We have already discussed about Graphic cards, its working and for what it is used for?

Now it’s time to learn “How to buy a Graphic card” or “How to choose the right Graphic card for you?”

I have already said that Graphic cards can be categorised into 2, based on their use.

1. For viewing or editing HD videos
2. For playing Games

Like we do for computer processors, we wish to get a Graphic card so that it can serve both the above two purposes.

Price increases proportionately to the performance

You might have thought of upgrading your Graphic card or buying a new one, only because of the reason that you couldn’t play your favourite games smoothly or couldn’t play it at all.

As I said in 3 Quick steps to choose a new Processor post, my desktop computer is old and is powered by Radeon HD 4670, 512MB Graphics card.

Though it’s pretty old, it runs even Crysis 2 game at medium-high settings at HD resolution, though my monitor is a Full HD one.

Since I opted for a 4 times faster processor while choosing the new processor, let me choose 4 times faster Graphic card than my current HD 4670, now.

So on comparing the benchmarks in AnandTech GPU bench, I found that HD 7870 2GB Graphics card is almost 4 times faster than HD 4670.

I heard from most people that they want at least 10-20 times faster computer than their present one, for playing games, which is practically impossible if you’re upgrading within a span of 5 years.

Here I expect 4 times faster Graphic card than mine, so I should be ready to allocate 4 times the money I allocated for my previous Graphic card. I bought HD 4670 for ₹5,000 a few years back and now HD 7870 costs around ₹20,500. But, when I bought my old card, even HD 4890 was priced at ~ ₹15,000, which is almost 2.5 times slower than HD 7870.

5 easy steps to choose the right Graphic card for you

1. Download and install some famous or highly recognised 3D benchmarks or Gaming benchmarks on your existing PC. Then run it and note down the benchmark score.

2. Decide the average budget for your Graphic card.

3. See the benchmark results of the Graphic cards in your budget range. If the new Graphic card’s performance level is above your expectations go to step 5 else move on to next step.

4. See for the Graphic cards which offer at least 30fps in some of the latest high end 3D games like Far cry 3, Crysis 2 etc. Once you have got hold of such a Graphic card, look for its price in India, using my upcoming Graphic card buying guide, or on online computer hardware shopping sites.

5. If the price is within your budget then find the entire range of Graphic cards from AMD and NVIDIA in that range, come to a decision after comparing the feature set and their performance in different benchmarks.

2 strategies to buy a Graphic card, if you’re under a tight budget

These 2 strategies are not a completely new strategy, but it’s something that everyone will not dare to do.

First Strategy

If you’re going to buy a Graphic card for only a specific purpose such as games and multimedia or 3D modelling etc., then, if you buy a latest Graphic card, which has less raw power, you will not gain much in terms of value. The latest Graphic card may be capable of doing all the things you need but also the things you may not need, still you pay for that too.

Assume that you’re buying your Graphic card just to play your favourite games and watch HD videos.

• HD 7850 for ₹14,000 – latest Graphic card with all features
• HD 7750 for ₹8,500 – latest Graphic card with all features but less raw power
• HD 5970 for ₹10,500 – 12,500 – on clearance sale (e.g.) not will all latest features, but with high raw power

If I were you I would go for option 3.

Yes!

Because I can save around ₹ 6,000 – ₹4,000 and getting almost similar raw power of any ₹16,500 Graphic card, with which I can play almost all games at Full HD resolution in high – very high settings.

So simply, you can go for a latest Graphic card with all new features or a similarly priced, high raw power, older architecture based Graphics card, with fewer features.

This won’t hold well in all conditions except on some jaw dropping deals, because latest architecture will always be better, in terms of power consumption, noise and overclocking.

So, just have it as an option, when buying a new Graphic card, but don’t rely on this idea always.

Second Strategy

The second strategy is to buy a used Graphic card with unexpired warranty.

There are many enthusiasts living in India, who needs the most powerful Graphic card, the next day of its release. So most often they sell their Graphic card on eBay.in within a year.

Those cards will have unexpired warranty, so even if you experience some problems after buying it, you can get it serviced in any authorized service centre for free!

Also eBay gives you 7 day return guarantee, so the seller cannot cheat and run away.

Keep one thing in mind; they are selling their cards to buy the new ones, so you will get it cheaper than a new one in market but not at some great discounts. Also this type of deals can be seen only during the time of new Graphic cards release.

The post How to Buy the right Graphic Card within your Budget? appeared first on Lenzfire.

But still some prefer to pay for features than reliability.

It holds good at some situations.

For example, if you’re buying a motherboard temporarily, or for a short-term, or if you cannot find a compatible and reliable motherboard for your socket then you can look for features than reliability.

The best approach is to look for a balanced one with compulsory features + highly reliable motherboard or compulsory + optional features + mediocrely reliable motherboard.

But don’t compromise on quality too much.

How to select your motherboard?

1.     Socket

2.     Chipset

3.     Compulsory features needed

4.     Additional features offered

5.     Price range and expandability

How to find the socket?

There is no magic here; it’s just an if-else statement.

Which Chipset you’d choose?

For AMD Llano processors, if you’re very budget minded, go for A55 chipset; else if you can raise your quota for motherboard a bit, try A75 chipset.

The same applies to AMD Trinity processors too. But there is one more chipset available for AMD Trinity and that is called A85X chipset, which is a performance level chipset, which can be paired with A10 5800K APU for better balanced combination.

