Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Why is the fan/heatsink on my new AMD FX 6350 CPU not working properly?

Posted on November 17, 2013

Question from Benji: I decided to try my hand at building my own PC so I bought the parts from Newegg, and as soon as they arrived I carefully put them together with my nephew’s help. Everything worked fine, but the case was to small for my chosen video card to fit comfortably within it.

I bought a larger case and transferred the components from the old case into it, then powered it up. Everything seemed fine for several seconds but then I got a CPU heatsink error. I double-checked everything, and I can’t find anything wrong.

Any ideas about what to look for? I’d hate to have to send everything back! By the way, the heatsink/fan is a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Can I connect my Samsung Galaxy S4 to my router via USB?

Posted on November 17, 2013

Question from Devon P.: Rick, I have Charter Internet, and I access it through a Belkin wireless router that the Wi-Fi has stopped working on. That’s fine for me because I only have one computer, and since it’s a desktop I just keep it plugged in to the router via an Ethernet cable.

The problem I have is I also need to connect my Samsung Galaxy S4 to the router via the Micro USB connector since there is no Wi-Fi available and there is no usable cell service out here in the boondocks where I live.

I can’t seem to get a straight answer as to whether I can do this or not, and I’d really appreciate it you could give me a yes or no (and if the answer is yes, the steps I need to take to do it). I’d like to avoid having to buy a new wireless router if I can.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Crucial to being selling DDR4 RAM by the end of December

Posted on November 16, 2013

DDR3 memory has been the standard for years, but that will soon change. Our friends over at Crucial Technology have just announced that they’ll begin selling DDR4 RAM some time before the end of December 2013.

DDR4 promises to be a major upgrade over DDR3. The new memory standard doubles the speed of its predecessor while also doubling the maximum storage capacity per module from 8GB to 16GB. And just as important, the new DDR4 RAM will operate on a meager 1.2 volts of electricity which means it should run cooler and save energy. [Read more…]

Q&A: How do I change the formatting of a word everywhere that it occurs in a MS Word document?

Posted on November 13, 2013

Question from Keith D.: Rick, I write rather lengthy documents in Microsoft Word on a regular basis, and I often go back and manually change the formatting of every instance of certain words or phrases (i.e. font color, italics, bold, etc.) to make them stand out from the rest of the text.

It would save me a ton of time if there was a way to change the formatting of every instance of a word or phrase at once. Is there a way to do that?

Rick’s answer: There sure is Keith, and it’s a fairly simple process: [Read more…]

Great deal: SanDisk Ultra Plus 256 GB SSD for about $100 w/free shipping

Posted on November 11, 2013

sandisk-256-gb-ssd No other upgrade will speed up your computer as effectively as replacing the hard drive with a Solid State Drive (SSD). But there are a couple of caveats with such an upgrade:

1 – When comparing their relative costs per gigabyte, SSDs are considerably more expensive than traditional hard drives.

2 – Most affordable SSDs are quite limited in the amount of data they can store.

Right now you can get a great deal on the SanDisk Ultra Plus 256 GB SATA 6.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch SSD that helps mitigate both of the caveats mentioned above. Not only will they sell you one for about $100, they’ll also ship it to you for free! [Read more…]