Let’s talk about a case first which is your personal computer’s tower. You should look for one that has enough room for all your components you wish to buy, and one that has technical specifications to support your own set of components. If you are buying a server case, point out what you need because they have different requirements. Make sure that your case has enough places where you can place coolers. It is advised to have at least 4 good working coolers.

Next thing should be the motherboard which should be able to support all components that you wish to put into your personal computer. The processor or CPU should be strong. Something like a dual-core or quad-core if you are going to play games or do some modeling, rendering or designing on your personal computer. In other cases you don’t need such a strong processor.

The next component is the memory, you will need from 1 to 8 gb’s of RAM memory. If you are just using your computer for internet browsing, typing or some minor work, like watching movies or downloading files, 1 gb should be enough. In order to play games and design however, you will need more than that to work properly without any problems.

One other important component is the hard drive. It doesn’t matter what configuration you need and for what exactly, hard drives are used to store data, and it’s your choice which one you buy.

If you have bought stronger components, you should have in mind that they can overheat and stop working or even make other devices stop working if you don’t have a good cooling system. You should have coolers on your CPU, Graphic Card, Power Supply and even a few in your computer case if you have a really strong configuration because it can easily overheat.

The next component you need is a power supply. For configurations that are strong, some strong power supplies are advised to be used. For example; you can buy a 300-450W power supply if your configuration is for web browsing or for office work, 450-800 W is advised for gaming computers and 800-1400W power supplies are being used for designing, modeling, rendering, etc.

You will also want to have a monitor. Monitors come in different shapes and specifications. The size varies from 15 inch monitors to 22 inch monitors. Today, 19 inch is pretty much the standard. You can choose between crt, tft, lcd monitors. Today, flat monitors are commonly used everywhere. TFT and LCD monitors take less space than CRT ones.

You also must buy other components needed to use your computer like a keyboard, a mouse, speakers, etc. There is also a big number of gadgets you can buy for your computer like microphones, headsets, webcams and other handy gadgets.

If you are not that familiar with hardware for a computer it is nice to get the help of a specialist when you look for a computer. This can prevent you from buying the wrong components and making a wrong setup in your computer.

The power supply is one of the most important components in your personal computer tower, if not the most important. It supplies power to other components in your computer.

Power supplies usually look like metal boxes and their place in computer is at the back of personal computer’s tower.

There are many variations of power supplies. There are stronger ones which are usually used for computers with components that need much power, and there are ones that are not so strong for some older machines. Supplies now go from 300-1400 W. Stronger gaming machines usually require around 500 W, and machines that are used for rendering or modeling/animating in 3D environment programs should use 800-1400 power supplies.

Power supplies can fail to turn on. Your system could randomly reboot itself if your power supply is lacking. When a strong electrical surge hits the power supply it can even destroy the other components in your personal computer.

To see if your power supply is not working you can use the power supply tester, you can buy it because it is really cheap and a good thing to have.  You can also open the personal computer’s case to see if there is any physical damage, you can also check cables and connectors because your power supply should be connected to everything inside the computer’s tower. Power supplies are always better when they are stronger than 400 W, it is recommended to have at least 450 W if you use your personal computer for gaming, internet browsing and/or working on some minor things. There are machines that need really strong power supplies like server machines for example and other strong machines that need a lot of coolers to work normally because their sole components need much power and strong coolers waste a lot of energy as well.

You should be careful when you choose your power supply, because there are a lot of companies that create them and some are of a higher quality than others. You should also pay attention on how strong your personal computer is and what kind of power supply it needs. If you alone don’t know what power supply you need, you should take advice from someone that knows, or you could speak with people you are buying your power supply from. It is really risky to take a power supply that is not strong enough. It could even work normally for some time, but then create serious damage to your components at some point.

Power supplies are really sensitive hardware and you should really keep an eye on the dust and smoke, because it could easily gather on the cooler of the power supply and make it stop working, or slower the speed of its fan. That could cause your power supply to overheat and it could make some serious damage to your personal computer. So if you are experienced with computers you could open the power supplies’ case and clean the fan of the cooler. You could use a vacuum cleaner and try to clean the dust in the case of the power supply.

The Green Bug
-I’m The Vaccine To Your Machine!

Overheating is a constant problem with computers. There are a lot of people that think that their system is down because of some computer virus or some dangerous software but it is overheating that is usually the problem. The symptoms of overheating can be shutting down of the computer, computer restarting on its own, etc.

There are a few problems that can cause overheating. One of the coolers may not work and it causes the temperature to go high.

The computer can have up to three coolers, the power supply cooler, graphic card cooler and central processing unit or CPU.  You can easily check if the power supply cooler is working, just look in the upper computer tower part located at the back of the tower and see if the fans are spinning. Other two coolers are located in the computer tower itself and you can check if those are spinning. If one of those is not spinning you might need to replace that part of the computer or repair it.

Dust can be a problem too. It is gathered on coolers and it may slow them down so they can’t cool the system enough to work properly. You can clean your coolers from time to time to prevent this from happening.

One other problem is smoke. If a computer is exposed to cigarette smoke, overheating can be a problem again. It’s because cigarette smoke has tar in it, and tar gathers around coolers making them work slower so they again can’t cool the system enough. When the temperature inside the computer rises above a normal and safe temperature, the computer will shut down as a precaution. In your BIOS you can choose at what temperature your system will shut down and you can choose to activate a temperature warning sound too.

A computer can have cd burner fans, PCI slot fans and hard disk fans too. These are just a bonus and these kinds of hardware have them implemented sometimes.

When one of your fans is not working properly, your computer tower may be a bit noisy. That’s because dust or tar gathered on some of the coolers and it’s making them noisier. You should clean it on time because that cooler may get even more dust or tar on it, and it can stop working.

There are many types of coolers and their strength varies. If your personal computer has some strong components like for example a great graphic card, it can easily overheat, so you need a good cooling system. One other thing to watch for is the power supply. When you have good and strong coolers, you must have a high voltage power supply to support these coolers and the other components.

Computer Repairs Perth and Perth Computer Repairs are proudly brought to you by

The Green Bug
-I’m The Vaccine To Your Machine!