-Computer Building and Maintenance Tips and Tricks

This is not so much of a tutorial as it is a collection of tips and tricks I've learned or discovered with building and maintaining computers over the years. This isn't a guide on how to build or fix things, but could supplement one to fix your specific problem. Keep in mind that for users who DO NOT plan on overclocking or modding their PC, much of this may not apply.



Computer Hardware:

- Static Electricity:
- As many people know, static electricity can damage computer parts, especially the more expensive ones. The safest way to reduce this risk is to wear a grounding strap, but this is not always available or very convenient, so here are some tips for reducing your risk.
- Discharge yourself often on metal surfaces, if you feel any static built up (hairs standing up especially) stop whatever you're doing and ground yourself.
- Your case can be used as a ground in some cases, especially if the computer is plugged in.
- Wear clothes that don't cling or pick up static when you work, work in a room without a carpet, and avoid working in very dry conditions.
- Keep components in anti static bags when in storage and put them on the bags, hard plastic surfaces, or cardboard/paper when storing them temporarily. Make sure they are out of the way of where you are working and off of the ground.





- Purchasing hardware (the most important part of building a computer):
- Do your homework. Know exactly what parts you are getting, know that they are compatible, know where to find drivers and support for every piece, and know what each part's return policy is.
- Look up your parts, especially RAM and large CPU coolers, on a search engine to see if anyone has complained about them. Often motherboards can be picky as to what they will run and recognize properly, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble by picking parts that are known to be compatible.
- Be prepared to troubleshoot, especially if you're using a lot of non-stock parts. Strange combinations can cause strange problems, know where you can find help and research problems people have had with your parts before you attempt your build.

- Assembly Order: When building your PC, plan out how you will assemble it so everything fits and you don't get to the final step and discover you're missing a piece, or something won't fit.

- Lapping: - Lapping can be extremely helpful in keeping your temps down, even if not overclocking. It is common to see some benefit from lapping on most systems.
- Lapping takes time and patience, start with smaller sandpaper grit numbers and work your way up to a mirror shine or close.
- Use a flat surface and a flat piece of sandpaper, to further minimize the risk of making an improper angle, use circular sanding motions and change where you apply pressure from your hand regularly.
- Lapping of a CPU is entirely viable and often helps more than lapping a heatsink with a good finish. Keep in mind that it will effectively erase all the stepping information, so it is helpful to copy it down. NEVER lap a CPU with no metal cover called an IHS, Core 2 Duo, Athlon X2, and Pentium 4 CPUs all have them, along with many others, but on a CPU like an Athlon XP, lapping will assuredly destroy your CPU.
- Generally, Lapping should start around 600 grit sandpaper and work up to 2000 for a polished finish. It is possible to lap with only very fine sandpaper (1000+ grit) but it may take much longer, as it is possible to lap with coarser grit (320 and above, the picture is of 320 -> 600) to get good results, but you must be far more careful and will not get as nice of a finish.





- Overclocking: - Overclock your CPU in BIOS. Some applications like AMD's Overdrive utility do a fair job of in-OS OCing, but BIOS is best.
- Gradually work your way up in clockspeed, and do some stability checking in your OS before turning it up another notch. This way, when you hit your limit, you will get a crash in the OS and not in BIOS or before, so it is much easier to revert your settings.
- Stress testing is key. After you reach your speed check for stability. Use something like Orthos 2004, Prime95, or SuperPi and make sure the final stress test loads all of your CPU cores. Monitor temperatures during this to make sure your CPU doesn't cook and makes it through the test. Half an hour of Orthos on every core is good for everyday use, but it really only qualifies as a stable OC if you test for 6 hours or more. Some people test for a day or more under full load.
- Voltage is what moves the clockspeed wall up, but it is also what usually damages your CPU. Keep the increments small and know what is too much. Monitoring temps as you go can help tell you what voltage is too high.
- Overclocking your PCI/PCI-E bus has literally no impact on system performance (and may make it less stable). On AMD systems, the speed of the HT link also doesn't matter much, so don't mind keeping it at or even below stock.
- Most systems use a memory divider to find the memory clock. If you hit a wall with your CPU, make sure that lowering the divider doesn't give you extra room to go, as that would indicate that the memory speed was holding back your overclock


Air Cooling:





- Fans:
- High power fans usually come at a price..... noise. If you want a quiet case, look for fans with low dB or Sone ratings which still push a fair amount of air. Generally speaking, lower RPMs, lower noise.
- Larger slow fans can move just as much air with less noise, and larger fast fans can move far more. Keep this in mind when buying a case or CPU cooler.
- Fans can and do wear out (see picture). If your hear more noise than when they were new, it may be a sign to replace them. If they stop spinning all together, it could be a sign of a more serious problem or could just be a loss in cooling efficiency. It is a good idea to keep RPM monitoring and beep alerts on the important fans in your system (CPU, maybe GPU), as one of them failing can mean a roasted computer.

