How to keep your PC computer running as fast as possible

Hello everyone, In today's post I am going to be looking at how you can keep your PC running as fast as possible without having to make any hardware changes at all. This guide will show you how to keep your PC software in top condition and keep it running quickly and efficiently. I will include some free programs that I currently use that keeps my PC running at top performance, Often my cheap computer will out perform more expensive ones because I take care of the software side of my PC.

The first step to increasing the performance of your PC is to make sure that there is no junk on the computer that will take up space and slow the hard drive performance down. To do this I recomend that you download and install CCleaner and CCEnhancer. Once you have downloaded them, Install CCleaner first and then install CCenhancer after. Once CCenhancer is installed open CCleaner and then on the left hand side tick all of the tick boxes apart from "Wipe free disk space"

Once you have ticked all the boxes apart from "Wipe free disk space" click on the tab at the top of that section that says "Applications" Once you have clicked that, Tick all of the boxes in the section that appears to make sure that you are removing all of the junk on your computer. If you would like under this section you can opt not to delete "Saved form information" and "Saved passwords" under Internet explorer, Firefox, Google chome, and Opera. This means that any saved passwords will still exist after you run this program.

Once you have selected all of the tick boxes click "Run cleaner" in the bottom right hand side of the screen. This will set the cleaner to work digging out and deleting all of the rubbish documents and folders that have built up over the course of using your PC. Once that section of the program has finished you can now move onto it's next part.

Click on the big icon on the left hand side that says registry. Once you have that section open, Click all of the tick boxes on the screen so that it cleans every section of the registry.

Once all of the tick boxes are selected, click on scan for issues. Once it has finished scanning a list of damaged/broken registry entries will be shown on the screen. You can now clock on fix selected issues and it will fix all the registry problems.

Now it is time to Defrag your hard drive to help regain the performance that it originally had before you installed and uninstalled programs and files. Defragging arranges the files and folders on the hard drive so that they are all in order which makes loading times much faster. Firstly download Defraggler. Once you have installed Defraggler open it and then click on the hard drive that you would like to defrag at the top of the screen as show in this image.

Once the drive has been selected click on the Defrag button that is located at the bottom left hand side of the program. This will set the program to defrag you hard drive. It is best to close as many programs as possible when doing this as that means that more of the files and folders can be defragged. Once it has started leave the computer and just let it finish this task on it's own as it can take quite a long time on a hard drive that hasn't been defragged often.

Once Defraggler has been finished it is often a good idea to run an Anti-Virus scan as well. I would suggest that you make sure your anti-virus program has the newest updates and virus definitions (which most programs do on there own anyway) and then run the program to do the most in-depth scan you can and let it complete it. As there are many different anti-virus programs out there I cannot really show you how to do this one in depth.

Once all of those tasks have been finished the computer should be a lot more responsive and fast running. I have bought back many PC's that people have thought to have been broken by using these 3 simple programs and everyone has been surprised at what a speed improvement they got.

Thanks for reading, Jack-O-Bytes

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What to Look for When Buying a Desktop Computer PC

Hey there everyone, Today I am going to be looking at how to choose a good computer that is right for your needs. There are many little tricks out there in the PC business that makes it hard to choose a computer that is correct for you and often support staff at computer shops will sell you one that is much higher cost than you really need to pay. I am going to look at all the basic stages of computers from Office PC to Gaming PC's and show you computers that are in those ranges so you know what to look for.


The Budget Desktop PC

A lot of people don't currently have a lot of money to spend on gaming PC's or extreme computers that will do anything in seconds so there is a massive market out there for budget desktop computers at the moment.
I class a budget computer as one that costs anywhere between £180-£250 ($285-$400) When you are buying a budget computer the main thing to look for is to make sure that it has an operating system included. Often on cheap computers they will leave out the operating system which then becomes and additional cost that you weren't prepared to pay for.
A modern budget computer will usually come with either a single or dual core CPU and around 2-4Gb RAM. The hard drive will generally be around 500Gb and there will often not be a graphcics card included. Here are a couple of examples of budget computers that would do for most simple tasks such as internet browsing and office work (England) and (USA)
The computer from eBuyer has a Dual core Intel CPU that is fairly out of date now but at this price that can be expected. The Newegg computer has a very good Quad core AMD CPU and 4Gb of RAM. It will easily be fast enough for any office and internet work that you throw at it.
Both computers have Windows 7 pre-installed so you can get them working straight out of the box so long as you have a screen to go with them.
 

