Aerosecurity

I just finished putting my laptop back together after blowing away the dust buildup and decided to let you guys know about a few easy methods of keeping your system at it's peak performance. Most of you already know about, but some of us may not know, so lets share our secrets!

#1) Ventilation

Keep your system cool. Even the best gaming systems can be slowed down by overheating systems. This isn't as much of a problem for desktop users as the laptop users. The reason for this is the amount of space in the computer to allow airflow within your computer. Desktops have a lot of open space for air molecules to absorb the radiating heat off your CPU and GPU. If there is a lot of dust on the inside of your system, then this heat-flow is slowed down, which heats up your CPU/GPU even more. For laptops, there is virtually no space for air to flow, and the fan is not as powerful, so if you get even a little dust in there, your system's performance degrades vastly.

Solutions:
a.) Clean out the dust in your computer every so often (at least every 6 months for desktop users, and 2 to 4 months for laptop users).
b.) Upgrade your cooling system. Instead of getting that $500 graphics card, spend some money on a better cooling system for your computer. I promise you, the increased performance a cooler system gives you will be much greater than any top-of-the-line graphics card (besides, those things will go down in price within the next few months).
c.) (Laptops) Get a cooling pad. This helps by pulling the hot air that builds up under your computer. It may not feel like it's pulling out any hot air, but trust me, it helps. It's not as effective as placing your laptop on top of your AC vent and blasting cold air onto your computer, but it keeps it from overheating just the same. Some cooling pads also come with extra USB ports which is really helpful when you got a lot of external devices.


2.) Fragmentation

This is very often overlooked by computer users. When computers write files to it's hard disks, sometimes there is not enough room to store the entire file, so it breaks it up into two or more pieces and stores these files in different spots on the hard disk. This severely degrades system performance as the hard disk must find all the parts to a single file in order to load it into your RAM.

Solutions:
a.) Use the computer's built-in defragmenter as often as possible. It may take a long time the first time you run it, but it goes by quicker once your computer reduces the fragmentation of your system.
b.) Get professional defragmentation software. I would recommend Diskeeper 2007 Professional. This software not only allows you to manually defrag your system, but it also has an autodefrager which defrags files as they are written to your disk. It also has a boot-time defragmenter which allows the defragmentation of system files that would otherwise be in use. Another use of this software is the ability to move files that are in use more often towards the center of the disk so the harddrive does not have to move as far to read the necessary files. There are many more options available which are not available in the default defragmenters.

3.) Background Programs

Almost all of you know about these, yet sometimes we forget about them. Most background operations can be ignored since they are a minimal strain to the system, but others like MSN Messenger and AIM are a drain on system resources. As a rule of thumb, I close any unimportant programs out of the taskbar(shown below).

Oh, and BTW, iTunes slows down BF2142 too (I've tried )

Solution
a.) Close unnecessary programs and background programs. If necessary, open the task manager (Ctrl + Alt + Delete) and close out any programs and/or processes you feel is safe to close out.


Thats all I can think of at the moment. If you see any errors in this post, feel free to point them out. Also if you have any suggestions of your own, please tell us, I'm sure we could all use a little extra performance.

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Boulderdash

msconfig is your friend. I only have maybe 4 program start at launch.

Tsuoz250rdrK

Thanks! I've been using my laptop for a little over a year and haven't cleaned the dust out. I'm going to try tonight and hopefully I will get better performance.

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Aerosecurity

Actually, I had to clean out my laptop because it would run for 10 minutes in BF2142 then lock up due to the processor overheating. It used to run for about 2 hours before overheating, then i got my cooling pad, and it never overheated. But as time went by, it was taking less and less time for the computer to overheat.

It was getting annoying, quite frankly. So, i finally took my laptop apart and went at it with a can of air. Apparently dust was clogging up the fan and ports where the air came in. I have yet to field test it yet... hmmm, good idea.

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Eroak

Run command: Services.msc

I'm supprized by how many "Computer Techs" don't know of it. Vista I haven't learned yet what is ok to turn off and on. But for WinXP there are a few that you can turn off that will help speed up Boot and clear out up to 100mb of idle RAM. Google for "Services.msc" and you'll find a few sites that will have a list of whats good to turn on and off.

DON'T turn anything off unless you know what your doing. For instance if you turn off "Event log" Windows wont even start and basicly have to run a windows CD repair. So make sure you research what you are doing frist before you do it. I'd provide a list but there is much to explain and I have to run around for some items before easter.

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Aerosecurity

Oh yes, I'm a living testament to the 1st suggestion. I just spent at least an hour, perhaps 3 hours on the TG server with almost no lag (which is usually the case), without my cooling pad, and it didn't freeze up once!

It's amazing how a little bit of dust will completely ruin your computer.

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pedestrian01

I used to do computer repairs for a living and its frightening how dirty some people let their computers get. I remember one guy's comp I opened up to replace the hard drive and I couldn't even see the mobo. He had at least a quarter inch of dust completely covering the inside of the computer. One thing to remember when using compressed air to clean it out though is to shoot it in bursts. Don't just stick the can in your fan ports and blast away. I know people that have damaged their computers doing this. Also make sure you keep the can upright if you turn it over the air comes out as a liquid.