- Heatsinks:
- Copper conducts heat better, Aluminum dissipates it better. Just because something is copper doesn't necessarily make it a better heatsink, it just means it weighs more.
- Lapping (as mentioned above) can be helpful, but most heatsinks now are milled to good tolerances and it is not as common as earlier years.
- Fanless heatsinks are silent, but usually require some case airflow. If you want to make a fanless system plan on buying lower-power parts and potentially undervolting.
- When it comes to cooling, you need to wick away the heat quickly and the dissipate it. More fan surface area is better for dissipation, but generally copper cores and heatpipes are best for wicking heat away from the CPU.
- Passive heatsinks generally have more space between their fins, while active ones generally have more fins in a smaller area. Keep this in mind if you are switching from the heatsink's original purpose.
- Ramsinks help, but generally don't let you overclock much more. Ram in general never gets terribly hot, so it doesn't benefit as much from very good cooling solutions.





- Airflow:
- Try to keep the fans in your case balanced, having too many inputs or too many outputs can lead to inefficiency in case cooling. If you have to have a significant imbalance, it is better to have more fans pushing out, as it will suck air in through other case holes.
- Heat rises and collects in areas which generate it, having exhaust fans in the top of your case and near the CPU and graphics card is both logical and effective.
- Heatsinks often perform the same regardless of which direction the fan is facing (suck vs. blow) you can use your CPU fan to cool motherboard components or even aid in exhaust.
- Fans with restricted intakes or outputs make more noise, keeping the area free and the fan grilles unobtrusive can quiet your case and make it cool better.
- Filters on intake fans is great, especially in highly trafficked areas or with the tower on the floor. Granted they need to be cleaned every month or two, but they keep your components clean and your heatsinks performing well.


Water Cooling:

- Hydrodynamics (this includes no math):
- Water (or coolant) is the main element in any water cooling system and it obeys some unchangeable laws. By keeping them in mind when building your loop, you reduce the problems you may have and make a higher performing system.
- Restriction happens at every waterblock, radiator, and junction. If you want more than one block serially in your loop (daisy chained), look for less restrictive parts. Too much restriction means your pump works harder but pushes less coolant through your system. Too little restriction generally doesn't perform as well.
- Gravity is all important in water cooling. Ideally, you want your reservoir to be the highest point in your loop and your pump to be the lowest. Reducing the distance from the bottom to the top of your loop will give you better performance.
- Bubbles stay in for some time and often have to be coaxed out of a loop. Tilting your computer in different directions can help, but having a strong pump and a gravity fed radiator works best. You are most likely to get bubbles in the radiator and in the top areas of your pump and waterblocks.
- High pressure systems (generally more restrictive systems) are often noisier and put more strain on the pump. While these can be the highest performance, they work best in single waterblock loops and with high performance users.
- When you need to change or drain the coolant (and you will) you may find it hard to get out of a closed loop. Adding in a bleed tube that is closed off from the lowest part of your setup is a good idea, and remember that for water to drain, it needs air to come in and replace it. I like to keep some extra tubing on my reservoir so I can raise it up and open the fillport to let in air when I bleed the system from the lower tube.





- Choosing parts:
- Choosing the parts in your system dictates how often you have to service it, how well it performs, how noisy it will be, and how much it costs. Basically all of the important aspects.
- Coolant comes in many styles and colors. I prefer non-conductive coolant as if you have a leak it does not fry your expensive computer, but other coolants generally perform better. The classic homebrew coolant is 15% antifreeze 85% distilled water, but it requires changing every 6 months. More expensive synthetic coolants often have anti-algal, anti-corrosive, and lubricating properties but are much more expensive. Consider viscosity when you buy, the higher the viscosity, the lower the overall flow rate in your loop.
- Tubing is central to your system, getting the cheap stuff gives you this picture after less than a year of use. Going with Tygon or Clearflex tubing gives your system a longer lifetime, reduces the problem of kinking, reduces coolant evaporation, and reduces some of the problems associated with deteriorating PVC.
- Waterblocks come in many shapes and sizes, get one that fits your parts. Consider the barb size it comes with, the restrictiveness of the block, the performance charts, and the price. Often a block will perform very differently with a different pump/loop situation so reading reviews and paying attention to performance vs. flow rate curves can be very helpful.
- The radiator you choose must be capable of dissipating all of the heat picked up in your loop. This means it has to be effective. A 2 or 3 120mm fan radiator should be a realistic choice (I went with a 3 and mounted it outside the case) as modern systems generate a lot of heat. Remember that any heat not dissipated by the radiator just returns to the waterblocks warmer than before and comes right back.





