- Guide to cleaning a laptop heatsink

Laptops are obviously more susceptible to heat related issues due to their extreme lack of airflow, meaning the cpu's temperature in particular is easily influenced by dust buildup. I bet a lot of people dont even realise how easily accessible the cpu's heatsink is for a thorough cleaning on almost all laptops these days. Short-Media have kindly produced a guide explaining what cleaning materials and methods are best suited to the task of a regular freshening/cleaning of your laptop for safer and more stable temps.

A notebook will get dirty. It is inevitable that dust and dirt will build up inside and out. This dirt will begin to make a notebook computer operate at a higher temperature compared to when it was new. If a notebook overheats then it is prone to errors and possibly shutting down during CPU-intensive activities such as gaming, video and image editing and when running distributed computing programs such as Folding@Home. If your notebook is experiencing BSODs or complete shut-downs then the culprit be a dusty, dirty CPU and heatsink. This means it's time to clean it and gain back stability. Just how to do it is what this guide is all about.

- BBQ: How to cook your hard drive

For the minority (anyone??) who feels the spontaneous need to COOK their dead hard drive, You wouldn't think a guide be necessary would you? Just rip it out, throw it into the oven at 220c for oooh, 3 hrs? and voila, sweet revenge on lost data! The funny buggers at Bonefide Reviews take it a step further however. They've also fired up the video camera for some live action of the hdd cook-fest! Weighing in at just 11mb.

So there you are, working on finishing up the extremely long and important Power Point presentation you have due tomorrow, when you start to hear clicking noises come from your computer tower. You place your ear close to the case to try to figure out what exactly is causing the ruckus only to hear a sudden screech and then silence. Yup, your hard drive just died and all of your presentation along with it. Anger starts to bubble up inside of you as images of all of the things you would like to do to your now dead hard drive flash through your mind. Never happen to you? Well it did to one of our writers which is why we decided to get revenge on the silicon by not smashing it, but rather barbecuing it. That's right, it's BFR's first ever, and hopefully not last, hardware BBQ. Here is how you cook your hard drive...


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