I recently had a customer who had just built his own PC, an AMD Ryzen, but could not get it to boot. So, he brought it to me to figure out what was going wrong. After examining things, checking out things like the power supply, RAM, etc., I decided to pull out the...
At MCS, we love building custom PCs. And we love to see what others build also. Somehow, someway, a system built by IG user @80ishplus, a system builder in Australia, made its way to a user here in Charlotte, and then to me for repairs. I love the unique design. The...
One of the more common issues we see is users, especially laptop users, not rebooting their computers at all. They come to us with a computer running slow, but can't understand why. When I check, it turns out the computer has been updated or rebooted in months or...
A lot has been written in the last couple of weeks about Apple's new $6000 Mac Pro, its $5000 monitor, and its $1000 stand. There were even a few salty takes. Now, a lot of blogs laugh at how out of touch Apple is with consumers. And about most of Apple, I might...
If you're like me, you're a digital hoarder; the hard drive equivalent of the crazy lady with the newspapers stacked floor to ceiling. For some, your hoarding may come from your music collection. For others, your shutterbug streak has caused you to have pictures and...
For those who build computers, we often use the term “bottleneck.”  Bottlenecks occur when one component of a system is woefully slower than the others.  Think of a computer like a chain .. its only as strong as its weakest link.
Someone recently asked for recommendations for a new PC. For his needs, I said, "For a laptop, a Core i5, at a bare minimum. For a desktop, a Core i3 would be plenty." But why the difference? Shouldn't a Core i5 desktop have about the same...
This is the first in a series on how to keep your PC healthy, happy, and secure. This series will be posted over the next few months, and then kept in archive for referral. In part 1, I will focus on the most basic piece of the equation, Windows. Ask yourself,...
