Recent content by mikef845

Have you reset the BIOS to optimal defaults or whatever it's called in your BIOS? Also your CMOS battery might be failing.

- are you using SATA 3 cable, they have a metal clip on them, the SATA 2 cables don't - did you do a full format on the SSD, a quick format or no format? Slow performance has been reported on SSDs that haven't been formatted before use. If you decide to format the drive again, of course the data...

For FPS and real-time games, you're better off having separate computers. Running two games on one computer can be very laggy.

Have you checked the voltage on the CMOS battery? If it's under voltage, the BIOS can do strange things. It should be full voltage of 3.0V or higher.

Most laptops have power throttling. They are affected by a bad battery or incorrect power supply. This happens to any brand or model: http://www.tomsguide.com/forum/id-3587293/dell-xps-9560-gtx-1050-4gb-low-fps-horrible-performance.html#xtor=EPR-8886 Have you tried shutting down the laptop...

A handy anti-virus program to run is TDSSKiller: https://usa.kaspersky.com/downloads/tdsskiller It claims to find and remove rootkits which other anti-virus programs might miss. It can be run once a year or maybe once a month. It only takes a few minutes to run. It doesn't leave anything...

I avoid server CPUs because they might not be a good performer for multimedia and gaming. I try to get a desktop CPU. A CPU rated for gaming might be even better.

I've had a lot of fun with CounterStrike:Source. Especially the zombie mods. Everybody must play the DOOM, Quake and Wolfenstein series. Another game I play a lot is 7 Days to Die. It's perpetually under development. I've played it for 2,600 hours! Team Fortress 2 is a blast for multiplayer...

It could be wear and tear from plugging things in many times. But it sounds like the USB 2 controller has died. Most people just buy a USB 3 hub that can handle SDCards. Much easier than trying to repair the laptop.

That's a lot of power for a laptop. A desktop with a graphics card can run off 150W. The laptop has to get rid of that 230 W of heat. It could burn out the laptop. If you can do without one of the RAM sticks, one could be removed to reduce power usage. Most games will run happily with 16 Gb...

A repairable laptop might be a good idea. Portable / light / thin laptops usually aren't repairable. If it's repairable, it will have screws on the bottom so it can be dis-assembled. An Ultrabook might be underpowered. Video/photo editing usually benefits from a quad core processor and a high...

Gaming kills laptops. Anything under 85C should be safe. But if the temps are under 65C most of the time, it might extend the lifetime of your laptop.