If you’re choosing FX series processors then you have three choices.

1.     990FX

2.     990X

3.     970

Among these three, the last one, 970 does not come with an on-board GPU, so you should choose this chipset only if you already have or if you’re going to buy a discrete graphic card, because there won’t be even a VGA connector on the motherboard. But if you’re a budget or midrange PC gamer then this will be the only chipset that suits your budget.

If you want to buy entry-level sandy bridge or Ivy Bridge processors then you can opt for H61 chipset for cost cutting. But if you wish to buy a motherboard with latest features for the cheapest price then choose B75 chipset.

If you wish to move your budget a little further then take H67 or H77 chipset. Since H67 is previous generation chipset, I’ll recommend H77, compared to H67.

The following suggestions are for enthusiast segment or overclocker’s segment.

If you are in an idea to buy a overclockable Intel processor then the cheap and best chipset is Z77. Not all chipsets support, Overclocking the processor, by changing its multiplier value, only Z77, Z68 and P67 do. So you’re in an idea to overclock Intel processors such as Core i5 3570K or Core i7 3770K, 2700K, you’d opt for the above mentioned 3 chipsets only, else you cannot overclock your processor by changing its clock multiplier.

Features Required / Offered

Compulsory features needed

This depends on our specific need and varies from person to person.

Let me list some of the most common, highly needed features in the ascending order.

1.      USB 3.0

2.     SATA III

3.     HDMI

4.     5.1 or 7.1 channel audio

5.     At least 2 PCI x16 slots for crossfire or SLI

Additional options or features offered

Basically the excessive necessary features available for a cheaper price are seen as additional features

For example

Price range and expandability

Once our requirement is met in our expected price range, see for options such as same set of features at lesser price or you can also see for more set of features at the same price, because the features sets varies, even from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Regarding expandability, see to that whether the socket and chipset you have chosen is compatible with the future processor releases from the company. Not only that, see for as much expansion slots as possible, such as multiple RAM slots, PCIe slots, USB 3.0 slots, SATA III slots etc.

Reliable Motherboard Brands in India

Highly reliable – Asus, Gigabyte

Mediocrely reliable – Asrock, MSI

Sub Mediocrely reliable – BioStar, ECS – Go for these motherboards only if you have no other options above.

The post 5 Things to See When you Buy Motherboard appeared first on Lenzfire.

The following is the pattern which I have used to follow when I want to decide to choose a new processor. I guess, it will help you too.

3 Quick Steps

Step 1:

Collect details about all the latest professors from Intel and AMD. I know that this should be the most tedious and time-consuming task for most of the users. So, I have designed a computer buying guide (processors). You can use the guide for this step 1.

Step 2:

Some of us could have allocated a certain budget and then we do look for a processor and other components within that range. But some don’t know, how much to allocate? So price is an issue here. Still, the unknown price amount helps you to finalize your decision, from the choices you have obtained. So let’s keep it in hold and move to next.

Step 3:

Generally we wish to have the fastest processor that can be bought within our budget. Though we are about to reach that point, it’s not a good starting point to start our research.

So, how to do then?

We have already discussed about benchmarks, right? I usually use Anandtech’s CPU bench for comparing the benchmarks of multiple number of CPUs.

First of all decide, how much performance you need, compared to your existing processor (if you already have one) or compared to the processor that you might have used in your college or at work or at your friend’s home.

Let me start with an example, I have AMD Athlon X2 7850 dual core processor on my old desktop computer. It’s highly enough for browsing internet, editing home videos, playing 3D games like Far cry 2 or Crysis 2 etc. But since it’s old, I wish to upgrade it.

Now you have to quantify the amount of performance you expect from the new processor you’re going to buy, compared to the existing one.

Assume that I expect 4X, where ‘X’ is the performance of the processor I already have. It’s not that simple to find a processor with 4X performance in all applications. But still we can find such a processor using benchmarks.

To make it simple, let’s consider 2 benchmarks alone.

1. Cinebench single threaded – This benchmark says us how fast each single core is. It denotes the difference in performance, owing to the improvement in architecture.

My Athlon 7850 processor is around 3-4 years old, where Intel Core i5 3570K was released just a few months back. So there should be  much improvement in architecture resulting in higher performance / core.

The Cinebench single threaded benchmark scores are as follows:-

which means each core of i5 processor is almost 2 times faster than my Athlon processor. Let’s make a calculation here.

Each core of Core i5 = 2 x each core of Athlon 7850

Or one core of core i5 = total Athlon 7850 (since my Athlon 7850 X2 is a dual core processor)

But Core i5 3570K is a quad-core processor.

As a result I should get 4X the performance of my existing processor. Let’s check the effect of calculation in real world performance through benchmarks.

2. Cine bench multithreaded – It says us how fast the processor is, as a whole, when utilizing all of its cores.

Athlon 7850 – 5970

Core i5 3570K – 22750

For exact 4X performance Core i5 should have scored around 24000, but it has scored 22750. Even then I can over clock Core i5 to get the desired 4X performance.

So, once you quantify the amount of performance you expect, when compared to an older processor, it’s very easy to sort out the processor we need to buy.

With this we have completed our Step 3.

Similarly, use the above said two benchmarks to narrow down your choice of processor to 1 or 2. Then,

1. Compare those processors with various other benchmarks
2. Read their positives and negatives in user reviews
3. Calculate the Performance / Price ratio of the processors shortlisted and then choose the one whose ratio is high.

