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!

1. Go to the Start menu > Control Panel
2. Click System and Maintenance
3. Click Problem Reports and Solutions
4. On the left hand panel, click Change Settings then Advanced Settings
5. Under “For my programs, problem reporting is:” select Off
6. Click OK on both screens then exit the Control Panel

You may also be interested in our article on Disabling Vista’s User Account Control and Disabling Vista’s Sidebar.

To Enable ‘Private Browsing’ (Firefox) or ‘InPrivate Browsing’ (IE8) just hold down Ctrl + Shift + P and hold the same keys down again to exit the feature.

You will soon realise that using the Private Internet Browsing feature in your browser is much faster than the proxy option as you don’t have to browse via a server half way across the world. It is also much safer in terms of privacy as you can safely continue your online banking for example, without worrying whether the proxy site you are using is a fraud. If you have already been browsing non-work friendly websites and wish to remove any traces of this, you should follow our guide on Deleting History and Cookies.

Step One:

Download and install WinDirStat

Step Two:

Choose the drive(s) you would like to analyse and click OK

Step Three:

Wait for WinDirStat to finish scanning your drive(s), there is a percentage in the header of the program. This may take several minutes. After it has finished scanning, you will see a screen similar to this:

The multi coloured squares/rectangles on the bottom half of the screen are a visual representation of the files on your hard drive. By clicking on a shape, the top half of the program will display the files in an explorer style view which enables you to delete, copy and edit selected files. The size of the files are represented by the size of the shape, and the file type is represented by the colour of the shape. For example, the large rectangle in the top left of my diagram is a collection of Call of Duty 4 files packed into a .7z format.

Step Four:

Wipe your hard drive clean of any unwanted files and folders. Or alternatively, roam around your hard drive discovering thousands of lost mp3 files (that’s what I did anyway) and enjoy your new clean hard drive. You can go as far as you like with this quick and easy program that will quickly make your PC faster and more spacious!

Compatible with Internet Explorer and Firefox:

Ctrl + W – Closes the current Tab

Ctrl + D – Bookmarks the Page

Ctrl + T – Opens a new Tab

Ctrl + N – Opens a new Window

F5 / Ctrl + R – Refreshes the page

Ctrl + F – Searches for text in a web page

Ctrl + Shift + P – Starts Private Browsing*

Ctrl + Shift + P – Stops Private Browsing*

Backspace – Reverts to the previous web page

Compatible with Firefox only:

Clicking here opens a new Tab:

Ctrl + J – Opens the Downloads window

Ctrl + Shift + W – Closes the current Window

*Private Browsing enables you to browse the web anonymously without any history or cookies being saved.

You may also be interested in our article on 5 Steps To Speed Up Firefox

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.

To disable the Sidebar:

1. Right click on the Sidebar and select Properties

2. Uncheck the “Start Sidebar when Windows starts” box

3. Click Ok and Restart

You may also be interested in our article on Disabling Vista’s User Account Control

User Account Control scans through every single file of a program you want to run, imagine how long this takes for an 11GB game like Modern Warfare 2. Disabling User Account Control will save you tonnes of time on your PC.

1. Click on Run in the start menu and type in MSCONFIG, then click OK.

2. On the Tools tab, find “Disable UAP” (same thing as UAC)

3. Click the Launch button

4. A CMD window will run, let it finish what its doing before closing it down.

5. Close MSCONFIG and reboot your PC

You may also be interested in our article on Removing Startup Programs to boost your PC’s performance or Disabling Vista’s Sidebar.