There are two ways to place an operating system on the new drive. One is to clone the data on your previous drive to the new one. The other is to start fresh and put a new installation of your operating system on the new dr

For those of us experiencing issues with dust or fan noise, fixing either of these issues doesn't require much effort or money at all. Using the two methods outlined in this article, adding a dust filter and lubricating a rattling fan, will improve long-term cooling, ease of maintenance and acoustic qualit

On the other hand, the StarTech filters require fastening via screws. Fortunately, they have a removable plastic top, which holds the filter. These, like the magnetic variety, attach externally to the case, which allows for quick removal and clean

One problem that you may face with a wooden case is noise; the resonance of wood (a key aspect of its use in the construction of musical instruments) can result in fans, disk drives and the PSU being louder than they might be in a standard case. Use of foam padding, strips of felt and other absorbing materials can counter this, howe

Once open, locate the drive bays. These are usually at the front of the case below the large optical drive bays. The bays themselves are usually just metal brackets with screw holes, though some more expensive cases will custom "tool-less" mounting system. If your case has such a system you may need to refer to it for mounting instructi

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

Once you’ve boot into your operating system from the solid state drive it’s time to install drivers. Most SSDs will come with drivers, and I do recommend installing them. They usually include drive management utilities that maximize the performance and Pcbuildinsight.Com reliability of the dr

Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB 1333Mhz DDR3 DIMM memory : This set of RAM was the best that I could find that were in line with the motherboard's specifications. Kingston is a good brand, and the attachments on both sides of each module of RAM helps dissipate heat. The price also wasn't

I hope that you enjoy your new solid state drive. You’ll no doubt notice that programs load much more quickly than before. Boot times will also be quicker. Because SSDs tend to have small storage capacities it’s a good idea to manage data so that only important files and programs are on new drive. See our SSD management guide for m

A few months back I showed you how to install a second SATA drive , appropriate if your computer was bought sometime in the last 5 years or so. We also taught you all about partitions and formatting drives, and to completely replace your old drive with a new one - but I skipped over the subject of physically installing IDE hard drives as I considered them to be too old to warrant a tutor

The hard disk is similar, but this time I chose " Master with Slave Present ". Then I connect the cable up, bearing in mind that the hard drive as the master should be connected to the centre of the cable, with the slave CD-ROM drive being added at the

IDE was a significant limiting factor in older PCs. Though modern machines will often include a single IDE connection for the sake of backwards compatibility, most machines from the IDE era of computing were equipped with two IDE sockets - each connection being referred to as an IDE "channel". On each channel, you could add up to 2 IDE devices - so that meant a maximum of 4 hard drives and/or CD-ROM dri

Now that you’ve cloned data to the SSD, or decided to do a fresh install, you need to make the SSD your boot drive. This can be done only by entering your computer’s BIOS. Reboot the computer and then press the BIOS hotkey at the first boot screen (this is usually Delete or F12). Your operating system will not boot and BIOS will appear inst

The difficult part is the jumper settings, which will vary according to your device. Basically, you're looking for something that mentions CS or Cable Select, as well as Master, and Slave. There will be a diagram somewhere. The digrams indicate which pins a jumper should connect. You should be able to remove a jumper with your finger nails, if not then use a pair of very small needle nose pliers and don't bend the p

On the motherboard end, the socket looks like this. On my fairly modern motherboard, the cable is actually colour coded so you know which end plugs where - but more than likely your old PC won't be, so you'll need to figure which end of the cable is longest and plug that into the board. There is a notch on one side of the connector to prevent you plugging it in the wrong way, so make sure you align t

There’s nothing else to note about installing drivers. They install like any other software. Just pop in the CD or run the executable and follow the installation wizard’s instructions. You may need to reboot after installation is compl