The post 3 Quick Steps to choose a new Computer Processor? appeared first on Lenzfire.

If you’re buying for the first time, on online shopping sites, I highly recommend giving a test drive first.

7 steps to do a test buy on online stores?

Step 1:

Choose the site from which you want to buy a computer component

Step 2:

Now, once the site is chosen

Step 3:

Sign up on the site with your email ID.

Step 4:

Once you have signed up, go back to your email inbox, as most of the websites send a verification link to your email. This is done to verify that none other than you use your email.

Step 5:

So now, click the verification link to verify your account.

Step 6:

If you believe that the website is trustworthy, skip to next step else there are 2 modes to check.

2 easy ways to find whether the online shopping site is legit?

First one is, call to their phone number and preferably toll-free number, if any.

Just enquire about the product you’re going to buy. If the customer care support is satisfactory for you, then go with it.

But if you cannot call, or if they don’t attend your call, then go to the “contact us” page and mail to the ‘contact email’ provided in that page, enquiring about the product.

If you’re happy with the response, then go ahead with the purchase, else look for the next shop.

But why?

If they don’t give a proper response for sales queries itself, then how their response will be, for after sales queries!

Repeat the step until you find a trustworthy site to buy.

Step 7:

Once you have decided about the site to buy, look for COD-Cash on Delivery. This is the best method to test, if you’re buying from the shop for the first time.

In COD, you won’t pay the money first, instead, you place the order and their sales person will call your mobile and confirm your address. Once the formalities are over, they will ship the product through some courier. Most websites reply you with the courier AWB No., which will be helpful for you to track the parcel from courier website.

What is tracking, in courier services?

If you’re dealing with this for the first time, don’t fear. Even if you don’t do tracking, the parcel will be delivered to you.

But still tracking has several advantages.

You can get an idea on,

• When the parcel will be delivered?
• Is it travelling on right schedule?

If it’s getting delayed, then search for “courier name” + “your city name” in Google search.

90% of the time you can get a contact number of a courier person in your city.

Once you have that, call the corresponding person, tell your AWB No. and enquire about the parcel.

How to track a lost courier parcel?

This is the segment, which is similar to the first fear that we have discussed in ’3 fears that stop buyers from buying online’.

But a slight difference is there. How?

The first fear that we had discussed earlier was about the fraudulent act of the seller, who didn’t send you the product after receiving money from you, but in this case, the seller has shipped your product and the parcel hasn’t reached you in time due to some untold reasons.

If you can catch a concerned courier person, then it is well and good, you just make them aware that the parcel is missing and they will look after the issue. But, what if, if you can’t get any contact number of the courier person in your region, or even nearer regions too!

Yes, it can happen and it happened to me twice.

What will do in such helpless situations?

There is a solution!

Call the seller and tell that your parcel hasn’t reached you. If you have taken any steps to find the lost parcel, then tell them too. Most probably, he will assure you that the problem will be solved in 24 – 48 hours.

What could have happened? How could the courier parcel be lost?

These are some of the problems that I have faced during my purchases.

1. “You’re out of station, so we sent back the courier to our head office” – courier staff. If this is the case, then the tracking status would have been mentioned as ‘undelivered‘ in the courier company’s website.

2. Seller could have sent two parcels under one AWB No. So if the local courier has only one parcel, they will wait for the other one to reach them.

3. Uncontrollable external events – Due to some natural calamities, or transport strike etc., it could have been delayed. In such cases, the tracking status should be mentioned as ‘delayed’.

4. This is something extraordinary. The parcel could have been delivered to some other home, where some people do live with your name.

Yes! It happens.

Sometimes, the person with your name, who has received your parcel mistakenly, may call and tell you about that, as the seller could have mentioned your Mobile No. in the ‘To address’.

But most of the time, it won’t happen.

What’d you do in that situation?

If the tracking status is mentioned as ‘delivered’, call the concerned courier person and tell him, that he had delivered to wrong address or you didn’t get the parcel.

If you can’t contact the courier person then, call the seller and say that you haven’t received the parcel, but the tracking status was found to be ‘delivered’. He will take the necessary steps.

All the issues that I have come across are exposed to you now. If none of these issues happen to you, then well and good, you’re not unlucky. The courier person will come to your doorstep and ask you to pay for the item you ordered through COD. Once you pay the said amount, you will be delivered your package.

But in some places, some couriers call the buyer to come to their office to pay and receive the package. It’s happening for me too, as Bhavani is still not a city.

The post How to choose an online shopping site? Difficulties faced in it? appeared first on Lenzfire.

Though there are several reasons that can be outlined for buying PC components online. I’d like to mention 2 major reasons.

1.     Availability

2.     Affordability

If there are a few major reasons, then there should be some minor reasons such as

1.     We can read real user reviews

2.     Delivery at doorstep

3.     7 – 30 day replacement or money back guarantee

4.     Unboxing and assembling thrill / suspense

5.     No hidden costs or marketing executive cheating

6.     Original and new products

7.     Warranty for each and individual items

8.     EMI facility

I’m not compelling you to go for online shopping. Why?

Because there are some downsides too.

Are they really unavoidable?

No. You can easily get pass through it.

Why people fear to do online shopping?

