Another way to speed up Steam is to play over a VPN. The thinking behind this is straightforward: ISPs throttle traffic, but managing encrypted traffic is a different matter. If your Steam download speed is slow, connecting a via a VPN is a smart option. It can even enhance speeds with online gaming and provide access to game servers you wouldn't normally re

Keeping the fan in place is before the screws are installed is a common difficulty. Expensive cases usually have brackets that can hold a fan even without screws, but budget cases do not, Pcbuildinsight.Com making installation a chore. My recommendation is to use a few pieces of masking tape or duct tape to temporarily hold the fan is pl

Always check how a new piece of hardware will connect to your motherboard. The most common connections are SATA (for hard drives and optical drives) and PCI Express (for video cards, sound cards and network adapters), but there are oth

Though you can get by with both of them, it’ll prove better to take a card with a DVI connector. Apart from DVI’s better image, a lot of the newer screens are already stopping the VGA support, and chances are that you’ll be stuck with a ton of convertor cables. If you’re not tight on money, you can also pick cards with additional S-Video or HDMI connect

Once you’ve accounted for these four points you can safely purchase a hardware upgrade. Yes, I know – checking all of this can be a bit annoying and will take some extra time. But it does reduce the chance that you’ll buy incompatible hardware. It will also make you more familiar with your system and with computers in general, which means you’ll have less homework to do the next time you want to upgr

For the CD-ROM, the diagram indicates that 2 is Slave setting. What does this mean? Well, looking at the back of the device, we have 3 pairs of pins. So, to make it a slave device, I place a jumper over the central (second) p

After all, a massive amount of data is handled by Steams servers---usually the service is up to the task. Just check this live graph of Steam's bandwidth over the past 48 hours . You can drill down through the data to select regions, and even see which ISP provides the biggest bandwi

Before installing you’ll need to know if your desktop has 2.5" drive bay inside it. This can be hard to determine if no solid state drive is already installed. It will simple be a small, think bracket 2.5 inches in width. Don’t be surprised if there isn’t one. Even new desktops often lack this feat

Now you may be wondering – what is the difference between three and four-pin connections? It’s all about a feature called Pulse Width Modulation. With this feature, which is enabled through the fourth pin, a computer can control the speed of a fan connected to its motherboard. Having this is nice because the fan can automatically adjust its speed based on internal temperatures or user pres

All you need to complete installation is power. The fan will come with a three or four-pin female connector like that shown in the picture above. This needs to be plugged into a three or four-pin male adapter located either on the motherboard or power supply. The connector on a motherboard looks like

While upgrading a mechanical hard disk drive (HDDs) to a faster model (say 5400rpm to 7200rpm) might help, switching to an SSD is a better option. Solid-state drives are based on the same technology as USB thumb drives; as such they're far fas

The L1 cache holds the most frequently accessed data, followed respectively by L2 and L3. The CPU always searches the L1 cache first, before going on to the other(s). To create the most time-efficient searches, each deposit is distinctively smaller than the next. Larger caches means more data storage, but also means your CPU will spend a longer time strolling around before it can ‘get on with it

Also make sure that you have the fan mounted so it blows in the proper direction. The fan should have a printed or molded arrow that shows the direction air flows. Fans can be installed as either an intake (air blowing in) or exhaust (air blowing out). There may also be an arrow that shows the direction of s

Slide the SSD into its bracket, lining up the screw holes in the SSD or the 3.5" adapter with the holes in the drive bay. Make sure to install the drive so that its SATA power and data connectors are facing the motherbo

Computers have changed a lot over the last decade, but one thing remains the same – the need for cooling. Efficiency has pushed temperatures down but hasn’t eliminated heat as an issue. That’s particularly true for high-end workstations and gaming

Some of the power connections in desktops have remained the same over time, but some haven’t. The most recent examples of new connections are SATA and PCI Express. If you own a computer that is more than five years old it may not support them, and that means you won’t be able to use a SATA hard drive or a PCI Express video card without an adapter. Always makes sure that your power supply has the connectors required to accept any new hardware you might purch