Also for services I have a nice little batch file on my desktop that stops all of the unneeded services I run before I fire up Battlefield. It's pretty easy to do. Once you figure out which services you don't need just open up notepad and type "Net stop servicename" and save it as a .bat file.

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Lorax74

For those of you venturing into your cases for the first time to dust them out, bring a vacuum along with the brush attachment. Vacuum the vents out (including the PSU vents) first before using the compressed air and, if possible, bring your rig outside before using the compressed air. You'd be surprised just how much dust a desktop can collect inside, especially one on the floor in a home with pets.

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Ikariam (Alpha)
Bayhios [35:70] > Truax (c) - Wine
Streardeos [39:70] > New Truax - Marble
Meikaios[35:68] > Truax Minor - Crystal

Sir_Brass

I REALLY need to clean out the dust in my desktop. Thing is that some parts have REALLY gotten alot of dust in them and I'd need an air compressor with precision air-blasting tool to dislodge it (and then have a vacuum right by to suck out all the dust I blast into the air). Cans of air can't help my system very much right now.

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|TG-Irr|Hiram_Yorik
Games: GRAW, BF2142, Oblivion, FarCry, Empire At War, R6:RVS, KotOR, KotOR2, MW4: Mercs, FEAR (XP)




*Hiss* "Oh...crap!" *BLAM* "I'm down....MEDIC!!"

DirtyLude: "If we kill him and eat his heart, his magic will be ours."

SpiffBiffster

I have an air compressor and blow out my boxes and monitors often. I have not used canned air.

Blow them off outside.

Use eye and ear protection.

Stick your finger or a pencil into the fan blades so they do not over spin. Or put your finger on the center hub and drag it. I feel the fan bearings can be damaged by excess rpm. Most fans are permag DC motors and when you spin them with compressed air they turn into generators. Freaked me the first time I blew out a LED fan, the blade spun up and the LEDs glowed. I do not know what that generated electricity is doing to the rest of your system.

Fan blades accumulate dirt, I blow them off, wipe the blade and housing with cotton swabs and blow them again. Also what the fan blows on gets the dirt impacted and is best removed by rubbing or brushing. If you do not remove the impacted dirt it just accumulates more dirt faster. It is a pain, but I have removed the CPU heatsink, removed the fan and washed the heatsink in soap and water. Dry it, reassemble and reinstall.

While I have it apart I will oil the fan bearings. Partially peel off the label on the center hub of the fan will expose a hole with the bearing. I am not sure it helps a ball bearing much but the solid sleave type bearings need to be lubricated. If the fan is making noise the bearing has already been damaged. But a bit of oil and sliding the fan blade in and out to work the oil in will shut it up for a while. I use a medium weight plastic compatible oil, Labelle #107 from the local hobby shop.

Be carefull when blowing around where there is heat sink grease. If there is excess grease you can move it to places you do not want. The powdered silver containing greases could potentally short things out.

Aerosecurity

I would caution using air compressors. Regular air compressors will compress the regular air, air that contains water. When that moist air (even if it's dry, it still has some moisture) is compressed, and then released real fast, that moisture condenses (thats why clouds form at the top of a 2L soda when you open it real fast).

You all know by now that
water + computer = your screwed
So, i would highly recommend the air canisters that you can purchase from any computer store. Sure it costs a little money, but better safe than sorry. And even with the compressed air cans, you have to be careful because the cans are filled with compressed liquid which turns into gas when the pressure goes down inside (thats why you use short bursts to let the liquid turn back into gas).

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DigitalAssassin

I'm a testament to ventilation. My temperatures were running hot and after the simple move of getting a better designed/ventilated case my CPU temps dropped 15 degrees at idle and 25 degrees under load. I guess that shows how bad a job the old case was doing.

I figure that simple move extended the life of several key components...

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RedForman

Yikes, this reminds me to grab the air can and head inside. I haven't cleaned it out in a LONG time...

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"I've been working since I was sixteen. I fought two in wars. Hell, I've killed people. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy it..."
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Aerosecurity

don't forget your vacuum! You'll get dust everywhere!

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msdz

I use a different defrag program than what omes with Windows, it is called DiskTrix Ultimate Defrag. You can chose where you want the data located on your HDD so it will perform better as well. I have 2 HDD's so Windows is on the first and all the games I play on the second. You need to really read the manual that comes with the program as to find the way you want it set up to defrag. The first HDD I have set to for Recency/ place most recent data accessed on outer track. Archived data that has not been accessed for a long time on the inner tracks(slowest part of the HDD). Second HDD I have all my high performance games on the outer most tracks and any data not being accessed by these games archived to the inner tracks. You would not believe the difference in the way I load a game now and how much smoother they play. I have an old computer with a 3000+ processor, 1.5 Gb of RAM, and an ATI X800Xt video card and can play BF2142 real good. I could nly imagine how fast it would run with a newer computer.
So how the data is actually stored on the HDD can make a difference in performance also. Windows default defrag program automatically puts everything together and just jumbles it, not organizing the data making your HDD have to work more to get all the data needed.

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