Because, they have 3 fears lying deep inside them. Let me pull them out one by one.

1. What will I do, if the seller doesn’t ship the item after I pay for it?

Can that really happen?

Yes! It does.

Then how can I find some websites that I can trust, to buy online?

There are no magic rules to find such sites.

EBay, Tradus, Flipkart, Bitfang, TheITDepot, Techshop are some of the reliable sites to buy.

Some other sites are also there but I haven’t purchased anything from them yet, so I didn’t mention them here.

Desidime.com is a deals sharing website, which has a helpful community in its forum. Members of that community are called by the name Dimers.

The forum allows any new dimer to post deals or ask questions about reliability of shops.

Normally I prefer the above said websites, to buy computer components. But if I had found any attractive deal from a new website, then I would post that deal in the forum. Dimers will vote for that or reply. From that I can judge about the reliability of the website easily.

You can wipe out this fear easily by buying any smaller component like pen drive or mouse etc. to do a test-purchase from the website.

2. Cancellation of order or refund of money

Most of the websites send your money back within a week, if they or you cancel your order.

I wish to share my experience (in this regard) with you.

A few years back, I was searching for AM2+ motherboard for my desktop AMD Athlon 7850 X2 processor. Since they are very rare to find, I was compelled to buy from new websites, which I hadn’t heard before. At those times, websites like Flipkart and Bitfang were not selling AM2+ motherboards.

Accidentally I found a decent AM2+ motherboard in AnythingInIt.com website. So without any research about the website, I ordered and paid the amount through debit card.

For about a week the order was in “processing” stage. After that I lost my patience and sent them an email, reminding about that order. After 2 days, I received a call from them saying, “Sorry sir, we don’t have that model. But we have another one which is costlier than that, but we will give you for the same price you paid”. Actually a normal PC user would think, wow! This is a great deal. I too thought the same. They asked me to check it on the website before confirming.

So, I proceeded to their website, the alternative board was priced at Rs.400 more. But it doesn’t seem worth, for the price mentioned in their website.

It’s quite natural that some range of components would be cheaper in one shop and some would be cheaper in another shop. Another reason, why I rejected that board was it had NVidia chipset. I was looking for AMD chipset, to use AMD overdrive software.

I called and informed them that I don’t want the alternative board. Then I asked for my refund. They also said that my money will be credited back to my account in 10-15 days. But even after 30 days, it didn’t appear.

Then I called them, since it was weekend they didn’t attend. A woman (may be his wife) or someone unrelated to his business attended and asked me to call later.

Then I sent him an email, addressing this issue. After a few days, he replied, “I didn’t accept the money you paid, so it should have been returned by now. The money is not with me”.

Then after 60 days from the order date, when I went to my bank for another work, I asked a representative about this issue. He asked me to fill up a form. After that within 4days, the amount got credited back to my account.

This type of experience has not happened just once or twice but many times. Of course not only in online shopping – it happens even in an ATM, if your time is not good.

When you buy 100 times online some 5-8 times it goes like this. We should understand such things and maintain our patience.

3. Returns and Replacements

The third fear for people to buy online is returning the product, if it doesn’t work or if it has any damage.

Websites like eBay.in gives 7 day return policy. It doesn’t mean you have to return it within 7 days, but you have to inform about the damage or not-working condition and should have filed the return process within 7 days, whereas websites like Flipkart allows 30 day return policy.

To return such damaged or unsatisfied goods, call and tell the seller about the issue. They will ask you to send the goods back in the same condition as if it was received (packing, invoice and all). Some shops refund you the return shipping charges too, in some cases the buyer should bear that. But once they receive the product, they will refund you the money or send you a replacement.

The post 3 Fears Restricting Buyers from Online Shopping in India appeared first on Lenzfire.

So, now it’s the time to jotter down some tips on that. But before moving into the actual procedure, I wish that you’d know ‘Why cleaning your PC is so important?‘

Why you’d clean your PC regularly?

To simply put, to keep your PC running!

Surprised!

Yes, it’s human tendency to not take precious care of anything until it shows some flaws. Also we cannot handle it as casually as we did, once it shows some flaws.

Is PC cleaning that important?

Obviously yes! But, why?

1.     To improve life of each computer component

2.     To maintain the health and speed of your PC

3.     To avoid unnecessary data loss and repair costs

What will happen if you don’t clean your PC?

To be specific, dusts are the chief enemy of sufficient airflow inside the cabinet.

If these dusts obstruct the airflow severely then components like Processor, RAM, Graphic cards will get overheated.

If they are overheated constantly then the life of each component will considerably be reduced.

If you’re an advanced user, who overclocks his/her processor then the overheating effect will be much severe for you.

These dusts, when left over a prolonged time, will enter into the joints of RAM slot, HDD slot, making them to work slower than their default capability.

Sometimes dust will even stop the fans from rotating.

Are you feared? Good. So are you ready to clean your PC right now.

How to clean the inside parts of your computer cabinet?

You can do it easily, if you have a blower/vacuum cleaner.

What’d you use, if you don’t have one? Use a long haired soft brush and clean gently in one direction. After every wipe clean the brush with a cloth to remove the dust as well the accumulated static electricity.

If you have air pump, you can use that too, but a Vacuum cleaner / Blower is highly recommended.

Caution: Don’t start to disassemble your computer’s individual components, because it’s unnecessary and risky too.

How to carry out the Basic cleaning process?

