Not all computer problems are software related. Hardware can go bad as well and can even be bad right from the store. Hardware problems can often be more difficult to diagnose since you can’t look at a piece of hardware and tell it’s bad. For many of your hardware components you can troubleshoot them by replacing it with another device. For example if you aren’t getting sound out of your speakers you can first try to replace the speakers since that’s easy and if that doesn’t work you can swap out the sound card with a spare if you happen to have one or you can take one out of another system.

For some devices such as sound cards, video cards, network cards and other devices that are put into slots you can try to remove the device and reseat it or even try a different slot. Most cards nowadays use PCI slots with the exception of video cards which are usually AGP but can also be PCI.

Below is a typical motherboard showing the various components so you can get an idea of what goes where.

You will notice that there are many PCI slots for multiple devices. There is only 1 AGP slot since most of the time you will only have one video card unless you are doing a dual monitor setup etc.

There are 2 IDE controllers for devices such as hard drives and CD-ROMS. Each controller can have 2 devices attached to it for a total of 4 IDE devices. If your motherboard has Serial ATA connections you can add even more drives to your system. Just make sure your power supply can handle the load. A power supply of 300 watts or more should be sufficient for most systems.

The motherboard will also have a floppy controller to hook up to your floppy drive.

Most motherboards will have 2 or 3 memory (RAM) slots. Keep in mind there are different types of memory for different motherboards so make sure to match it up correctly or else you will run into problems.

Most motherboards will come with 1 processor (CPU) slot although it is possible to have multiple processors but the operating system must support them. The slot in the above illustration is actually called a socket. There are different kinds of sockets for different kinds of processors. There are also processors that use the Slot 1 format such as the older Pentium II and III as shown below.

One very important thing to make sure that is always working properly is your processor fan. The processor fan keeps the CPU cool so it won’t overheat. Once the processor overheats its time to buy a new one and they aren’t cheap!

A processor that is running hot will start to give you random errors make your computer lock up as well. The same thing will happen with bad RAM. Most motherboards have a safety mechanism in the setup that allows you to set a maximum temperature the CPU can reach before automatically shutting the PC down. Check your motherboard documentation to find out how to get into your systems BIOS to enable this setting.

If you are the type that likes to install your own hardware or build your own computer you will be installing hard drives and CD-ROMS at some point. There are a couple of things to watch for when doing this. One thing is to make sure you have the IDE cable on correctly and the other is to make sure you have the jumpers set correctly as well.

IDE cables are marked with a red stripe to designate pin # 1. In most cases the red stripe will be attached to the drive closest to the power connection. Make sure on the motherboard you have the red stripe matched up to pin # 1 as well. It should be marked on the motherboard itself. In most cases you will find that the connection and cable are keyed so you can only put them in one way.

IDE drives require jumpers to be set to designate a master or slave device. Like stated before you have 2 IDE controllers with 2 devices on each controller. One is called the master and the other is the slave. You should always make your primary hard drive (C drive) as master. If you look on the back of the drive you will usually see settings for master, slave and cable select. Cable select determines what is what from which connection on the cable you attach the drive. IDE cables come with 2 connections for 2 drives. As you can see from the image below the jumper settings are right next to the power and IDE connections. You will usually see a diagram on top of the drive showing what jumper is for what setting.

Any other techniques to configuring hardware that are not mentioned? Feel free to comment below!

With the next series of graphics cards just around the corner there is a lot of speculation on what specifications they have and how good they will be. In this article I aim to fill you in on the specifications of both sides and what is right from wrong.

First to release their cards will be ATI and that is no surprise as nVidia have been shamelessly re-branding and failing to produce any ground breaking products i.e. the numerous failed attempts to put the GT200 core on a 40nm die. Where as ATI have already put a 40nm card out there in the shape of the RV740, even if there has been a huge shortage of 40nm wafers. There are a lot of reasons why ATI will be the first to the post, ATI have already, as I said above, got a 40nm card, they also have full DX10.1 which is only a stones throw away from DX11 and they also have a lot of experience with GDDR5.

In comparison to nVidia, who hasn’t got any 40nm desktop cards or any with GDDR5 and a major ice breaker is the fact that their DX10 is a very stripped down version, more like DX9.d. This brings a lot of issues for nVidia as their GT200 Die has been labeled a “monolith”. With more shaders comes more transistors and with more transistors comes bigger die area so the GT300 will be even bigger unless they can pull something magical out of a hat…or maybe defy the law of physics.

ATI are set to release in later this year, whereas nVidia are looking to be releasing in the middle of 2010, oh dear. Below I have made a table showing what the cards will most likely consist of. Enjoy.

Specifications Table

Now these figures are speculation but they are realistic figures compared to what I’ve seen some people claim on forums. One site which are so way off it’s unreal is this one. Claiming that a HD5870 will have 3200 SP + 80 TMUs comprising of 1 master chip + 4 slaves. Who comes up with this stuff, seriously. The big tell tale signs are, there is only 1 Xfire connector and the card is way to short (looks around 6 inches) But enough of the fan boy’s idiotic dreaming, onto the depths of the cards. Now given the table above is correct that is a lot of horsepower, no? But if we look at nVidia’s GT200 core, you’ll find that it only uses 4% – 10% of that core for GPU functions, the rest are be used for CPU functions, why nVidia did this I don’t know but it is a monumental waste of power, they seem to be hell bent on making the GPU take over the role of the CPU. But don’t think it’s over, oh no, the GT300 only uses ~8% of it’s core for GPU related tasks, there is no point in it, let the CPU do CPU tasks (apart from physics) it’s not like they can’t handle it specially if there are 8 cores on their way.

ATI on the other hand are slightly better as their RV770 uses ~20 of it’s core for GPU tasks, O.K granted it’s still not much but with ATI it’s understandable, the whole fusion project and all, which is a good idea in theory, putting a small low end GPU in the CPU to help speed communication between GPU and CPU is a lot better than making a all purpose GPU.

Now one thing I know most enthusiasts are wondering is Crossfire, or to be more specific, when will it scale after 2 cards. Well your answer is with the HD5 series, ATI have said they are spending a lot of time on drivers and making sure the cards scale well in 3 or even 4 card configurations, so not all bad news, that is until we come to nVidia. nVidia are changing their SLI and so far reports have said it’s not as good, but as this is very early nVidia have all the chance to get the 15% improvement they want, and I hope they get it.

The last thing I’m going to touch on in this article is the cooling of these soon to be beasts. Now with current cards struggling to keep the cores cool and be quiet your gonna have to lose one thing more than another, ATI seems to favour low fan speed over heat, where as nVidia prefer slightly higher fan speed and cooler core. But to combat this ATI have said they will be using a new cooling solution, now I’m guessing it’s a more advanced version of Sapphire’s Vapour-X stuff, but only time will tell. As for nVidia well my guess is they are just gonna throw more heatpipes and copper at it.

Well that was my first article, hope you liked it, please tell me if you did or didn’t below in the comments box. Till next time.