- Maintenance:
- Listen. If you can hear changes in your pump, sloshing noises, dripping noises, or other noises coming from your loop something is probably awry. Know what your system sounds like and be able to tell when it changes and where it's coming from.
- Keep track of your coolant levels carefully, especially after recent changes in your system. Having an easily visible reservoir is a good way to monitor it.
- Pump RPM or coolant temperature monitoring and alerts can be very helpful in the event of a system failure.
- Foam can build up in the reservoir with some coolants and high flow pumps. Remember that foam is air and it will eventually turn into a larger bubble, make sure it's blown to a safe space in the system to prevent bubbles from forming in your waterblocks and radiator.
- Always have a little spare coolant on hand in case it needs topping off.
- Watch for excessive coolant loss and a leak of ANY size and shut down and unplug your computer at the first sign of trouble. It is better to find out what's wrong and fix it than to loose your hardware or stain your floor from trying to deal with it.


Care for your Components:





- General Maintenance:
- Dusting is important for a computer in almost any environment. Dusting even twice a year can increase the lifetime of your hardware (literally), can reduce the problems you face in the future, keeps your case looking clean, and lets you maintain your OC.
- Not too many parts of a PC wear out very often, but moving ones always wear out faster. Fans, hard drives, optical drives, and pumps all fall into this category. Keep backups of your data on CDs, DVDs, or an external drive and set your motherboard to RPM monitor your fans and pump (if possible). Optical drives aren't generally used as much, but replacing them is fairly common, but is relatively inexpensive. If you use your drive a lot it could be a good idea to buy a CD drive cleaner.
- Keep your system out of the rain, away from food, out of the way of chairs and things, and generally try not to damage it. Most of the time it won't be a problem but you will regret that one-in-a-thousand time that something goes wrong.
- While dusting is important, vacuuming can overspin and damage fans as well as build up static electricity. It's better to use pressurized air (in cans) or a non-static duster.
- Periodically (every couple months) go through a list of your system's hardware and find out if there are any driver updates. Having up-to-date drivers means better features, better performance, and fewer problems with new applications. In the case of some parts, new BIOSes and Firmware can be downloaded to fix problems or add functionality, as it is significantly more dangerous to update these things (but still pretty safe), I would only do that if the feature was important to you or you were experiencing problems.

- Product Lifetime:
- While there is always variance, most PC parts should last at least 5 years if built well and not abused. Most non-moving parts should last for longer, perhaps 10 years if not overstressed, but generally parts are so old then it hardly matters.
- Keep track of how long your warranties last and when they expire. Hard drives typically have a 3-5 year warranty, motherboards typically 1-3, retail CPUs have a 3 year warranty if you use the stock cooler and don't overclock. Many enthusiast aimed companies offer extended warranties and warranties which are not invalidated by overclocking or changing to improved cooling. If you want to have maximum warranty coverage it's an important aspect to consider.
- If you plan on keeping your system without maintenance for 2 or more years, invest in good quality parts. For absolute certainty you can get heatsinks and things which are better than are needed to cool the components, leaving some room for dust and other factors to impede them without damaging the system.
- In general, a system should last for years without interference, but given the chance and some basic know-how, it is always better to keep tabs on your system and keep it clean for it to work the best for the longest time.

- Storage:
- Keep anti static packaging material, foam drive carriers, plastic CPU covers, and other packaging materials so that when you are finished with your components you can store them safely.
- Never store components in a humid or hot environment. If your storage area is prone to flooding, it is worth investing in plastic boxes to store your components. Try to keep your storage organized and pad components where necessary, having a heap of parts will yield a lot of dead parts in that heap if anything shakes it around.
- If you like experimenting with your parts, it helps to have a PS-2 keyboard and a floppy drive in storage somewhere. Even with modern technology some vital part of your computer still relies on them for a basic but important function. I find it helpful to have a dos boot disk and a bootable Memtest86 CD lying around.
- Keep your manuals, accessories, and driver CDs. In the future you may install new drivers only to find a problem with them and have none other to revert to, or you may want to use a feature on your motherboard which it came with cables for, only to find you got rid of all the cables. Keeping these bits with your more important computer stuff can mean fewer headaches and trips to the parts store in the future.



Hopefully some of these tips will help in one of your computer endeavors, many have helped me.




1/9/08