Congratulations, Colleen Boudreau ! You would have received an email from jackson@makeuseof.com. Please respond before November 14 to claim your prize. Enquires beyond this date will not be entertai

Another extremely wise tactic is to only upgrade what you need to upgrade. This means avoiding spending your hard earned funds on new keyboards, a mouse/trackball, new monitor or even a new tower, unless it is absolutely requi

Along with the Pi itself, you’ll need a few extras. To use the computer as a desktop PC, you will need a keyboard and mouse, something you may have avoided if you’ve been accessing the device via S

Perhaps the most obvious cheap pc upgrade is to look out for sales. Bundles are often reduced, while usually expensive components might be given a short-term discount of a single day for promotional purpo

Every two-to-three years I decide to upgrade my PC. This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision as I plan my builds to run for around that length of time, choosing components such as RAM , CPU and graphics card so that the computer will be able to run the best games and applications (although not necessarily at maximum performan

There are many reasons why other people might want to purchase your old computer components and hardware – so why not give them the chance? Media Centre PCs, for example, don’t need the latest cutting-edge components ( a $35 Raspberry Pi is more than suitable! ), while anyone building a computer for their children probably won’t be expecting to pay top dollar for a Core i7 proces

If everything went well, your computer should be starting now! If not, don't worry. Just check each component to ensure that you did everything correctly. Make sure that you look at any appropriate manuals or other instruction pamphlets of each component for highly detailed instructions on installat

We finally have a custom budget gaming desktop that was cheaper to build than to just buy an Alienware X51! I installed Ubuntu as it's the most common distribution of Linux and the most recommended distro of game developers like Steam. Of course, to make full use of the graphics card, I also installed AMD's proprietary graphics drivers (to learn how, read Installed Ubuntu on Your Laptop? 6 Tweaks You'll Nee

Most DVD drives need to be installed from the front, so that means taking the front panel off carefully and avoid pulling the wires for the power switch. It's also better to connect any cables now before it's slotted in, as things can get quite tight back th

For this particular exercise, I used a high-grade grease (non-conductive) rated for 2,000-3,000 RPMs. A thinner lubricant will suffer from separation at high speeds, which causes the grease to literally separate from the surface it coats. And, never, ever use WD

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 $

Whenever users log in, all available music files are listed in the left menu bar. Each individual user can build their own player list by just adding the "+" sign next to the song. That song gets added to the personal player list, where the user can click on the " Play " button in the embedded player to get started. The files are streamed right over the network to the user's Pc component comparisons|https://pcbuildinsight.com/ or mobile dev

There are so many awesome websites and applications you can use to download music to any PC. Simon wrote about some of the best sites where you can download free music . Of course, most users will be more than accustomed to paying for and downloading music from sites like iTunes or Amaz

Set up a new password, and then start working through the menu systems to set everything up. The only area you really need to configure for your new jukebox-like Wi-Fi music streamer to work properly is to set up media folders on the server PC where you'll store all of the music available for your users to listen to. You do this by clicking on the " Media Folders " link in the m

Rattling fans produce loud noises because they have suffered a bearing failure , a fault common to both sleeve and ball-type fans. When a failure occurs, it means the lubrication greasing the sleeve or ball bearings has dried out, causing the bearing to grind on plastic. Fortunately, regreasing the fan's bearings will often fix the prob

For those of us experiencing issues with dust or fan noise, fixing either of these issues doesn't require much effort or money at all. Using the two methods outlined in this article, adding a dust filter and lubricating a rattling fan, will improve long-term cooling, ease of maintenance and acoustic qualit