PC Maintenance Guide

PC Maintenance Guide

By Hadi Yanuar   21.19   Tidak ada komentar:

"Take good care of your PC, and it will take good care of you."

It's a nice sentiment, but reality is more like "Take good care of your PC, and it won't crash, lose your data, and cost you your job--probably." Follow these steps to stop PC problems before they stop you.

Your PC's two mortal enemies are heat and moisture. Excess heat accelerates the deterioration of the delicate circuits in your system. The most common causes of overheating are dust and dirt: Clogged vents and CPU cooling fans can keep heat-dissipating air from moving through the case, and even a thin coating of dust or dirt can raise the temperature of your machine's components.

Any grime, but especially the residue of cigarette smoke, can corrode exposed metal contacts. That's why it pays to keep your system clean, inside and out.

If your PC resides in a relatively clean, climate-controlled environment, an annual cleaning should be sufficient. But in most real-world locations, such as dusty offices or shop floors, your system may need a cleaning every few months.

All you need are lint-free wipes, a can of compressed air, a few drops of a mild cleaning solution such as Formula 409 or Simple Green in a bowl of water, and an antistatic wrist strap to protect your system when you clean inside the case.

Think Outside the Box

Before you get started cleaning, check around your PC for anything nearby that could raise its temperature (such as a heating duct or sunshine coming through a window). Also clear away anything that might fall on it or make it dirty, such as a bookcase or houseplants.

Always turn off and unplug the system before you clean any of its components. Never apply any liquid directly to a component. Spray or pour the liquid on a lint-free cloth, and wipe the PC with the cloth.

Clean the case: Wipe the case and clear its ventilation ports of any obstructions. Compressed air is great for this, but don't blow dust into the PC or its optical and floppy drives. Keep all cables firmly attached to their connectors on the case.

Maintain your mechanical mouse: When a nonoptical mouse gets dirty, the pointer moves erratically. Unscrew the ring on the bottom of the unit and remove the ball. Then scrape the accumulated gunk off the two plastic rollers that are set 90 degrees apart inside the ball's housing.

Keep a neat keyboard: Turn the keyboard upside down and shake it to clear the crumbs from between the keys. If that doesn't suffice, blast it (briefly) with compressed air. If your keys stick or your keyboard is really dirty, pry the keys off for easier cleaning. Computer shops have special tools for removing keys, but you can also pop them off by using two pencils with broken tips as jumbo tweezers--just be sure to use a soft touch.

Make your monitor sparkle: Wipe the monitor case and clear its vents of obstructions, without pushing dust into the unit. Clean the screen with a standard glass cleaner and a lint-free cloth. If your monitor has a degauss button (look for a small magnet icon), push it to clear magnetic interference. Many LCDs can be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol; check with your LCD manufacturer. Wipe your LCD lightly: The underlying glass is fragile.

Check your power protection: Reseat the cables plugged into your surge protector. Check the unit's warning indicator, if it has one. Surge protectors may power your PC even after being compromised by a voltage spike (making your system susceptible to a second spike). If your power protector doesn't have a warning indicator and your area suffers frequent power outages, replace it with one that has such an indicator and is UL 1449 certified.

Swipe your CD and DVD media: Gently wipe each disc with a moistened, soft cloth. Use a motion that starts at the center of the disc and then moves outward toward the edge. Never wipe a disc in a circular motion.

Inside the Box

Before cracking open the case, turn off the power and unplug your PC. Ground yourself before you touch anything inside to avoid destroying your circuitry with a static charge. If you don't have a grounding wrist strap, you can ground yourself by touching any of various household objects, such as a water pipe, a lamp, or another grounded electrical device. Be sure to unplug the power cord before you open the case.

Use antistatic wipes to remove dust from inside the case. Avoid touching any circuit-board surfaces. Pay close attention to the power-supply fan, as well as to the case and to CPU fans, if you have them. Spray these components with a blast of compressed air to loosen dust; but to remove the dust rather than rearrange it, you should use a small vacuum.

