Taylah Fetty

Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 500W power supply : Cooler Master is a respected brand for power supplies and cooling, so I gravitated towards their products. With a decent CPU and GPU, I predicted that 500 watts should be more than enough to power the entire system. I could've probably gone with a 400 watt power supply without any issues, but I wanted to be completely sure. At just under $45, it's not a bad price anyways. If you're unsure about which power supply to get for your custom budget gaming rig, Matt explains everything you need to know about power supplies and how to pick o

To keep costs down you can aim for one of the less impressive options or an older product. The Crucial M4, which was once considered cutting-edge, is now pretty mundane. And that means you can buy a 128GB model for just

Once I did all that, I installed Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 via Steam. I also separately installed Urban Terror, another popular game on Linux. The custom budget gaming rig performed very well with these games. The settings for Dota 2 and Urban Terror were set to their maximums and gameplay remained very smooth. Team Fortress 2 also ran without a hitch following the settings recommended by the game -- all of which were set to "High" if not the maximums. These results are all very impressive for a computer that costed less than $

Following these steps can keep hundreds of dollars in your wallet. The system you end up may be not as awesome as it would have been, but it will be extremely close. So close that you won’t miss the more expensive hardware that you didn’t purch

VLC media player is the solution to many video playback issues. It can play almost any video format, from XviD to Real Video, and even optical discs. Codecs are built into VLC media player, although other techniques are used to playback vid

Many codecs can be used to encode video. In some sense, the codec is like the key and your video is like a locked file. You need the same key or the codec to view the file that was used to encode the f

The fan you purchased should come with at least four screws. These are usually short and stubby like the one in the photo below. However, the screws may be longer if they are meant to install alongside another piece of hardware, such as a radiator used in a liquid-cooling syst

One icon – a mouse – will be highlighted at the top of the window. Double-click this and your device will then be listed as Nintendo RVL-CNT-01 – connection is complete, as indicated by the dotted green line between your device icon and the orange sph

When you’re ready to begin, open Start >Control Panel >Add a device and then hold the 1 and 2 buttons on your Wiimote. Windows should detect the device (as Nintendo RVL-CNT-01 ) and add it, before asking you to select a pairing option – you don’t need to choose a passcode to pair this type of device, however, so skip t

When you have restarted Windows, launch the BlueSoleil software by double-clicking the Bluetooth icon in the Windows System Tray. Next, hold the 1 and 2 buttons on your Wiimote and double click the orange sphere in the BlueSoleil window – your Nintendo Wiimote should be listed, so right-click this and select Search Servic

Once you have a fan of the correct size you need to open your case and line up the fan with the mounting area. It will have four screw holes, as will the fan, so you just need to line up the screw holes on e

Cleaning a modern LCD screen isn't the same as cleaning an old-fashioned CRT monitor. That is because CRTs are covered with glass, while LCD displays have a softer plastic-based surface. To clean your LCD without damaging it, you need a lint-free cloth, distilled water (for dust) or isopropyl alcohol or white vinegar (SSD vs HDD for gaming|https://pcbuildinsight.com/ oily stains) and a bottle, ideally an atomizer. Spray your cloth with water or a 1:1 isopropyl alcohol : water mixture. Then carefully wipe the screen with the damp cl

Elsewhere on MakeUseOf we’ve covered methods for connecting PS3 controllers and Xbox 360 controllers to your PC – but did you know that it is also possible to interact with your computer via the Wiim

In part 1 of this checklist, I will take you through the physical cleaning checkpoints of your desktop computer or laptop. In part 2 I will follow up with a list of things you can do to purge obsolete files, unused programs, crapware and more from your Windows mach

Most motherboards come with two to four system fan connections. If you’re installing more fans than your motherboard can support you’ll need to connect the additional fans directly to your power supply . Some supplies will come with three-pin connectors for this purpose. Others require that you use a Molex adapt

If the fan is installed and has power it should start to spin as soon as the system begins to boot – if it does not, check the power connection again. Something may have come loose or the fan may be fau