Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

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You'll find the option to either uninstall or reinstall drivers in 'device manager'. Right click my computer, choose properties and you'll find device manager in there.
 
DIY builders, what are your favorite:

system fan makers/models,

CPU air coolers,

PSU makers




Also, what air-flow orientation do you use for the side-door fan (push or pull)?
 
Favorite fans: Scythe S-FLEX -- those things are whisper quiet and have damned good airflow.
CPU HS: Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 is the best, but Noctua has some good quiet ones.
PSU: Corsair is my favorite, but it is by far not the only company to make great PSU's. Pretty much any company that uses Seasonic as an OEM is bound to be good at the very least.

Side door fan should be push. If its pull, you pull air away from the GPU and the CPU HS, which chokes them and screws up cooling. Push brings in new cool air right on top of the GPU's or CPU HS which is great for cooling. I know that when I installed a fan on my case side for my Antec 1200, my GPU temp dropped around 10C on load, simply because now air did not have to go past a gauntlet of HDD's, power cables and etc to get to the GPU fan.
 
In. The CPU fan blows down into the heatsink (if there is a CPU fan. The air then runs through the PSU, which ought to be the only outlet.


Why do you say the PSU fan should be the only puller (i.e. out)? Most cases have extra rear fan slots, and I've only ever seen it recommended that they pull air out of the case.
 
Any rear fans should be pulling air out of the case. Even the most basic of cases have at least a single rear fan slot.
The rear fans will generally be pulling the hot air away from the CPU due to their position. This is why if you have a cpu cooler with a vertically mounted fan, you should position it so that it sucks air in from the front of the case, passes it through to the back where it gets sucked out.

PSU fans are generally going to push air out too and there is nothing you can do to change that config besides opening the PSU up and rewiring the fans. This is good, because the PSU then doesnt push hot air into its own environment.
 
Sorry what I meant was, why'd Indm say you should have the PSU push the air out, instead of say the PSU + the 2 rear fan slots pushing the air out. But I guess he was really trying to imply was that the side fan should be pushing air into the case, and only the rear of the case should be pulling air out.
 
Question: Why is it that every now and then when I go through my pictures I find one that is completly blank? The file opens and all but there is no more picture.
 
Sorry what I meant was, why'd Indm say you should have the PSU push the air out, instead of say the PSU + the 2 rear fan slots pushing the air out. But I guess he was really trying to imply was that the side fan should be pushing air into the case, and only the rear of the case should be pulling air out.
Yes, my bad. I agree with what you and Genocidicbunny are saying.

Although I do have a preference for using only the PSU fan as the outlet.
 
I might be thinking of only bottom mounted PSU's, but if you have it like that, only having the PSU as the outlet is a bad idea. First off, you have the air, already hot from the CPU go to the GPU. Whatever the GPU doesnt push out then goes to the PSU. In the end, you're artificially raising temps when you could have avoided so with a 10$ fan.

Whats worse is that for every intake fan, you *should* have one exhaust fan. Otherwise, you create pressure inside the case and mess up airflow. Hot air will move towards the cool air instead of towards the outlet. In the end, you end up with horribly inefficient airflow. Now, this is not true for a system with only one intake fan, especially front mounted. There, as long as the front fan has a higher CFM than the PSU fan, you should be fine ( The GPU will take whatever is left)

Still, im of the school of thought that, as long as fans are properly positioned, you can never have too many. In fact, next week, im going to be doing some modding to my old case to take 140mm fans, a pair of them, on top of the two 120mm mounts already present.
 
Whats worse is that for every intake fan, you *should* have one exhaust fan. Otherwise...
This is so right that I do not believe in having both inlet and exhaust fans at the same time unless you're trying to correct an airflow direction issue. I am not worried about the same air passing by all three of the major heat generating components overheating them because if any one of them is hot enough to affect the others, then I've done something wrong, and enough airflow past a component will keep it cool.
, you create pressure inside the case and mess up airflow. Hot air will move towards the cool air instead of towards the outlet. In the end, you end up with horribly inefficient airflow.
I agree with your assessment but I think it happens differently.

When you have one in fan and one out fan, the total flow is very similar to a single fan. The only difference is that any ordinary resistance is reduced but the fans are working fairly freely to begin with.

Say you have one out fan and two in fans of the same type. The two in fans would speed up the single out fan and the out fan would slow down the other two. The total airflow would be somewhere between that for a single fan and two fans. The extra wasted effort will pressurise the case and leak out somewhere. The computer would still see 1.5 fans worth of air flowing.
 
Should I switch my year-old Norton Internet Security for AVG? I'm not going to be able to buy new software, and I was wondering if that might be better than a Symantec product with outdated threat definitions. And if it is to be replaced, do I uninstall the Norton software too?
 
Should I switch my year-old Norton Internet Security for AVG? I'm not going to be able to buy new software, and I was wondering if that might be better than a Symantec product with outdated threat definitions. And if it is to be replaced, do I uninstall the Norton software too?
An out of date AV is worthless, so pick up a free one. You will need to uninstall Norton, although AVG should check for that as well.
 
Should I switch my year-old Norton Internet Security for AVG? I'm not going to be able to buy new software, and I was wondering if that might be better than a Symantec product with outdated threat definitions. And if it is to be replaced, do I uninstall the Norton software too?

AVG is not longer free. I'm trying Avira free now. Seems ok on short acquaintance.
 
A version of it is free.

Anyway, I was using Disk Cleanup and I was wondering whether it was safe to delete the Debug Dump Files. I'm using Windows Vista, if that helps.

Also, what are safe things to do on a computer while its hard drive is defragging?
 
Also, what are safe things to do on a computer while its hard drive is defragging?

Sleeping. Eating. Going for a walk. That sort of thing.

You *could* use the computer during a defrag, however it will run longer, and there's a chance that files won't be defragged.

I always start the defrag before going to bed.
 
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