Before starting to clean your computer, first switch off power and disconnect all the wires that are connecting to your cabinet at the back.

Step 1:

Let’s start from outside of the cabinet. Using a cloth, wipe out the dust from the sides of the cabinet including the ventilation holes. After cleaning it, unscrew one side (mostly left side, when you face the cabinet from front) of the cabinet and gently keep it aside.

Don’t feel astonished to see the amount of dust inside your cabinet!

Step 2:

Now switch on your vacuum cleaner and keep it at 1 foot from the motherboard and suck all the dust.

But see to that you don’t make the fans (including the processor fan) to rotate at high speeds when you use vacuum cleaner to clean the dust. If that happens, then reverse current will flow to your mother board which may damage it.

Once you have sucked out all the dust using a vacuum cleaner, switch it off and keep it aside

Step 3:

Now take a cotton cloth and start to wipe the dust from the wires connecting between the mother board and the components

Be cautious!

Do it gently, in such a manner that it doesn’t damage the cables connected between the mother board and the components.

Also see to that you don’t pull out any connector from the motherboard or from the components connected to it.

Once you have done that, it’s the time to blow out all the dust. So now take your cabinet outside of your home or upstairs, along with the vacuum cleaner.

Step 4:

Switch on your vacuum cleaner in blower mode and blow out all the dust from the components and the motherboard.

Caution: As I said before see to that you hold the fans from rotating when you blow out.

Now from the back, blow out the dust from your SMPS, while keeping the SMPS fan still (To keep it still, you may use a small stick, or hold it by your bare hands).

Now come to the front and blow out your optical drives and floppy drives if any.

Again, keep your vacuum cleaner at 1 foot from the motherboard and blow out all the dust that could have accumulated when you were cleaning the other components.

At any stage of the cleaning process, don’t place the vacuum cleaner very near to the components, because it will create an electrostatic charge, which will cause certain damage to your computer components and motherboard.

Step 5:

If any dust remains even after this, don’t show your anger to your computer.

Remain calm!

Use a cotton cloth to wipe that dust off.

If it remains still, then let it be. It won’t harm your computer, because if you try hard to remove such dust, definitely you will cause some damage to your computer components.

Step 6 – I:

Now, bring your computer back and fit the removed side of your cabinet.

Connect all the wires at the back and switch ON your computer to test whether your computer works.

If it does, then it means, you have successfully completed the task. This completes the basic cleaning of dust from your cabinet.

How to do the Advanced cleaning process?

Now let me tell you the advanced cleaning methods for your computer.

After completing the basic method (i.e. Step 5), don’t put the removed side of the cabinet back (don’t do step 6 – I), because we have some other job to do yet.

Step 6 – II:

First thing is to remove the RAM from RAM slots.

Using the blower, blow out the dust from the RAM and RAM slots. See to that you use smaller diameter couplers in vacuum cleaners, so that you can concentrate on a particular area like RAM slot.

Step 7:

Repeat the same procedure for graphic cards too. While cleaning the copper plate, which goes inside the slots, be sure to wipe out using the cloth in only one direction.

Step 8:

Now, we are going to clean the heat sink and the fan above the Processor.

While blowing out the processor fan make sure, it doesn’t rotate.

While cleaning the heat sink, blow air on all the four sides.

Step 9:

If you still want to be more perfect, in cleaning your computer, you may remove the dust from every connector.

To do it easily, disconnect one connector or each connector, at a time and clean it separately using a blower followed by sucker mode and reconnect it back.

Why I am saying this is, if you disconnect all the connectors at once, after cleaning them, you may get confused on ‘how to connect all of them back?’

Step 6 – I (same as above I- 6th Step)

Once this is done, put the removed side of the cabinet back and connect all the wires at the rear back again. Now switch on the power and also your computer. Check, whether it works normally.

If you want to compare the temperature of your processor or rpm of the fan, then download and install a hardware monitoring software before doing the cleaning process.

Note down all the values such as processor temperature, rpm of the fans before and after the cleaning process separately, so that you can compare the results and check whether any improvements can be seen after cleaning your computer.

The post Day 25 – 9 Easy Steps to Clean Motherboard and other Components of Computer? appeared first on Lenzfire.

These are the methods used by experts to beginners, who wish to research a bit before buying a new PC or upgrading it.

Basically there are 3 methods

1.     Benchmark software

2.     Forum

3.     User reviews

What is benchmarking?

Let us assume that the fastest person in the world can run at 50 kmph and if you can run at 20 kmph, here comes the benchmark, so you are comparing yourself to the fastest person through some graph or values.

In benchmark software, we are going to compare our desired processor or motherboard graphic card to the nearly priced ones or the fastest ones.

From this we can easily know the comparative performance of similarly priced processors or graphic cards etc.

By comparing the benchmark of your existing processor with the one you are going to buy, you can find out how fast the new processor is, than your existing processor.

There are several benchmark software available presently but some benchmark software do the benchmark for all the components such as processor, motherboard, RAM etc. Some benchmark software compares graphic card performance or 3D performance specifically.

Before you get a professor in hand how can you do that benchmark?

There are several reliable sites in internet that delivers unbiased review of pc components.

Here at LenZFire, I am going to publish such reviews about budget range processors, graphic cards and motherboard soon.

Benchmarks results are two types.

