My new computer freezes or reboots when I'm pushing it (e.g. encoding video). Can you help me figure out which part is bad before I start having to ship things back to newegg and pay restocking fees? [more inside]
posted by chndrcks on Sep 30, 2009 - 19 answers

I bought a new motherboard and a new video card, and now my computer beeps and won't boot to Windows. Which one is to blame? [more inside]
posted by Who_Am_I on Jun 6, 2008 - 14 answers

Is it worthwhile to upgrade the RAM on a six-year-old iBook? [more inside]
posted by donpedro on Aug 9, 2007 - 16 answers

BSODFilter: I tried to install a RAM upgrade in my girlfriend's Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, and got nothing on screen after powerup. So I replaced the old DIMM, and got the BSOD -- the file that was missing was a driver for the Intel video adapter. Long story short, it's still not working. [more inside]
posted by YoungAmerican on Aug 2, 2007 - 10 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 by Leonard of Vince on Dec 18, 2006 - 24 answers

I'd like to upgrade my 4 year old Dell Dimension 8200 computer, while hopefully getting components that I could use later, should I decide to build a whole new system in a few months. Sadly, I know nearly nothing about computer hardware. [more inside]
posted by Elpoca on Jan 5, 2006 - 23 answers

Can I use my G4 iMac (the one that has a round base and a swivelly flat monitor) as a monitor/second hard drive for a new mac mini? [more inside]
posted by AgentRocket on Dec 10, 2005 - 10 answers

I've just purchased 4 sticks of PNY 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz RAM (2GB). Where can I find a Dell server that will accept this RAM? I don't mind used computers and I'd like to keep it under $500. Finding which RAM to put in a given machine is easy. But I'm struggling with finding all the machines that will accept my RAM. I prefer Dell but some other server with nice case design (tool-less entry, etc) would be considered. Pentium or AMD please.
posted by phildog on Oct 28, 2005 - 12 answers

Help me upgrade my work computer to make it run better. [more inside]
posted by ikkyu2 on Oct 25, 2005 - 31 answers

I'm thinking about buying a new iMac G5, and I'd like to bump the RAM up to 1GB from the standard 512MB. The Apple customization menu gives you the option of getting 1GB in two DIMMs or one; the latter is $50 more expensive. Is there any performance benefit in having all the RAM in one place, or is it just a question of keeping a slot open?
posted by logovisual on Jul 13, 2005 - 14 answers

Processor speed, RAM, hard drive speed-- Where's the best bang for the buck? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by trharlan on Feb 4, 2004 - 13 answers