Inside your computer there is something called a USB Controller which is an IC chip that enables the system to use usb technology and transfer data across compatible devices. What are Internal HUBs and Internal Ports Now a USB Controller (inside the computer) is connected to an “INTERNAL HUB” (again somekind of ic chip) which… Read More »
I recently got a Asus TUF A17 Gaming laptop and started playing games like Fortnite and Forza Horizon on it. Using MSI Afterburner to monitor the performance, the thermals were not performing very well. The CPU temps stayed at peak levels of 94-95 C when playing fortnite with clock speeds at 4025+ Mhz. Though Ryzen… Read More »
VPN Service Surfshark is a popular vpn service provider that works natively on windows, macos and linux with a gui client app, and also has browser extensions for chrome and firefox. In this article we take a look at how the browser extensions of Surfshark vpn (and similar vpn providers) work under the hood. With… Read More »
Performance metrics are numbers that measure different aspects of the working state of a cpu and reveal useful diagnostic information. These include cpu usage, clock speed, power consumption, temperature etc. There are many more but for simplicity we shall be focusing on these ones in this article. The metrics can be monitored using tools like… Read More »
1% Low FPS and why it matters 1% Low FPS indicates the worst frame generation times that can cause stuttering if they are way lower than the average fps. Low 1% FPS can arise out of a number of reasons like hardware bottlenecks or some kind of poor configuration that holds back the system from… Read More »
In this article we take a quick look at testing wifi throughput over lan using a simple tool called iperf. Wifi lan speed matters when you are transferring large files across devices. For example transferring a big video or zip file from ipad or smartphone to desktop pc connected on ethernet. Wifi speed is not… Read More »
What are UEFI and BIOS These are specifications that describe and define how the system firmware should work to initialize the hardware and load the OS. In old systems we had the IBM PC “derived” BIOS implementations. Its the blue screen interface that you enter by pressing the Del/F2 keys just AFTER system power has… Read More »
So recently I was looking for a command to check the live power consumption of cpu in watts. I tried different commands like powertop, powerstat, lm-sensors but none of them worked properly. lm-sensors did show the temperatures of individual cores of the cpu, but could not display the watts being consumed in realtime. Other commands… Read More »
SSDs SSDs come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The biggest size is the 2.5″ drives that are installed inside desktop computers. Then comes the smaller and bare looking M.2 SSDs that are installed inside laptops and even on desktops. There are a lot of technical parameters that describe M.2 SSD drives about how… Read More »
What is White Uniformity Issue When reading a web-page that has black text on white background if you notice that the white background color looks different at different parts of the screen, its called white uniformity issue. The white may look slightly bluish (cooler) in some areas and slightly yellowish (warmer) in other areas. Simply… Read More »
PC gaming has become bigger than ever before with new gamers joining every year and technology progressing at an unrelenting speed. With the social media culture that we have nowadays, the design and look of a gaming pc is also important as the hardware of the PC. You’ll get a lot more likes and appreciation… Read More »
A lot of Intel processors like the i5-7400 have integrated gpus, that work quite well with Ubuntu and similar Linux systems using the open source drivers. Besides IGPU inside CPUs, there are even some motherboards that have IGPU in their chipsets. In this article we shall take a look at some of the commands that… Read More »
Just like any other computer hardware, CPUs or processors produce a lot of heat, and it needs to be cooled down properly to get the maximum performance out of it. In the earlier years of personal computers or desktop PCs, air coolers was the standard way to cool down your cpu, and it is still… Read More »
Connecting apple devices like iphones and ipads to other platforms like windows or linux has never been easy, simply because apple’s ecosystem does not support anything outside of it. However recent models of ipads started supporting usb drives natively. That means you can now connect the usb drive to the ipad and read/write files to… Read More »
AIO coolers are the easiest route if you plan to dive into liquid cooling. Compared to stock coolers and air coolers, AIO coolers offer slightly better cooling performance for your CPU. Besides AIO coolers there are the custom liquid cooling loops but those are a speciality thing requiring some skills. The key advantage of aio… Read More »
Random Access Memory or RAM is the component that stores temporary working data in the form of readable and rewritable computer memory. It allows for quick access to the data, regardless of its physical location inside the memory. The speed at which the processor can read and write data to the RAM is significantly faster… Read More »
Computer gaming has always been popular, but with streaming and Esports becoming bigger than ever, more people are getting into it. PC gaming requires having the right hardware, from the hardware in your desktop or laptop, to the keyboard and mouse you use. Depending on the genre you play the most, the mouse can easily… Read More »
The cpu in a computer is brain that does all the processing. It is the most important component that determines the performance of your computer. It is installed in a socket on the motherboard and can be spotted easily if you look at it. CPUs also have a heat sink and fan installed right over… Read More »
If you are upgrading an old PC that has DDR3 1066/800 Mhz RAM slots on its motherboard and planning to upgrade, then you might not be able to find new RAM modules with that frequency. Newer RAM modules available in the market will have higher frequency like 1333 Mhz and 1600Mhz. So can you put… Read More »
Monitor DPI/PPI DPI or PPI is a measure of how many pixels are there per inch. High PPI means that more pixels are packed in the same amount of space. The “sharpness” of a display depends on the PPI and not just the resolution. For example 2 monitors with the same Full HD resolution may… Read More »