Windows Tools, Help & Guides

You probably have a hard drive in your home that’s one terabyte or more. If you open Computer (Windows Key + E), you’ll see your terabyte hard drive might only show a capacity of around 930 GB. Where did all those extra gigabytes go? Aren’t there a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte? If you have questions like these, this guide answers them.

Terabyte vs. Tebibyte

Hard drive manufacturers use the International System of Units (SI) convention to when listing hard drive capacity. Kilo-, mega-, giga-, and tera- are some of the prefixes used in accordance with the SI and are base-10 (decimal.) “Tera” means trillion so a terabyte is one trillion, 1,000,000,000,000, or 10²⁰ bytes.

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Over time, dust and dirt build up inside your laptop; thereby, restricting airflow, increasing heat, and putting a strain on your laptop’s fans. A hot laptop is not a happy laptop. In fact, most modern processors (CPUs) reduce their clock speed when temperatures get close to 80C (think of it as a “survival mode” for your CPU), which is generally accepted as the highest temperature you should let your CPU reach. The dirtier the airways in your laptop, the quicker your CPU’s temperature can jump to dangerous levels—especially when the airways are further restricted by a pillow, your jeans etc.

To help stop your laptop overheating, consider clearing the channels by which air is designed to flow through your hardware. This guide provides a few tips to help you keep your laptop’s airways free of dust and dirt.

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If you’re using an older computer or a computer that came without a dedicated graphics card (GPU – Graphics processing unit), you may have considered getting a more powerful GPU. An upgraded GPU will let you:

• Play games at higher resolution, detail, and frame rate
• Play HD video without stutter
• Use two or more monitors (helpful if you can only use one with your current setup)
• Speed up photo and video editing

In this guide, I’ll show you the basics of finding out what your upgrade options are and how to install a new graphics card.

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The computers I work on every day are cooled by an on-board water cooled heat exchanger—without water cooling (WC), they’d either run slowly (best case) or overheat and shut down (worst case.) Outside the enterprise, liquid cooling isn’t as necessary but, for around $100 US, you too can enjoy liquid cooling technology on your overclocked home rig. In this guide, we’ll cover the basics on liquid cooling  and explain why liquid cooling is superior to air cooling. We’ll then look into why you really don’t need liquid cooling for your home PC—but don’t let that stop you!

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Windows Forums member, Bert_H, asked the following question in our suggestion box:

[I'd like] an explanation on i3, i5, i7 Operating Systems, and how they compare with Core 2 and Quad Core CPUs.

Update: Manuel commented asking the following:

It seems core2 duo CPUs have not been included and where they belong.  Are core 2 duo CPUs comparable with i3s or even i5s?  thanks.

Scroll down or click here for the answer.

If you’re in the market to buy a PC and you’re looking for the best value for money, you’ve likely asked yourself: “what’s the difference between Dual and Quad Core and what about i3, i5, and i7?”

This guide offers a basic explanation of these five types of processors and will help you determine the best for your needs.

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If you are anything like me, every time you sit down at your PC you think of all the component upgrades you could invest in. The problem is that there simply isn’t enough cash in the world to do everything you’d like to (for most of us at least – good riddance to those of you that have that kind of cake). Using my own experience I’ve compiled a short list of the most cost-effective upgrades you can make to boost the joy you experience every time you use your PC. Read the rest of this entry »