If your PC is more than four years old, or if the expansion cards plugged into its motherboard are exceptionally dirty, remove each card, clean its contacts with isopropyl alcohol, and reseat it. If your system is less than a couple years old, however, just make sure each card is firmly seated by pressing gently downward on its top edge while not touching its face. Likewise, check your power connectors, EIDE connectors, and other internal cables for a snug fit.

While you have the case open, familiarize yourself with the CMOS battery on the motherboard. For its location, check the motherboard manual. If your PC is more than four or five years old, the CMOS battery may need to be replaced. (A system clock that loses time is one indicator of a dying CMOS battery.)

Look for Trouble

Give your PC a periodic checkup with a good hardware diagnostic utility. Two excellent choices are Sandra Standard from SiSoftware and #1-TuffTest-Lite from #1-PC Diagnostics. Download the free version of Sandra (the full version of the application costs $35) or to download #1-TuffTest-Lite (the fully functional version is $10).

Sandra Standard:

CODE

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,4005,tk,ur,00.asp

#1-TuffTest-Lite:

CODE

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7725,tk,ur,00.asp

Adding and removing system components leaves orphaned entries in the Windows Registry. This can increase the time your PC takes to boot and can slow system performance. Many shareware utilities are designed to clean the Registry.

Windows stores files on a hard drive in rows of contiguous segments, but over time the disk fills and segments become scattered, so they take longer to access. To keep your drive shipshape, run Windows' Disk Defragmenter utility. Click Start, Programs (All Programs in XP), Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. If your drive is heavily fragmented, you could boost performance. Defragging may take hours, however. Disable your screen saver and other automatic programs beforehand to keep the defrag from restarting every few minutes.

Disk Defragmenter won't defragment the file on your hard drive that holds overflow data from system memory (also known as the swap file). Since the swap file is frequently accessed, defragmenting it can give your PC more pep. You can defragment your swap file by using a utility such as the SpeedDisk program included with Norton SystemWorks 2004, but there's a way to reset it in Windows.

In Windows XP, right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click Advanced, and then choose the Settings button under Performance. Click Advanced again and the Change button under Virtual Memory. Select another drive or partition, set your swap file size, and click OK.

If you have only one partition and no way to create a second one, and you have at least 256MB of RAM, disable the swap file rather than moving it: Select "No paging file" in the Virtual Memory settings. If you have trouble booting, start Windows in Safe Mode and re-enable this option.

Hard-Drive Checkup

Windows XP offers a rudimentary evaluation of your hard disk's health with its error-checking utility: Right-click the drive's icon in Windows Explorer and select Properties, Tools, Check Now. (Windows can fix errors and recover bad sectors automatically if you wish.) If the check discovers a few file errors, don't worry, but if it comes up with hundreds of errors, the drive could be in trouble.

To conduct a more thorough examination, download Panterasoft's free HDD Health utility, which monitors hard-drive performance and warns of impending disaster:

CODE

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22945,tk,ur,00.asp

The program works only with drives that support S.M.A.R.T technology, but nearly all drives released since 2000 are S.M.A.R.T.-compliant.

Many hardware and software designers humbly assume you want their program running on your PC all the time, so they tell Windows to load the application at startup (hence, the ever-growing string of icons in your system tray). These programs eat up system resources and make hardware conflicts and compatibility problems more likely. To prevent them from launching, just click Start, Run, type "msconfig" and press Enter. The programs listed under the Startup tab are set to start along with Windows. Uncheck the box at the left of each undesirable program to prevent it from starting automatically.

Four Tips for Longer PC Life

1. Keep your PC in a smoke-free environment. Tobacco smoke can damage delicate contacts and circuits.

2. Leave your PC running. Powering up from a cold state is one of the most stressful things you can do to your system's components. If you don't want to leave your PC running all the time, use Windows' Power Management settings to put your machine into hibernation rather than completely shutting down. In Windows XP, right-click the desktop and select Properties. Click the Screen Saver tab and select the Power button. Choose the Hibernate tab to ensure that hibernation is enabled, and then select a time beneath "System hibernates" under the Power Schemes tab. (Note that this option is not available on all PCs.) Computers running older versions of Windows may or may not provide similar power-management features. Look under the Power Management icon (Power Options in Windows 2000) in Control Panel to evaluate your machine's capabilities.

