Learn
Written by Marlo Strydom, the Computer Info Bits learning hub covers PC hardware, software, networking, and practical IT topics drawn from years of hands-on systems engineering experience. Posts are focused, accurate, and built to be genuinely useful.
Practical guides on PC hardware, software, and technology from 20 years of hands-on IT experience.
The exact checklist an IT engineer runs before paying: confirm the real specs, read the drive's hours and health, test the CPU, GPU, and RAM, check a laptop battery, spot account locks, and judge a fair price.
What a second screen actually does for gaming: less alt-tabbing, live monitoring, and easier streaming, plus the honest trade-offs in performance, power, and refresh-rate matching.
Strip the cooler, clean off the dried compound, apply fresh paste, and reassemble. A clear walkthrough that typically drops temperatures by 18-36°F (10-20°C) on older cards.
Boot straight to the desktop and skip the sign-in screen. Three safe methods using netplwiz, the official Autologon tool, or the registry, plus how to stop the password prompt after sleep.
A gaming PC draws roughly 300-600W under load and far less at idle. What that means in real kWh, what it costs to run per year, and the changes that bring the number down.
Confirm your processor is healthy with boot checks, Task Manager, temperature monitoring, and a stress test. Covers beep codes, WHEA errors, repair-vs-replace, and the common faults behind crashes.
Your monitor sets the ceiling, the genre sets the target, and the 1% lows decide whether it feels smooth. Working numbers per genre, plus a calculator that returns what your setup will actually deliver.
No, but games load three to five times slower without one. SSD speed gains, types, sizing, and when a hard drive is still fine for gaming.
Four likely causes, easiest to hardest: bad cable, wrong TV input, wrong Windows display setting, old graphics driver. Step-by-step checks to get a picture back.
How scalpers use bots to buy graphics cards at retail and resell them far above MSRP, why it hurts buyers, what drives it, and what is being done about it.
Software keeps getting heavier while your hardware stays the same. The real causes of an aging PC slowing down, and the fixes that bring it back without a new computer.
A safe, ten-minute fix for weak memory connections: rub the gold pins with a pencil eraser, wipe, blow dry with compressed air, and reseat the stick.
The signs to watch for, the free tools that show throttling directly, the temperature thresholds for Intel and AMD, and how to tell thermal throttling apart from power throttling.
Researched 2025 PC gaming data: player counts, Steam stats, GPU and CPU market share, popular resolutions, gaming PC build costs, and esports figures with sources.
What the BIOS actually does at startup: POST, the bootstrap loader, the BIOS setup utility, CMOS storage, hardware management, Secure Boot, overclocking, and Legacy BIOS vs UEFI.
A complete breakdown of every major motherboard component including the CPU socket, chipset, RAM slots, PCIe slots, SATA ports, M.2 connector, BIOS chip, and rear I/O panel.
A complete guide to monitor panel types, resolutions, refresh rates, and connection options. Covers IPS, VA, OLED, and TN panels with comparison tables.
Test your graphics card using Task Manager and MSI Afterburner. Covers monitoring tools, benchmarking, physical inspection, and common GPU problems with fixes.
A complete breakdown of every major PC component including the CPU, motherboard, RAM, GPU, storage, PSU, cooling, and connectivity. Includes an interactive quiz.
How to set up your case fans for balanced positive pressure, which fan configurations work best, and free ways to drop your temps by up to 27°F without buying anything new.
The Computer Info Bits learning hub is where practical technology knowledge gets written down in a format that is easy to read and actually useful. Rather than chasing trends or publishing filler, each post focuses on a specific topic with enough depth to be worth your time.
Topics range across PC hardware, Windows software, networking fundamentals, storage, and the kind of IT knowledge that comes from working with real systems rather than just reading about them. Posts are written by Marlo Strydom, an IT systems engineer with over 20 years of experience.
This section will grow over time. If there is a topic you would like covered, you are welcome to reach out through the contact page.