1. Lower is better

Here the benchmark results will mostly be measured in time or seconds. So the lesser the time a processor takes to complete a task, the faster the processor.

2. Higher is better

Here the benchmark results may be in score or fps etc., where higher the score, faster the processor. Most of the benchmark results will be of this type.

Here are some common Benchmarks used widely

1. PC Mark Vantage
2. Cinebench 10
3. POVRAY
4. Fritz Chess Benchmark
5. ScienceMark 2.0
6. Prime95 
7. SuperPi
8. HD Tach 3
9. HD Tune 4
10. Sisoft Sandra Lite
11. Everest Ultimate
12. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
13. DiRT2
14. BattleForge
15. Unigine Heaven

These are some of the famous websites, which publish reviews, once a new processor or graphic card is released

1. Tom’s Hardware Reviews
   
2. AnandTech
   
3. Overclockers Club
4. HardOCP
5. Hardware Canucks
6. Guru3D.com
   
7. X-bit labs
8. Bit-Tech

Why’d we use Benchmarks?

Let me put a question before you.

Assume that I have given you AMD FX8350 and Intel Core i7 3770K processors.

• FX 8350 has 8 integer cores and 4 floating point cores running at 4 GHz clock speed
• Core i7 3770K has 4 integer cores and 4 floating point cores running at 3.5 GHz clock speed

So now, can you say me which one is faster without seeing any benchmarks?

Yes, you can! If you know their performances previously else it’s not possible to judge correctly, because FX 8350 has more cores and higher clock speed, but yet Core i7 is faster. Why?

It’s because of difference in architecture. So unless we compare the benchmark results, we cannot predict the performance and reliability of PC components with their specifications.

Not only that, we can also do clock by clock performance to find out the improvement in architecture from the old generation to new generation computer hardware.

Benchmark software also helps us to find the single core performance of a multi core processor.

Some processors may be faster in certain areas, for e.g. AMD processors are usually faster than similarly priced Intel processors in 7zip compression, h264 media decoding and other highly threaded applications or benchmark software. This is because AMD offers more cores at the same price than Intel.

Intel processors perform well in many other benchmarks such as gaming benchmarks, Cinebench single threaded, etc. This is because we don’t need anything more than 4 cores for games. So single core performance, mainly decides the best performing processor.

Once you start to read the reviews of processors, you will understand lot many things like this. So, let’s enter into the next category.

How to use Forums?

There are lots and lots of computer hardware forums available around the world, but in India, famous computer hardware forums are less.

When you wish to buy a new computer component for a budget, you may post questions in it.

Users of those forums will reply you within a few hours. After reading their replies you can come to a decision.

But this a bit time consuming process for beginners. Still, most of the issues should be answered already, in the forums. So your job is to just search your question in Google and find the answer in forums.

How to decide through User reviews?

Several websites like Flipkart, provides a space for user feedback or reviews on products sold in India. They also provide ratings for products for a total of five stars.

So if a product has large number of higher ratings, it means the product is good.

If you still want to dig deep, you may scroll down and read the reviews, where you can find the exact detail about pros and cons of a product from the previous buyers.

Suppose if you can’t find enough number of reviews, but if you believe that the product may be good and suitable for you, what will you do?

Move to foreign websites like Newegg and read the user reviews written there. If you’re happy with it buy it here, in India.

How to approach user reviews?

After you’re satisfied with a product’s specification and price you’d move on to user reviews. After reading one or two positive reviews, stop there. Try to find and read all negative reviews. Decide whether those negatives can be compromised.

Some negative reviews may not be true for various reasons.

Eg: I have bought a screen guard for my mobile and pasted it on my screen. It got scratched even when I nail it with my fingers. I got upset and written a negative review for that. Later I found that I didn’t remove the upper layer. I thought of editing my feedback, but I haven’t done it till date.

Also nothing can be 100% perfect. Some person could have got a defective piece and instead of replacing it, they could have left a negative comment.

So read all the negative comments or user reviews and segregate the real / unreal ones, then check whether those real negatives can be compromised for your use.

If you feel the above methods are tedious!

Buying guide for computer hardware will be ready in a few days at LenZFire.com/Free. You can buy any computer component or design a whole computer configuration easily by yourself, using that guide.

The post Day 24 – How to Buy PC Components without using Buying Guides? appeared first on Lenzfire.

Are you wondering where is cabinet?

It’s none other than your CPU. Then why it is called by the name cabinet. A cabin is an empty space, which gives you space to accommodate something, likewise, cabinets give you various different types of spaces to accommodate motherboard, SSD, HDD, optical drives, PSU etc.

What are the common problems faced in a cheap cabinet?

The first problem you ever face with any cheap cabinet is the failure of front USB ports. Next is the failure of the PSU that came with the cheap cabinet.

Beyond these, there are several indirect problems that may be caused by it. They are

1.     Insufficient air flow, owing to cheap fans or no fans inside it

2.     Mild shocks, if not earthed properly

3.     Random reboots (low quality PSU)

4.     Cheap build quality

5.     No sufficient room for PSU wires or cables

6.     No additional screws or cables

7.     No support for front eSATA or USB 3.0 ports

8.     No room for additional larger fans

9.     No room for larger graphic cards

Some cabinets even bend, when you add heavyweight PSUs, like mine.

Why you’d invest more in cabinets?

Let us assume that a user has 25k budget. He would allocate the processor and motherboard the most part of his budget.