3. Don't leave your monitor running. The best way to extend your display's life is to shut it off when it's not in use.

4. Avoid jostling the PC. Whenever you move your system, even if it's just across the desktop, make sure the machine is shut down and unplugged.

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Overclocking Tutorial

Overclocking Tutorial

By Hadi Yanuar   21.15   Tidak ada komentar:

Overclocking takes on 3 forms:

First, is the casual overclocking, easy, and anyone can do it.

Second, is the right way to overclock, taking into account, everything.

Third, if you want serious power, your gonna need to be savy to what does what.

The casual overclocker gains about 5% increase, and really doesn't see any benefit from this, whilst it makes you feel good, no serious damage can be made, by upping the FSB a little, or changing your multiplier, only thing is, you want more.

The correct way to overclock, is to start looking at your system, check the motherboard specs, PSU, amount of harddrives, CD ROMS etc. (high end systems, including the lastest graphic cards will need serious power).

Lets take a base system like my old system setup:

AMD XP1700+ ( Thoroughbred JIUHB DLT3C )

Core Voltage = 1.50v

Maximum Die Temp = 90c

FSB = 266Mhz

(factory unlocked)

Jetway K266B KT266 chipset

DDR + SDR RAM (not together)

No onboard RAID

DDR RAM = Dane Elec PC2700 DDR (333Mhz)

Not registered

2 Hard drvies

1 CD Writer & 1 DVD ROM drive

2 LAN cards

1 PCI soundcard

(onboard sound turned off).

Now, lets look at what they can do:

The Thoroughbred is still the top processor for overclocking, Thunderbirds are just not upto it, even though they are capable of some really decent speeds, same as the Palamino, not to mention the Barton's (these are not what they have been made up to be).

(for the purpose of space, I'll not go into unlocking your CPU)

As you can see, my Thoroughbred has a core voltage of 1.5v, and as my motherboard is capable of giving my processor anything upto 1.85v, there is score for more there.

The FSB on my motherboard is capable of a max of 200Mhz (this is the magic number).

Die temps to a max of 90c is good (never been near it, yet!).

Now, to work out your Mhz on your system, or to check your multiplier or FSB, there is a little calculation you'll need to remember, and it's easy:

Your Mhz is worked out by your multiplier timed your FSB.

example:

CODE

133x10 = 1.33Ghz

Of course you can devide your Mhz with your known FSB to give you your multiplier etc.

Now for easy, I have the results of my previous unlocking tests handy, so I'll use them, and not the current speeds etc.

Standard Multiplier = 11.0

Overclocked Multiplier = 12.0

Standard Voltage = 1.50v

Overclocked Voltage = 1.52v

Standard FSB = 133Mhz

Overclocked FSB = 136Mhz

Standard Speed = 1467Mhz

Overclocked Speed = 1630Mhz

Standard Temps = CPU = 37c SYSTEM = 32c (idle) CPU = 44c SYSTEM = 36c (under load)

Overclocked Temps = CPU = 34c SYSTEM = 29c (idle) CPU 40c SYSTEM 34c (under load)

As you can see, the system is cooler when overclocked, this is due to having the correct cooling setup, and temps for it when it was standard, was standard cooling setup.

Basically, all I have done, is raised the FSB by 3mhz, the voltage by 0.02v and the multiplier by 1.0, this has given me a 163Mhz increase without over strssing my system, but, here is where it gets teadious:

To achieve this, it took me about a week, and this is how I did it:

I started by lowering the multiplier to 5.0, from there I raised the FSB to its max (at the time, have latest BIOS update for mobo, allowing 200Mhz FSB), 166Mhz, this is the correct way of overclocking.

From there, I started to raise the multiplier one by one, getting it back upto the standard multiplier or higher, checking the stability of the system each time.

