Games PC CPUFilter: Is it worth upgrading from an Athlon64 3500+ Venice to a 4000+ San Diego? (plus a bonus question on 3GB RAM in XP and dual channel memory). [more inside]
posted on May 30, 2008 - 12 answers

How can I cool my computer down without replacing the broken fans? [more inside]
posted on Feb 2, 2008 - 24 answers

Why are CPUs not getting faster any more? This plot is some data I scraped from a few sources around the web. I know it's not exhaustive, but I'm looking to pick out long-term and general trends. It's clear to me that processor clock speed has plateau'ed around roughly 4 GHz. Why? [more inside]
posted on Dec 9, 2007 - 30 answers

Can you help my ACER L100 stop over-heating? (Please say yes, I'm trying to write my thesis!) [more inside]
posted on Sep 1, 2007 - 14 answers

Laptopfilter: I'm curious about how CPU usage, noise level, and being able to go to standby/hibernation and shut down properly are related. For a long time (over a year, I think) my HP laptop(running Windows XP) was at 100% CPU usage all the time, ran loudly, and wouldn't go to standby or hibernation or shut down all the way. There's a lot [more inside]
posted on Jan 31, 2007 - 11 answers

Shopping for a cheap used laptop: What are the minimum specs I should be looking for with respect to CPU, RAM, HD? I'm planning to use WinXP (maybe I'll settle for 2K), Open Office, and FireFox (including some AJAX-heavy web sites such as gmail, Google Docs, del.icio.us), with a wifi card. And not much else. I want to avoid "I'm always waiting for this stupid slow computer!" but not spend much more than the minimum needed to avoid that.
posted on Dec 18, 2006 - 24 answers

I'm going to swap the motherboard and CPU on my computer, please help me not screw it up! [more inside]
posted on May 29, 2006 - 17 answers

My computer is making a funny noise and overheating. Can you help me fix it? [more inside]
posted on Dec 29, 2005 - 17 answers

Owing to bad/absent ventilation design on the part of hold everything, I now have a drawer with an interior temperature pretty constantly in the 90 degree F (32 C) range. How should I best take advantage of this? [more inside]
posted on Jul 31, 2005 - 17 answers

[DeadComputerFilter] I just moved, and as is customary, my PC moved in a separate trip, re-boxed in its original container, and generally cared for better than even myself. Now, I plug it in, turn it on... well, almost. It just doesn't come on anymore. [more inside]
posted on Jul 9, 2005 - 6 answers

While in the middle of doing my taxes the other day, my monitor went to displaying a weird character over and over over the entire screen. The computer wouldn't respond at all, so I shut it off manually via the power switch on the back. Since then, whenever I've attempted to start it up, the fans come on, the hard drive clicks a couple times, as usual, and then nothing. The fans keep whirring but there's no beep, no usual startup process, and nothing ever gets displayed to the monitor. [more inside]
posted on Apr 16, 2005 - 3 answers