Yes! It’s not a bad thing.

But have you thought about an undeniable fact?

A cabinet is the one which is not needed to be changed for years, if it’s maintained well. Then why shouldn’t you invest more in that?

I’m not advising you to buy a 5k or 10k cabinet, but at least 2k to 2.5k.

What will you get in a budget branded cabinets?

1.     Solid build quality

2.     Lots of room for expansion

3.     Latest features like front USB 3.0 ports

4.     Sufficient airflow, which gives longer life for processor and graphic cards

5.     Additional room for larger coolers

6.     May be a separate room for PSU cables

Corsair, Cooler Master, Antec, Thermaltake are some of the good companies in cabinet manufacturing. My recommendation is Corsair Carbide 300R cabinet.

What is a cooler?

A cooler may be a CPU cooler or additional cabinet fans.

Generally processors come with a stock CPU cooler, which is of normal quality. If you want to maintain a still cooler temperature for your processor you’d go for an aftermarket cooler.

Why’d you go for an aftermarket cooler?

During the initial days of the course, I’ve said that you can instantaneously improve the speed of your computer through overclocking. Now I’m going to detail you about that.

What is overclocking?

Normally we address the speed of the processor by clock speed.

Do you know what actually happens inside the processor?

Every processor has a base clock on which the FSB, including the RAM works. But each of them has their own multiplier and that’s why their resultant clock speed differs.

So if you increase their individual multipliers then you can change their individual clock speed.

But if you change the base clock of the processor then the total bus frequency will be increased, which will increase the resultant clock speed of all the components that are connected to the bus.

To explain this better, assume three persons A, B and C are on an escalator, which is moving at 10kmph.

• A is standing still
• B is moving at 10kmph on it. So his net speed is 10+10=20kmph
• C is moving at 30 kmph (just assume). So his net speed is 10+30=40kmph

Now if I want to change the individual net speed of C, I can raise his speed from 30 to 35kmph. Instead, if I increase the escalator speed by 5kmph, then the net speed of all, A, B and C will be increased by 5kmph.

You may ask me, isn’t that good?

Certainly not. Because your processor may overclock higher, but your RAM may not be that much efficient in overclocking. So, we should consider all these factors while overclocking.

You may also think why can’t we increase the multiplier then?

Yes you can, but only if you’re allowed to.

Confused?

Your processor manufacture should have allowed you to change it. It means you’d have bought an unlocked processor, which means unlocked multiplier.

All the FX lines of AMD processors come with unlocked multiplier, but not all of its APU line up.

So how to find that?

If your processor model number ends with ‘k’ then you have unlocked multiplier, else you don’t have. This applies to both Intel and AMD.

If you have all of these requirements, then your processor should have sufficient cooling facilities for better overclocking, else you can attain as low as 100MHz improvement only.

Last year, AMD had set a Guinness world record on processor overclocking with liquid helium cooler. Just see this video. The liquid helium is poured from pipes, which gets evaporated as soon as it’s been poured.

Don’t think you need such a cooler to overclock. Aftermarket coolers are available from as low as Rs.500. But to buy a decent air cooler you need to spend at least Rs.2000.

Some of the famous brands are Cooler Master, Thermal take, Corsair, Antec etc. You can also buy liquid coolers from Rs.3500. But air cooler is more than sufficient for a normal budget user and also they last longer.

You may buy a decent cooler, not only for overclocking, but also to improve the processor life as well as to reduce the noise that comes from the smaller CPU fans.

The post Day 23 – Why do we need a branded cabinet and coolers? appeared first on Lenzfire.

Normally, when we look at a desktop computer we don’t notice the presence of keyboard and mouse, because they are usually placed on a slider beneath the monitor. So they are visible, only when the slider is moved out.

But when we sit before our computer, our hands will get itself placed on mouse and keyboard automatically, unnoticed by ourselves. This actually means a fact that we spend our most part of time with keyboard and mouse, when we use or interact with our computer.

But still, budget PC users don’t invest a decent amount of money in keyboard and mouse.

Why?

Because they don’t want to inflate their budget unnecessarily.

But, is it really unnecessary?

Certainly not.

A budget user wishes to have a colourful display, a faster processor, a feature rich motherboard, high capacity RAM, but he / she doesn’t care about their comfort.

Are you one among them?

So, How much you should you spend for a Keyboard and Mouse?

There is no certain answer for that.

But if you ask me, I will advise you to spend, at least Rs.1500 for keyboard and mouse combo for a casual user.

With that budget you have 2 options.

1.           Feature rich, comfortable, wired keyboard and mouse

2.           Mediocre wireless keyboard and mouse

Why we need a keyboard and mouse actually?

Keyboard and mouse are the peripheral devices of the computer, which have feelings, because, without them you cannot interact with computer, so easily.

Most of us will feel that Mouse is the most necessary device than keyboard, but the real fact is, you can do most of the tasks so easily and faster with keyboard than a mouse. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need mouse.

During the initial stages of the course, I’ve said that most of the old peoples don’t use keyboard at all, for day to day usages.

Even my Dad does so! (He has been handling computers for the past 2 decades).

Even, I was like him a few years before.

When I was studying in my collage, one of my friends asked me, “What’s the shortcut to open ‘My Computer’ without using mouse?”

I just got stunned and realised that I had missed knowing about such an important section in computer (Keyboard shortcuts). Don’t worry I’ll not bore you now by teaching those things.

