfer at a lower rate just because it is too hot. However, overheating will reduce the lifespan of the hard drive and will become less reliable in the long run.

The best way to cool down a hard drive is to use a hard drive cooler. It consists of a metal casing to fix on the hard drive with embedded fan to cool down the unit.

Some advanced hard drive coolers come with extra heat sink to help lower the temperature. These are useful if your hard drive gets overheated easily.

Next >>

BASIC COMPUTER TROUBLESHOOTING

1. The system’s fan is whining loudly.
2. Your PC spontaneously reboots.
3. Your Optical Drive (CD or DVD) Runs Slower and Slower….
4. I have four pieces of RAM installed and I’m pretty sure that at least one is bad. What’s the best way to test RAM for errors?
5. Sometimes when I play games for a long time, my computer just randomly crashes to the desktop.
6. My new Athlon XP system is telling me that my brand-new Athlon XP 3200+ is only Athlon 2200+!
7. My optical drive has suddenly slowed to a crawl reading discs, and it refuses to read some discs.
8. I just bought a new PC, and now my PocketPC refuses to connect via the USB port.

PC BUILDING TROUBLESHOOTING

9. I just built a new machine and am experiencing totally random crashes. What are the possible culprits?
10. I’m building a new PC and have the motherboard mounted inside the case. When I push the AGP card all the way down in the slot, the end of the metal tab on the slot cover hits the bottom of the case, preventing me from inserting the AGP edge connector all the way.

HARD DRIVE TROUBLESHOOTING

11. I just plugged in a brand-new hard drive but it’s not showing up in Windows XP.
12. My system crashed, and when I rebooted, my RAID array was no longer working properly.

GENERAL TROUBLESHOOTING

The system’s fan is whining loudly.

Solution: A loud fan can be the result of a number of minor problems. The common cause is dirt. A dirty fan, clogged with dust, is highly inefficient and works harder to handle its cooling duties. As the fan struggles to cool the system, it produces the whirring sound. A quick cleaning should do the trick. If the fan is new and you’re still hearing a loud whirring, your problem may be "ambient heat." You need to operate your PC in a cool environment. Many PCs get louder as they get hotter, with the fans spinning faster to keep the system cool. Be certain your PC is clean and cool and you’ll run trouble-free.

Your PC spontaneously reboots.

Solution: A long-standing mystery solved! If rebooting occurs in a PC that you’ve just built, try re-seating your CPU’s heat sink. Make sure you’re using the proper thermal gel and spread it evenly between the heat sink and the processor. If inadequate amounts of gel have been applied or low-quality gel has been used, the system will reboot as the CPU heats up—and builds in the uneven "pockets" created by the uneven gel. Also: check to see if you’ve removed the protective sticker on the bottom of the heat sink (don’t laugh—it happens!). And by all means, make sure your motherboard supports the CPU you’re installing. If these steps check out and you’re still experiencing spontaneous reboots, your problem may be one of the following:

• Overclocking: Unless you are an expert, else we do not recommend overclocking.
• Memory Timing: Go into your BIOS and set your memory on "Auto" or at a more conservative setting and see if the reboot problem goes away.
• Outdated BIOS: Make sure you have the latest BIOS for your board. You can determine if your CPU is supported by browsing the BIOS updates of the motherboard’s manufacturer. If you’re running a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition and notice that it’s only supported with the latest BIOS updates, you may have located the problem!
• Inadequate Power: If you’ve made significant component upgrades—with the exception of the power supply—your power supply may be overstressed or failing due to heat or age.
• Finally, if you’ve migrated your OS and other files from machine to machine to machine, it may be time for a clean install.

Your Optical Drive (CD or DVD) Runs Slower and Slower….

Solution: Again, the villain may be dirt, since optical drives rarely "slow down" on their own. Optical drives either work—or they don’t, so a mechanical problem is ruled out. What most likely has happened is that your dive has accumulated a layer of dirt or dust. Here’s the fix: You’ll need a can of "spray air" (available everywhere). Eject the disc tray and spray into the drive with short bursts—and be sure to spray at an angle so the dust will be expelled out of the drive. Do not spray continuously or turn the spray can upside down (doing so could introduce moisture into the drive. Repeat this process a few times, then try test the drive.

I have four pieces of RAM installed and I’m pretty sure that at least one is bad. What’s the best way to test RAM for errors?