The Mid Range Desktop PC

This is where things usually start to get a bit more complicated. At a price range of £250-£550 ($400-$900) many companies start to add in things like graphics cards and SSD drives. This can often complicate the choice quite a bit.
In this price range you should be expecting to get at least a quad core CPU and a 1Gb graphics card. I would also personally expect at least 8Gb of RAM and a 1Tb hard drive. I have found a couple of current examples of mid range PC's to show you what sort of computer you should be expecting to get for your money. (England) and (USA) The English computer there features a quad core CPU and 8Gb of RAM. It also has an Nvidia GT 520 graphics card which is very good at this price. As for the Newegg computer that has a Quad core Intel CPU, 8Gb of DDR3 RAM and a HD6670 which is a very good card to find in a computer at this price range. It also comes in quite a funky looking case which will apeal to most gamers.
Overall computers at this range will usually be very good at simple office tasks and internet browsing along with HD video decoding and possibly some light-medium gaming. Not bad for £250-£550 ($400-$900)



The High End Desktop PC

This next category is where performance really starts to become more about competing with the next person rather than just having it for the fact that it is nicer to use. I would class £550-£1000 ($900-$1600) as the performance PC section of the market. In this section of the market you can expect to get at least a quad core CPU minimum. Around 8-16Gb of RAM and a high end gaming graphics card. You can also expect to get a good copy of Windows 7 instead of the basic home edition one. I have found a couple of examples of computers that you can get in this price range.
(England) and (USA) Both of those example computers come with the latest range of Intel CPU's. The Ebuyer computer has a high speed Core i5 CPU and the Newegg computer has the newest Core i7 CPU. Both of the computers have 8Gb of DDR3 RAM which is the fastest type you can currently buy and both of them have high end graphics cards in the form of an Nvidida GTX 560 and GTX 570. Both of these cards are lightning fast and will easily be enough to power through most current games.


I am going to include these two websites as well in this post as these have helped me no end when building computers and recommending computers to people that I know.

• http://cpubenchmark.net/
• http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

I have often found that when buying PC's the person selling them will say something such as "Dual Core 3Ghz CPU" now that really isn't that helpful as an older 3Ghz dual core will be much much slower than a modern Dual core 3Ghz CPU. I have also found that many people will sell a computer as a gaming computer even with a low end graphics card that has 1Gb of video RAM. A card such as the HD5450 1Gb Edition will be quite a bit slower than say a 5670 with only 512Mb of graphics RAM. The two websites above will help you compare the CPU's and Video cards in different computers and will show you which one has truly more performance. I will show an example of this now;

• HD 5450 1Gb - 304 Points
• HD 5550 512Mb - 612 Points

As you can see getting conned into buying a 1Gb model graphics card just for the RAM can leave you with a massive performance drop. Here is an example of some 3.0Ghz CPU's

• Intel Core i3 2.6Ghz - 3509
• Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz - 1730

As you can see, Both of these are dual core CPU's yet the lower clocked Intel core i3 has a much better performance score. This can be down to a number of things such as the amount of L1, L2, and L3 cache the CPU has and also the general architecture of the CPU die itself.

Overall there are many ways that companies and individuals can scam you when selling a computer and I hope that this guide has helped people to see where you can be caught out and what to expect when buying a computer. If you have any questions just post a comment on this post.

Related Articles 

• How to build a budget/Cheap PC (Video)
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• Budget CPU Coolers Reviewed 

Jack-O-Bytes