Newly released games are requiring more and more powerful graphics cards every day and installing a new card can make your gameplay much smoother and faster. Finding the cheapest and best performing card might be a problem, but physically installing them definatly shouldn’t.

Today we’re going to be installing a nvidia 8500GT PCI-E, this is a relatively old card that I had lying around but still handles games such as Call Of Duty Modern Warfare quite well on medium settings. Please excuse the dust gathered in the heatsink, for a quick guide on unclogging heatsinks I highly recommend our guide on How To Clean Your PC.

After removing the side panel of my PC, you can now see my Foxconn motherboard. The PCI-E slot where the new graphics card will be housed is the longest yellow slot. PCI-E slots are typically yellow or white and will almost always look the same shape as the one pictured below. The black and yellow cable running over the slot is a 4 pin connector supplying power to my CPU, it gets in the way a bit, but until I purchase a new power supply it is going to have to stay put.

You can roughly see 4 screws on the left hand side of the picture, these keep the card slot covers in place which purely act as a barrier between the innards of your PC and the outside world. You may have noticed that I have already removed the top slot opposite the PCI-E connector in order to make room for the new graphics card, you should do the same.

Now you will need to physically insert the new graphics card into the yellow PCI-E slot. All that’s needed is common sense to figure out which way it fits. When inserting the card, keep an eye out for the metal slot on the left hand side (where the ports are) to make sure it is correctly aligned, the same applies for the connecting pins which fit into the yellow slot on the motherboard. Also, try not to be too forceful if it doesn’t slot in straight away as you might damage the connecting pins. When it is properly inserted you should hear a click, letting you know that is secured. However, the card will still wobble about, and this is where you need to screw the card to the case.

On the top left of the picture below you can see that I have screwed the graphics card to the case using a thumbscrew. I highly recommend these for almost every part of your PC which requires a screw as they are so quick and easy to use. Now your card is firmly secured, make sure there are no wires in contact, or close to the heatsink on the card, as this can cause the wire to melt or for the heatsinks to stop functioning properly (thus causing dangerous overheating problems).

Your new graphics card is now successfully installed! All that is needed now is to refit your cases side panel and to connect the graphics card to your monitor. Here’s what my graphics card looks like from the rear of the case:

As you can see, this card has HDMI (pink), VGA (blue) and TV-Out (black) ports. Make sure you connect the PC to your monitor using one of these ports, NOT your onboard adaptors that you have used previously as this will not work. This is because the new graphics card automatically overrides onboard ports.

Now, boot up your PC and enjoy your newly enhanced graphics!

In this review we’re going to be looking at a couple of desktops from both brands to see who offers more for your money. We’re also going to be taking a peak into their customer support so you know who’s really got your back when problems occur. I scavenged around both company websites for the best desktop under £400 and here’s the results:

Dell Inspiron 545: £359.01

• Processor: Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor E5300 2.6GHz,
• Operating System: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit,
• RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz [2x1024]
• HDD: 500GB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
• Graphics: Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100
• Other: Dell IN1910N 18.5″ HD Widescreen Monitor – UK/Irish + Standard Warranty1 year of coverage included with your PC

HP Pavilion P6105: £339

• Processor: Intel® Pentium® processor E5200 2.5ghz
• Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium 32-bit
• RAM: 3 GB DDR2-SDRAM
• HDD: 640 GB
• Graphics: Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator 3100 Integrated Graphics
• Other: 1 year, pick-up and return, parts and labour + 15in1 memory card reader

Remembering that the Dell model is £20 more expensive than the HP, at first glance Dell have clearly won in more categories. You say Dells CPU runs 0.1ghz faster? Think again, after some research I discovered that both the E5200 and E5300 are exactly the same CPU, all Intel have done is overclocked the latter and increased the price. Therefore, the battle of the CPUs is a draw.

We are now faced with the choice of Dell’s Windows 7 and HP’s Windows Vista. This should be obvious, Windows 7 wins without a question. Vista is far slower, has infinite amount of driver issues and looks much uglier than its successor. The RAM is also a no brainer and is actually quite disappointing on Dells part as it is so cheap nowadays, but HP obviously sussed this and have offered us 1GB more.

When buying a hard drive, I always search by brand (Western Digital being my personal favourite) as this almost always guarantee’s reliability. However, as much as I try, I just cannot find out what hard drives both company’s are using. Sure, HP offer 140Gb more but with all your precious data on there you would hope it wasn’t a cheap temperamental drive. For a family PC, I wouldn’t think you’d need more than 300Gb unless you have thousands upon thousands of music/pictures (it would take a lot to fill 500Gb) Therefore, anything over 300Gb is fine and all we are left to go off is the capacity, in which HP offer more, despite it being quite unnecessary.

Both brands offer a free 1 year warranty, I was hoping for one or two more for when these mysterious hard drives fail but this is all we’re offered. I was also not hoping for, or expecting a free monitor, but taking a look at it there is really no reason to complain.

Dell IN 1910 Monitor

Ten minutes of Google based research is all you need to discover the horrors of customer service. The first review page for Dell that I came across was a disaster. It was a large number of user reviews on Dells customer service at www.ciao.co.uk. One title of a review read “Possibly the worst customer service imaginable” and 90% of the others followed the same theme. Orders placed 2 months ago still hadn’t arrived and had been constantly rescheduled. A search for “HP” on the same site gave completely opposite reviews with 4/5 or 5/5 stars all over.

