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Having correct airflow through your PC case is critical to your system running properly. Heat buildup in a computer case can cause lockups, slowdowns and even shutdowns. You should carefully consider the direction of the air when building a PC or when modifying an existing computer. Which way should the case fans blow? The CPU fan attached to the heat sink should blow down onto the heat sink and processor. Fresh air can be pulled in this way, but you will want additional fans installed to help bring cooler air into the case. An 80mm case fan installed in the front of the computer pulling air in will help the processor run cooler. You may also want to add an additional fan at the rear of the PC that blows the air out of the back. This additional fan in the rear may not be necessary if the power supply has an intake fan inside the case that can pull that warm air out. Improving airflow in the case You can greatly increase the airflow through your PC by swapping out the standard, flat IDE cables with the rounded type. Because the rounded cables take up less space, air can easily move through the case without being trapped inside. Depending on your setup, you can also rearrange the power cables so that extra wires can be coiled and tucked away near the top. Balancing PC airflow Another thing to consider when adding fans is the effect it will have on the interior of the case. If you have a lot of fans pulling air in and not enough moving air out, the interior of the PC will become filled with hair, dust and other debris. You should also not hear one fan working harder that the others. This means the airflow is not balanced properly. For instance, if the rear case fan makes a whirring sound every few seconds, this could indicate there is too much air trying to escape and it cannot keep up. Whatever you do to improve airflow, you should open the case after a week to make sure everything is clean. You can also download monitoring tools to test the case and CPU temperatures before and after to make sure air is circulating properly and keeping the CPU cool.

There are several ways to erase the contents of a hard drive. But the technique you use will depend on what you want to use the hard drive for afterwards. For instance, if you just plan on reinstalling Windows, it isn’t necessary to do a Department of Defense level shredding of your data Erase your hard drive for reinstalling Windows In newer versions of Windows, you can simply boot to the Windows CD and during the setup process, tell Windows to delete the current partition and install on the new partition. This will wipe out what you already had and replace it with a fresh, shiny Windows installation. Brand name computers--such as Dell, HP, Compaq and Sony—will ship with a recovery disk. You can use that recovery disk in place of a Windows CD to format and reinstall automatically. Erase you hard drive and sell it on Ebay If you plan on selling the computer or hard drive on Ebay or even at a yard sale, you must use a shredding utility that will thoroughly erase the data on the hard drive. Actually, these programs write 1s and 0s over every sector of the hard drive several times so the data that had been there is most certainly gone forever. You can then reinstall Windows, if you wish. The problem with the first method is that even though the drive has been formatted, there are tools available that can recover the data that had been erased. Using a program like Darik’s Boot and Nuke (or DBaN) will make that data unrecoverable. Discarding a dead hard drive If your computer has failed and the hard drive is no good, you must destroy the hard drive before tossing it in the trash. Sophisticated tools can be used to recover the data on hard drives that no longer work. If you plan on recycling the computer or putting it in the landfill (shame on you), you have to remove the drive and carefully destroy it by whatever means necessary. You can remove the platters by opening the hard drive shell. Whether you plan on drilling holes in it, smashing it with a hammer or driving over it with your car, be sure to wear protective goggles and gloves. So there are different reasons for erasing your hard drive and different methods based on those reasons. You can find hard drive utilities on our Software Downloads section or contact us on our forums for more advice on how to handle data on your hard drive.

Hi, I am looking at overclcking my computer BUT don't know how to do it System Specs: -WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE SP1(32Bit) -AMD ATHLON 64 3200+ (2.00 GHz) -512MB OF DDR2 RAM -ATI RADEON 9550SE I would like to overclock with what i have (quite short budget). I am aware of the risks in it. any help with processor, RAM, GC overclocking would be VERY helpfull.

Hmm... I tried it, but when I try to open the proxy, it says that the page could not be found. Does anybody have the same problem? Should I try different browser?