The Official Computer Problems/Advices Thread

[Ludark]

Guys, can you help me decide between Asus and Dell? I like both but the problem I have here is whether I want to go for the cheaper option or one with a better processor. 

 

The laptop I'm using now is Asus with an i3 core processor but I want to buy another one so that my dad and brother don't have to share my laptop. My dad doesn't need it for anything else other than surfing the web and the same thing goes with my brother so I was thinking maybe an Intel Pentium would be fine? Yes, no? As you've already figured, I know nothing. 

 

The two laptops are:

Dell with and i3 core processor for $320 or Asus with Intel Pentium for $250. Both are 15.6 inches and comes with Windows 10, not sure if that matters. 

I will say first that I am not an expert on laptops.

Now I don't think that the processor is going to matter much if you are only planning to do some web surfing and maybe some light work(microsoft office and the like).

 

But a few recommendations, make sure the screen resolution is at least 1080p(Full HD) as many cheap laptops have sub 1080p screens and that won't look good if you plan to watch any sort of video on it

Also make sure that the laptop has at least 4gb of ram, more if you think your brother or father will end up with more than like 10 tabs of chrome open at a time.

 

The following is a bit more situational but you might want to consider it as well:

 

 

Storage medium: Hard drive (HDD) vs solid state drive (SSD)

 

SSD's ares much faster in terms of boot times for both the laptop itself and programs but will have much less storage capacity than HDD's, if going with a SSD I would recommend one that has at least 128 gb and you will most likely need an external drive if you plan to store photos and videos

 

HDD's while much slower than SSD's will typically offer much more storage capacity for programs and things like photos and videos, if the laptop your father and brother are sharing is more than a few years old this is also likely the type of storage they are using in that, so that is what you should expect speed wise.

 

Battery life, if you can always hook up the laptop to the wall you can ignore this otherwise you might want to look up reviews on just battery life it offers.

 

 

[Ludark]

If it's the fan, what do I need to do?

I will assume this is a desktop, if it's a laptop then you will just need to bring it in for repair

 

First of all make sure the fan isn't hitting anything inside your case this should be pretty obvious.

Now assuming it's not and assuming it's your cpu fan it depends on whether it happens whenever you boot up your pc or only under load when running heavier programs like games.

 

If it is the former replace the fan as it probably has gone bad, make sure the replacement fan fits on your heatsink and provides adequate cooling though, alternatively you could replace the heatsink as well and get an entirely new cpu cooler, that might be better but will require more work.

 

If it is the latter, then I will ask you if your pc is particularly dusty by any chance?, if so get a can of compressed air and clean out your pc, do not use a vacuum cleaner or hair dryer as that can damage your pc.

If this doesn't work just replace the fan, it's quite possible that the dust damaged the ball bearings in the fan.

 

If it's not your cpu fan but a case fan just replace it, if it's the fan on something else like a graphics card or your power supply then you are probably out of luck unless you are very sure about what you are doing.