With the results in, Fast PC Mods highly recommends to choose HP over Dell. The reasons being, HP is one step up in terms of specs, and ten times better with customer support. My own personal experiences with Dell have shown their true, shifty way of business that really takes money out of your pockets for things you could do without.  If you are looking to purchase the featured HP model, upgrading to Windows 7 would finish the product off as an all round winner. You might also get discount on the upgrade if you bundle it in with the desktop, depending on which site you buy from.

You may also be interested in our article on What To Look For In A PC for further help.

I never knew you could get such a quality 500gb hard drive for such a little price. From £35.69 at ebuyer.com there is really not a penny going to waste for your average home PC user.

OK, lets start with some specs:

• Serial ATA-300
• 8.9ms Average Seek Time
• 16mb Buffer size
• 7,200 rpm
• 500gb Memory
• 3 year warranty

Gamers may be put off by the 8.9ms seek time and the 7,200 rpm but unless you are crying out to reach maximum settings on Crysis then where is there to go wrong? This hard drive would be perfect for a family multimedia PC with its practically unlimited storage space (who needs 2TB anyway?) Linked with a nice CPU, I seriously doubt the average user will notice any sluggishness running this product.

The 3 year warranty is also a really nice feature, Western Digital must have been pretty sure they were not selling a product likely to break down. But my favourite feature of all is definitely the price, with which you simply cannot go wrong. Maybe sometime in the near future we will have cheap, reliable 2TB drives, but for now, this is defiantly the Hard Drive of my choice. Be sure to keep checking up on Western Digital as they are a very reliable brand whose products are almost always affordable.

You may also be interested in our article on Defragmenting Your Hard Drive.

First things first, take a look at that:

What more could you want from a CPU cooler for a measly price of $45? It encouraged me to install a window in my cases side panel. How could you just hide this thing?

The cooler comes with a 4-bolt mount which fits nicely onto most AMD and Intel processors, including the new i7. Often included in the pacakge is the Fan Mate 2 speed controller which allows you to run in “silent mode” which according to the Zalman website, is actually silent and vibration free.

The LED fan is 92mm diameters across and made from copper, this will conduct heat like no other. The whole heatsink is 109mm which will fit snugly in your average case without taking up too much room. I have to say though, I was surprised by the height of the CNP57000C at 63mm and I’m guessing Zalman are embarrassed by this as almost all pictures are from a birds eyes view.

Overall, Zalman have done really nice job here and are selling it for a generous price. For more info on this product, check out Zalman’s product page.

You may also be interested in our article on Cleaning your CPU Heatsink for faster performance.

This guide will show you how to safely give your computer a well needed spring clean to free the airways and cool down. We also have a guide on how to wipe your hard drive clean if you are interested in cleaning your PC virtually.

Step One – Opening The Case

There is really nothing to worry about, as long as your PC is UNPLUGGED, then you and your PC will be safe.

Most cases will have either a screw, a catch or a thumbscrew.  The case in the picture requires undoing a simple thumbscrew to open the side panel of the case, this has already been removed.  Once opened, place the side panel of the case in a safe place.

Step Two – Cleaning The PC

Inside, you should see the CPU fan and heatsink right in front of you.

The fan/heatsink in this picture is not bad at all, if your fan looks like this you should generally be fine. Sometimes it can get EXTREMELY dusty in there, so the fan has a hard time rotating.

I recommend using the COOL AIR setting on a hairdryer to blow away all  the dust, then a vacuum cleaner to collect it. There are pressurised air cans that you can buy, but for can of air, they are pricey.

Step Three – Closing The Case

Basically, the side panel goes back on the way you took it off. Some cases may require you to horizontally slide the side panel on, then screw it.

Now just turn your PC back on and listen to how much quieter it is, as your fan doesn’t have to push through all that dust and wear itself out. More importantly, temperatures will drop, causing your CPU to run at a much faster rate!

GHz

GHz is the speed that your Processor (the brains of your PC) runs at. Having a slower Processor will limit your overall PC speeds massively. Nearly all new PC’s nowadays come with at least 2GHz, this is more than enough for basic tasks such as word processing, browsing the web and even casual gaming.

RAM

Random Access Memory is often referred to as ‘memory’. This is NOT a measure of how many files you can put on your PC. As your Processor can only handle 1 process at a time, your RAM is there to queue the processes up. Therefore, the more RAM you have, the less your Processor has to scramble around looking for processes to carry out.

RAM is measured in GB’s To run most programs smoothly, you will need at least 1.5GB’s of RAM. You Will be looking at 3GB’s and up for a decent gaming PC.

Hard Drive

Your Hard Drive is the amount of space you have on your PC to store any type of file, from a movie to a word document. Hard Drives are becoming cheaper and cheaper, you can pick up a 30GB hard drive for £10 nowadays. That will fit 1000 albums and practically infinite amounts of word documents. Most PC’’s sold today should have at least 100GB as a market standard. We reccomend either the 500GB Western Digital WD5000AAKS or something very similar.

Graphics Card

To quickly render high-detail images such as this, your PC will need a decent graphics card. Graphics cards are usualy used by gamers to make high-end games run smoothly. They help your Processor convert binary code into viewable and realistic images. Generally, if you are looking for a decent graphics card, go with either ATI, or NVIDIA as reliable brands.

Operating System

The Operating System is what you see when you are using a PC. Think of the Processor as the engine of a car, and the Operating System as the interior. I would strongly reccomend avoiding Windows Vista and looking for a PC that runs Windows 7. This Operating System is quick, easy to use and much more reliable than its ancestors.