2PhatGeeks.com

I wasn’t always a customer service manager.

In a former life I worked for–and at one point, owned–a small, honest, computer repair business; working on everything from large office networks to private home computers. Unfortunately, as usually happens with any good business, the market became crowded and turned into the abusive used car lot that is computer business today. I bowed out as gracefully as I could before losing my shirt.

In that time, I learned quite a bit about the best ways to build computers and keep them running. I’ve managed to turn this knowledge into a few bucks here and there and build and maintain my own tidy little home network, including two gaming grade machines, with a minimum of time and effort and without spending every dime I own to do so.

Here’s the thing, though: About 90% of the money I make and the tricks I use are basically the sort of thing that anyone can do. No, seriously. Anyone.

So, rather than horde this knowledge to myself and dish it out to our internet friends and readers through rushed IMs typed by my better half, I’ve decided to put together a little guide to making and keeping your computer running as quickly as it can. There are billions of guides available on the internet for people that are technically minded, but this guide is not for them. This guide is for you, semi-normal people.

In order to keep your brain from exploding, I’m going to split this up into three installments. Each installment will cover one of the three key components of any good system, the is the Holy Trinity of Computery goodness: Hardware, Software and The User (That’s you, if you hadn’t guessed).

So, let’s get on with it shall we? Shawn’s easy computer tips to save you time and money:

Part I - Hardware

Hardware is and always will be your starting point for getting the most out of your computer. First and most importantly: This is not going to be a buying guide. This is a discussion on the basic requirement any good computer set-up needs to maximize speed while minimizing cost. The average person does not have unlimited funds to dump into what is essentially entertainment. You need the most bang for your buck and the best life for your investment.

Components

Whether you buy or build, there are going to be a few basic components that will be at the heart of the system’s performance. Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and GPU are most important. While the Hard Drive and Power Supply certainly play a role, it’s a bit less critical in mid-range systems.

Motherboard - While minimally important in it’s own right when it comes to it’s effects on the performance of the mid-range Computer, it will determine what sort of components you’ll be getting. Make sure any CPU, RAM and video card you get will function on the motherboard you choose. Find out the maximum of each of these your motherboard can support and make note of it when you go out looking for these parts. Make sure the motherboard has 4 RAM slots on it, to leave us room to grow.

CPU - This isn’t just the brain, it’s also the muscle. The better this component, the better your PC. I won’t dive into Intel vs AMD; both make great CPUs. Just make sure it matches up with your motherboard selection. However, the newer CPUs can be insanely expensive. Sometimes the CPU alone, if you buy bleeding edge, can be well over $1000. This is not our CPU. Our CPU was $1000 about a year ago. It’s about $250-$350 now. All the games that are being released over the next couple years will have been designed with this processor in mind. Get the best one you can find in this price range. Chances are this won’t be the max your motherboard can support, which will give you an easy upgrade in a year.

RAM -  If the CPU is the brain and muscle, the RAM is the heart and circulatory system. About 95% of the system instability I see are caused by either bad, insufficient or improperly addressed RAM. I’ve seen otherwise great systems crippled by a shortage of RAM and numerous crashes caused by low quality or mismatched RAM. Is more RAM better? Yes, to a point. Any 32 bit Windows can’t access more than 3GB and while I like accessing 4GB of RAM with Vista 64, the truth of the matter is that it’s really not a necessity at this point in time. Plan on buying 2 Gig of the best RAM you can afford and your motherboard can support. Don’t worry if you’re not buying the fastest RAM your motherboard can support. It just makes it easier to upgrade later when the prices drop.

Video Card/GPU – The right Video card for our computer is not the top of the line. Top of the line GPUs make CPUs look cheap. For the sake of discussion, we’ll assume we want our computer to play games, otherwise any onboard video would be good enough for you. So, what we need is a video card that will play games and make them look as pretty as possible without breaking the bank. Not surprisingly the same rule that works for CPUs work for GPUs. Buy the bad boy from a year ago, maybe a year and a half. It’ll likely be about as much as your CPU, if not a bit more. The nice thing about Video cards is that while the GPUs change all the time, the slot on the motherboard that they fit into doesn’t, so we’ll likely have room to grow here, too.

Hard Drive – There have likely been actual wars fought over the proper hard drive set up, and if money were no option, we would grab a super fast 15,000 RPM hard drive just for the OS and install our data and apps on a 4 Disk RAID of 1 Terabyte Drives in 1+0. However, money is actually an object for most of us, so the rule here is, buy a decently reviewed large drive and make one large partition. At the moment, the good $-to-GB ratio is in the 7200 RPM drives, so grab a 300-500GB drive for around $60-$100 and make sure it (and your motherboard) support SATA.

Power Supply – One basic rule: Don’t go cheap here! Cheap Power supplies burn out and take your PC with it. Figure on replacing the cheap, no-name one your case came with. Try to get efficient/green PSUs if you can afford it. Not because I care, but because your power bill will thank you. 200 Watts is a little more than enough to run a Hard drive, DVD, a newish  CPU, 2 GB of RAM and onboard Video/Sound. 100 Watts is not. The more you have, the more power it takes to run it. For most mid-range computers, including ours, 400-500 Watts is more than enough.

One final note on all of this: Don’t try to use old hardware you have laying around. The only acceptable piece of hardware that can basically be passed down for more than a couple years is your floppy drive. The same thing goes for spending good money on most of your parts and the cheap out on one part. Our basic goal in all this is to keep our system from bottlenecking, or slowing down because of one cheap component. You can’t buy a great CPU and 512MB of cheap slow RAM. You also can’t load up your computer with tons of hardware and USB devices and try to run it on some cheap 100W power supply.

Now, it is not enough to simply buy all this and put it together (or have it built) and just leave it the hell alone. Just like your car, the insides of your computer need to be taken care of in order to work properly.

Maintenance

Much like a car engine, the number one enemy of computer hardware is heat. Inside a case, this heat is normally dissipated with fans moving air through the case and over little fins of metal called heat sinks. In addition to cooling air, these fans drag dust and cat hair and smoke, and everything else through your system where it promptly gets stuck on these blades and heat sinks. This makes the temperatures rise which shortens the life of your expensive hardware and makes it more likely to break down.

Obviously, this just won’t do. You will have to clean out the fans, heat sinks and the intake and outflow grills in your computer case to keep the cool air flowing. Depending on how dusty your house is, you should be cleaning your computer out anywhere from every 3 to 6 months almost exactly like your car’s oil change. Usually a couple of cans of compressed air and a little patience will get the dust off of most of your computer. If you smoke (much like we both used to) you will likely need to do a more thorough cleaning and more often.

Cleaning your computer is vitally important. I have had computers brought to me with costly repairs that were basically the result of damage done by improper or impeded airflow. Keep the system clean and save yourself some dough.

So ends the first part of our little adventure. You’re now ready to run off and spend hard-earned money at my favorite store, Newegg. Next post we’ll tackle the software part of the puzzle and show you how to put all your new found hardware to use.

You may also like:

• Shawn’s Adventures with the Shuttle K45
• Time & Money Saved. Shawn’s Easy Computer Tips, Part II
• Time & Money Saved. Shawn’s Easy Computer Tips: Part III