Solution: Since you have four pieces of RAM, you can install just one DIMM in your motherboard at a time and run the machine until it crashes. This isn’t a completely reliable way to test RAM, though. As an alternative, download Memtest86 (www.memtest86.com) and create a bootable CD. Memtest86 does a fair job. It runs several test patterns through the RAM. If a piece of RAM passes these tests, swap it with another DIMM and continue your tests. Even better than Memtest86 is Ultra-X’s RAM Stress Test Pro 2, which is a self-booting diagnostic plug-in card. This card uses a comprehensive set of test patterns to assess your memory, and we’ve found that it finds bad pieces of RAM that other testers miss. Keep in mind that it may not actually be a stick of RAM that’s bad. The problem may in fact be a bad DIMM slot. If all four pieces of RAM pass the test, you may have to rerun them in each individual slot on your motherboard. Finally, your motherboard’s BIOS usually set RAM timing by reading the SPD setting on the module. If the SPDs are set too aggressively (we’ve seen this), it may cause problems. You should consider going into the BIOS and manually tweaking settings such as your CAS latency to a more conservative setting.

Sometimes when I play games for a long time, my computer just randomly crashes to the desktop.

Solution: Random crashes in games can be the result of a few different problems. Typically, it’s a heat issue, a driver issue, or a problem with the game. The first thing you should do is check for a patch for any of your games that are crashing. It seems like common sense, but frequently we receive complaints from people trying to run games that have been patched three or four times. Once you’ve updated your games, you need to update your video card and chipset drivers. Get your video card driver from the company that manufactured your card’s chipset, either ATI (www.ati.com) or nVidia (www.nvidia.com). You should also check for newer drivers for your motherboard’s chipset whenever you update your video card drivers. Outdated motherboard chipset drivers are one of the main causes of general system instability. If you’ve updated all your hardware, but are still having problems, you may have a heat issue. Open your case and look at your AGP card. Is there another card right below it? If there is, you should consider moving that card to another slot. A card directly below a high-end video card can disrupt airflow enough to cause overheating issues with today’s top-of-the-line video cards. If freeing the neighboring slot doesn’t alleviate your problem, try adding a fan that fits into one of your PCI slots and exhausts hot air from the bottom of your PC.

My new Athlon XP system is telling me that my brand-new Athlon XP 3200+ is only Athlon 2200+!

Solution: It sounds like your motherboard’s bus speed is set incorrectly. You see, you probably bought an Athlon XP 3200+ that runs on a 400MHz bus (which is actually a double-pumped 200Mhz bus). For the motherboard to recognize the CPU as a 3200+, the CPU has to run at 2.2GHz, or 2,200MHz. The CPU reaches that speed only if the motherboard is set to an 11 multiplier and with a 200MHz bus. So, 11×200=2200. If your motherboard’s frontside bus is set to run at 166MHz, the CPU would boot at 1833MHz. It’s no coincidence that this is the same speed at an Athlon XP 2200+. To correct this, reboot your machine and go into the BIOS by hitting DEL or F2 during boot. Look for the section that lets you change the bus speed. Hopefully we’re right and it’s set for 166MHz. Increase it to 400MHz, save the settings, reboot and you should have a 3200+.

My optical drive has suddenly slowed to a crawl reading discs, and it refuses to read some discs.

Solution: Optical drives usually don’t expire gradually; most simply stop working without so much as a death rattle. It’s much more likely you drive’s lens has accumulated a layer of dust.

Get yourself a can of compressed air at the local geek emporium, and eject the disc tray. Spray into the drive with quick, short bursts at an angle (so the dust is more likely to be expelled from the drive). Do not spray continuously or with the can upside down, because that could introduce moisture into the drive. Give the dust a minute to settle, and spray the innards again.

I just bought a new PC, and now my PocketPC refuses to connect via the USB port.

Solution: This problem occurs if you plug your PocketPC in before installing ActiveSync. Check the Device Manager by right-clicking My Computer, selecting Properties, clicking the Hardware tab, and then selecting Device Manager. If you see an Unknown Device entry, delete it by right-clicking it and selecting Uninstall. Restart you PC, install your PocketPCs drivers from the manufacturer’s disc, and plug it in again.

PC BUILDING TROUBLESHOOTING

I just built a new machine and am experiencing totally random crashes. What are the possible culprits?

Solution: Random crashes are always hard to diagnose, so let’s cover all the bases. The first area to check is your drivers. Make sure you have the latest drivers for all your hardware, especially the motherboard chipset drivers. You should also make sure you’ve downloaded all Windows Updates. Next, consider your power supply. If you’re running a midsize 300-watt PSU, and upgraded to a late model Pentium 4 CPU or Athlon FX, or are just running several hard drives and PCI add-in cards, you should upgrade your power supply to a 400 watt or thereabouts model. Inadequate power to your components can cause the entire system to lock up at worst, or just cause certain components to malfunction or stop working. The final consideration is cooling. Ideally, you should have a decent size fan in the lower front of your case sucking in cool air from the outside, and a large exhaust fan above your AGP card pull air out of the case.