Why’d you practice to use Keyboard often?

I wish to share another experience of mine with you all.

Once, when I visited an uncle’s house, he asked me to guide him to do video chat with his son, who was in a foreign country, through Internet.

I asked him to enter into his Gmail account. While entering into that he was searching for some number in keyboard.

After a while, I lost my patience and I asked him his password and typed myself.

When I had completed entering the password, he just starred at me.

I asked him, “why are you starring at me?”

He replied that he didn’t know that a Number pad section was available in keyboard, until that.

I have said this, just to make you understand a fact that when you don’t practice to use a keyboard often, you will make some easier jobs into tougher ones mouse.

Keeping these things aside, let’s enter into our core topic.

What are the latest advancements in keyboard and mouse?

Earlier, wireless mouse and keyboards were costly, but now they cost almost similar or just double, compared to the price of wired ones.

To avoid cluttering of wires behind the back of your computer table and to have more comfort, I always suggest wireless ones.

For example, when you watch videos, you can take the keyboard along with you to your sofa, to control the media player remotely.

Though there are different varieties of latest keyboard and mouse are available, they are not affordable for a normal budget user, so I just wish to share with you the different types of keyboards available.

1.     Ergonomic keyboards – better comfort and elegant

2.     Wireless keyboards – portable and can be used as remote

3.     Extra Function keys – e.g. Multimedia or Internet keyboards

The post Day 22 – Why do we need a keyboard and mouse? What are the latest advancements? appeared first on Lenzfire.

What is the main purpose of the monitor that you’re going to buy?

1. Office applications

2. Internet

3. Multimedia consumption

4. Media creation

5. Gaming

Office applications

For this segment of users, the monitor should have as much higher resolution as possible.

But why?

Larger the resolution, larger the working area!

So for example, let us assume that your monitor has a resolution of 1366×768, then you can work on only a single page at a time in MS Word, more than that won’t be visible to you clearly. Another reason is that if the resolution is higher, the smaller text will appear crispy.

For an 11 to 14 inch monitors, 1366×768 is a reasonable resolution, but for a 20 inch monitor it’s a low resolution. Similarly 1920 x 1080 is a reasonable resolution for 21 inch monitors.

Internet

Nowadays most of the websites have a separate design for mobile website mobile optimized responsive design. So, for viewing webpages, you don’t need a resolution more than 1366×768. But if the monitor can display deeper blacks and brighter whites then the display will be pleasant for the eyes.

Multimedia consumption

For this segment, users should see many things, while buying a monitor. They are:-

1. Full HD resolution

2. Higher dynamic contrast ratio

3. Deeper blacks

4. Maximum brightness that the monitor can deliver

5. Saturation or colour accuracy

6. Monitor size – as large as possible

7. Viewing angles

8. Tilting arrangement

9. Anti-Glare screen

Full HD resolution helps in better clarity of the video. If you play any video of native full HD resolution in a full HD display then you will feel as if you directly see them in live.

Higher dynamic contrast ratio helps in dynamic adjustment of contrast of videos while playing.

Do you know, what it means?

You need not adjust to a constant contrast on your own. The monitor can adjust the contrast by itself for every scene, so that bleaching of videos can be prevented.

Deeper blacks help in displaying black colours really black, which means the Cinemascope, monitor’s bezel, black region in videos will blend with each other. It will give a real cinematic feel if you switch off your room lights and watch the video.

• The monitor should be capable of delivering a decent amount of brightness. Most of the times, we use monitors inside our house, so a decent amount of brightness level will do the job. But if you want to use the monitor outside the house in direct sunlight then you’d buy a monitor with maximum brightness.
• Saturation comes along with vibrancy controls. Higher vibrancy will produce artificial colours but they will please your eyes. For example when you watch films like Avatar, if you increase the vibrancy then those violet colours and pink will be displayed in a more saturated way. It may not look real but it will be pleasing for your eyes.
• Normally when viewing films or videos, we watch it from a certain distance. So, larger the monitor, better the video.

Viewing angles play a major role when more persons watch the monitor at a time. Normally 1 to 2 persons can watch video in a monitor with narrow viewing angle. But, when a whole family is viewing a film in a monitor, viewing angle of 170° is preferable. This comes normally in any IPS display.

Tilting arrangement will be helpful for you if you work in the monitor at various positions. For example, when I feel sleepy, I used to tilt the monitor completely up and then I’ll stand and work. Also I feel much more comfortable with that type of working.

Anti-glare screen comes into action when you place your computer opposite to windows or lights. This type of screen does not reflect the image rather they diverge it.

Media creation

People working in this area, normally uses multi monitor setup. So they buy 2 or 3 monitors with same resolution and size. Beyond that they need exact colour accuracy. For colour accuracy I will always suggest performance range Asus monitors, they are a bit costly but they produce Whiter whites.

Gamers

Gamers usually need fast response monitors to avoid ghost effect, while playing games and to take advantage of their faster graphic card, if they have one. A budget gamer may not need more than 5ms (millisecond) response. But if you have more budget for monitor then you may prefer a 2ms response monitor, lower the ms faster the response.

These are the things that you should be aware of before buying a monitor.

Tomorrow let’s see some interesting things about keyboard and mouse.

The post Day 21 – What are the Important Aspects to see before Buying a Monitor? appeared first on Lenzfire.