(currently I am way passed the 136Mhz FSB, as I am running PC2700 DDR).

One thing to look at though, overclocking using the FSB WILL (unless your system allows you to specify it) mess with your PCI & RAM speeds.

Even raising it by 3Mhz can make your PCI cards to not work, and your RAM to get confused and crash your system.

Now your thinking to yourself 'I can do that' and yes you can, anyone can, but.......

It takes TIME, I can't stress that enough, if your going to try this, then you'll need to run your system for at least 6 hours between changing your multiplier, and as you can imagine, this can take a long time to do.

For your information, I used Hot CPU Tester, SETI & played Vietcong for testing purposes.

Now, for the hard part:

As most experienced overclockers will tell you, heat is your enemy, killing heat is your number 1 aim, don't worry about your speed at first, a 50Mhz increasde isn't gonna make your 3D Mark scream through the roof, actually, you'll probably not even get any better than what you did before.

There are several ways of dispersing heat, and they are:

Aircooling

Pro's: Cheap, effective at lower speeds.

Con's: Noisey, dust collectors, need maintanance.

Watercooling:

Pro's: Can lower your CPU by about 10c easily.

Con's: It has water in it, expensive, hard for some to understand.

Pelter:

Pro's: With watercooling, it's the daddy

Con's: ONLY EXPERIENCED PEOPLE NEED TO APPLY, very complicated, power hungry, NOT for the faint hearted. Stupidly expensive.

Aircooling:

Upgrading your CPU fan is the first step, there are several companies that offer aftermarket fans, which are better than the OEM fans are 2 a penny in todays world, but it's NOT just about your CPU fan, your system needs to breath, you need to get rid of 'hot spots' within your system.

Watercooling:

Its easier than most make out, its a good thing, kit prices can be got from about £120 ($200 US), just make sure they are upgradable, as you might want to add, a Northbridge water block & a GPU water block.

Modern day kits & parts are idiot proof, and will not leak, unless you act like Noah.

Pelter:

Pelter cooling is DANGEROUS, minly for your system, fitting it incorrectly, and you could end up with not only a baked CPU but a system that will end up as a very expensive paperweight.

Ask your local overclocking expert for more info.

Basically, if you can get hold of a decent Thoroughbred cored XP, your in luck (just like me), if its unlocked, then your in business, obviously, its not just down to your CPU, your motherboard and RAM will denote whether you can overclock big style or not.

I'd advise ANYONE thinking of overclocking, to research into it more, weigh up the odds on what they want or need, if your on a buget, DON'T attempt it, things can and do go wrong.

Most of the time, its not about 'mines faster than yours' or massive speed increases, its done by most, cause it can be. 90% of the time, you'd be better off buying a new CPU (as prices are so low), but if you get the urge, then a new world awaits you

great tutorial. this should help the OC noobs. If I can add something like you said know your specs of the mobo....and if you are serious about OC'ing dont go and get some generic NO-NAME ram and some ghetto mobo. to get the best stability go with ASUS and ABIT for the mobo and Crucial, Kingston, mushkin for the ram. A great forum for OC'ing is amdmb.com.

Indeed, if you are serious about your overclocking, its advised you only use serious brand names.

Generic parts are always a lower spec, and can easily destroy themselves with even a little stress aimed towards them.

Memory advice, use the folloing:

Kingston (added because of reviews, personally, I'm not sure about them).

Crucial (for Dual Channel DDR ONLY)

OCZ

Mushkin

Corsair

PNY (for EEC rated)

Samsung

Geil (my choice, when I can afford it)

Motherbord advice, use the following:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2

Asus A7N8X-VM nForce2

Asus A7N8X-X nForce2

Abit KD7-S KT400

Abit KV7 KT600

Abit NF7 v2.0 nForce2

Abit NF7-S v2.0 nForce2

MSI K7N2 Delta-L Nforce2

MSI KT6 Delta-LSR KT600

Epox 8RDA+ nForce2

Epox 8RGA+ nForce2

Any nForce2 motherboard would be best, they allow more score for overclocking your system.

_________________

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