I’m building a new PC and have the motherboard mounted inside the case. When I push the AGP card all the way down in the slot, the end of the metal tab on the slot cover hits the bottom of the case, preventing me from inserting the AGP edge connector all the way.

Solution: Even though every ATX motherboard and ATX case should be exactly the same dimensions, there are still small variances that can create problems when transplanting your hardware into a new environment. It’s fairly common for the video card to not quite fit, and when this happens the solution is to simply bend the end of the metal slot cover away from the board ever so slightly. This will afford it the extra millimeter or so of clearance the card needs to fit all the way down into the slot. But be careful!

HARD DRIVE TROUBLESHOOTING

I just plugged in a brand-new hard drive but it’s not showing up in Windows XP.

Solution: All brand-new hard drives are sold unformatted and thus don’t show up in Windows until they’ve gone through the formatting process. To get up and running, connect the drive, boot your PC, and at the Windows desktop right-click the My Computer icon and select Manage. Click Disk Management in the left-hand tree, and every drive connected to your system will show up. Simply right-click your new drive and select New Partition. Then follow the steps to get your drive up and running.

My system crashed, and when I rebooted, my RAID array was no longer working properly.

Solution: RAID arrays can stop functioning for several reasons, but it’s usually a case of a cable coming loose or something in the BIOS being reset. Serial ATA cables easily come out of their drives, so check them first. If everything is connected properly, you should also check to make sure that the ports your array is plugged into are set to "RAID" rather then "IDE.". Because these ports often double as either standard IDE ports or RAID ports, they must be set in the BIOS to one or the other. Be sure to check here first if your array suddenly disappears.

Is this Basic Computer Troubleshooting Guide useful to you? If you have any queries or problems that need us to troubleshoot for you, feel free to contact us.

It is cool to see hot babes running around, but it will be a disaster if you have a hot computer running on your desk. After investing all your pocket money on your ideal gaming computer, the last thing that you want to see is all your gaming hardware burning up in flames.

Overheating is the most common problem faced by gamers. A gaming computer running graphics intensive 3D games for 5-8 hours continuously can generate heat with temperature high enough to boil water. If no proper cooling is done to dissipate the heat, chances are that your gaming computer will get damages beyond repair very soon.

First line of defence – Cool Your CPU

With the enormous amount of calcuation that it has to do every microsecond, it is no surprise that the CPU is the most likely candidate to get overheated. In fact, it is also the computer part that generated the most heat.

A CPU heatsink with fan

The way to cool your CPU is to use a heatsink. The heatsink is a big solid piece of metal that is attached to the surface of the CPU (see left diagram). It has large parallel fins lining on its surface to conduct heat away from the CPU. Heatsink is usually made of aluminium material due to its high thermal conductivity and inexpensive price.

The heatsink is usually included in the package when you buy a boxed CPU. For OEM CPU, you have to get the heatsink separately. Conventionally, all the fins on the heatsink are lined in a single direction. The problem with this design is that air can only move through the fins in a single direction, creating a problem of air flow within the computer case. A newer design which has multiple threads running on the fins surface has greatly improved the efficiency of the heatsink.

Placing the heatsink

When placing the heatsink, it is important to seat it properly on the CPU. Any misplacement or gaps between the CPU and heatsink allow the CPU to be overheated. To further improve the thermal conductivity, some gamers insert a thin copper heat spreader between the CPU and the heatsink. Though it is not a ‘must-have’ component, it does help in dissipating the heat away.

Applying the thermal grease

Another important item is the thermal grease (some call it the thermal paste). Due to its high thermal conductivity and low resistance, thermal grease is essential to proper CPU cooling. It is a must to apply thermal grease on the surface of the CPU before seating the heatsink on it. Without the thermal grease, even the best heatsink will fail to work properly. For maximum efficiency, the thermal grease must be applied in a very thin and even film. Care must also be taken not to apply too much on the CPU as it can hinder the performance of the heatsink.

Function of the CPU cooling fan?

Heatsink can only transfer heat from the CPU to its metal fins. To dissipate the heat away from its metal surface, it needs a continuous stream of moving air to carry the heat away. This is where the CPU cooling fan comes into play. Attached to the top of the heatsink, the CPU cooling fan sucks the hot air out from the heatsink and blows a constant stream of cool air to the fins. Internally controlled by the motherboard, the fan can increase its speed when the CPU temperature gets too high.

Different type of CPU has different mounting configuration for its cooling fan. Therefore, when choosing a CPU cooling fan, ensure that it is compatible with the CPU in your computer.

Next >>