106
votes
Is it possible to run a motherboard in distilled water?
Yes it is. Running a computer in distilled water is no issue.
However, keeping the water distilled is near impossible.
As soon as contaminants pollute the water even in very small amounts, the water ...
- 2,417
101
votes
Why isn't 255.255.249.0 a valid subnet mask?
It's not a valid subnet mask because it doesn't define a prefix. If you convert it to binary, you'll see that its '1'-bits (and/or its '0'-bits) are not all contiguous. This is explicitly forbidden by ...
- 465k
67
votes
Accepted
What are these little rubber "condoms" that came with my thermal paste?
You're looking at finger protection, called finger cots, to allow you to spread the material over the heat conducting surfaces and not collect the grease into your skin. Other, medical application ...
- 2,670
64
votes
Accepted
Is ESD a serious risk on modern machines?
In industry it's referred to as electrostatic discharge (ESD) and is far more of a problem now than it has ever been, although it's mitigated somewhat by the fairly recent widespread adoption of ...
- 4,450
57
votes
Accepted
Why is Windows reporting a battery charge with my desktop?
You can run the following command at the cmd to list devices Windows thinks are batteries:
wmic path Win32_Battery get Caption,Description,DeviceID,Name
You can also go to the Device Manager under ...
- 2,290
42
votes
Is it possible to run a motherboard in distilled water?
I would be highly surprised if it actually worked, even for a second. Motherboards have some pretty high frequencies, and the PCB routing is intricately designed to minimize capacitance so that they ...
- 529
32
votes
Can computer components be damaged if they stay off for a long time?
Yes, specifically electrolytic capacitors can “deform” (basically short out) if left unpowered for a number of years (see https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/8794/do-electrolytic-...
- 523
27
votes
Accepted
Computer turns on but no signal in monitor
I believe your problem is that you bought an "AMD Athlon X4 860K" processor expecting it to have integrated graphics, however it does not. As you have listed your parts, there is no GPU in your part ...
- 388
18
votes
Does an extra old internal hard disk drive affect my new PC system’s performance?
Overall, no, it will not affect your PC's general performance. Only applications that make use of data stored on that HDD will experience a performance penalty due to the slower data speeds of that ...
- 2,886
17
votes
Is changing DPI of LED harmful?
Increasing your DPI makes your display items look smaller. I believe its entirely a software setting and shouldn't damage anything.
Changing your resolution results in terrible display quality on ...
- 130k
17
votes
Why isn't 255.255.249.0 a valid subnet mask?
The mask needs to contiguously have high order bits on to mask the network address under which the subnet addresses are. 249 does not have this property, as it is 11111001 in binary, there are zeroes ...
- 1,559
17
votes
Can computer components be damaged if they stay off for a long time?
The part I would be worried about is the hard disk. I've found that dormant PCs typically have difficulty spinning up the hard drive if left idle for a while. I'm guessing that the lubricant in the ...
- 507
16
votes
Does an extra old internal hard disk drive affect my new PC system’s performance?
Possibly.
From a Hardware Standpoint: It shouldn't, but this may depend on the SATA chip on the motherboard. Having to read large quantities of information through a slow channel might adversely ...
- 8,510
15
votes
Does an extra old internal hard disk drive affect my new PC system’s performance?
I've observed that some Windows 10 GUI operations (for example "open file" dialogs or opening Windows Explorer windows) will hang when you have an inactive external USB drive connected. I ...
- 311
15
votes
If I remove the Luks-encrypted drive to another motherboard, will I be able to run my system there?
The motherboard doesn't do the encryption; the OS does, entirely in software. The volume can be unlocked for as long as you remember the passphrase.
An exception is when you use TPM to implement ...
- 465k
14
votes
Is it possible to run a motherboard in distilled water?
I cannot speak to the use of water but a liquid cooling system was implemented years ago using fluorinert. This was done on the cray 2 and 3 I believe. The following snippet can be found on ...
- 151
12
votes
Computer turns on but no signal in monitor
The problem you have is that your CPU does not have integrated graphics, and you don't have a graphics card. Rather than invest in a new, expensive processor and potentially risk buying a processor ...
- 121
11
votes
Is ESD a serious risk on modern machines?
I'm not going to try to out-do @Argonauts's discussion of ESD :)
I do want to add something to that answer. @Argonauts points out that there are safeguards in place on many/most consumer electronics ...
- 381
11
votes
Windows 10 internet speed capped at half the original speed on new PC
I was getting less than half the speed I was paying for (150Mbps instead of 400Mbps) for more than a year and had tried everything from constantly calling tech support to swapping out cables and ...
- 111
10
votes
why does my wifi think my desktop is 10 different devices and why does each one have a different ip address?
Well, if you're running modern OSes, windows included, they have an option for randomised MAC addresses as a privacy option. Since many routers are going to give a different IP per mac address, its ...
- 130k
9
votes
Is it possible to run a motherboard in distilled water?
It would seem that pure water would not cause any electrical problems given its insulative properties, and it's further suggested that you would want deionized water, but the problems that arise are ...
- 386
9
votes
How can I tell if my mini computer is dying or it is just the fan?
If your hard drive is dying, you would hear repetitive clicking or buzzing noises and the computer may occasionally freeze up, getting worse as it dies. You can also tell that your hard drive is dying ...
- 1,381
8
votes
I've been getting many BSOD crashes when encoding videos
Overheat or under-power. Really hard to tell the difference on so little info. If you're software encoding, overheat is more likely. If GPU, that increases the possibility of under-power, but doesn't ...
- 50k
7
votes
How can I tell if my mini computer is dying or it is just the fan?
You can open it up and disconnect the fan (or otherwise stop it from spinning).
If the noise stops, the problem was the fan. Otherwise try disconnecting the power to the HDD to confirm that it's the ...
- 71.4k
7
votes
Any way to clean a PC safely with vacuum?
Let me add my two cents, same as harrymc's answer, based on no scientific method except 20+ years of empiricism.
I've been vacuuming computers for decades, I've not killed one yet.
I use a portable, ...
- 50k
7
votes
Windows 10 - park drives until manually unparked
Short answer: Windows is unable to do this due to a decades-old design choice.
Long answer: The Windows kernel uses a disk-backed memory model for commit. This implies that even if no process touches ...
- 20.3k
6
votes
If I remove the Luks-encrypted drive to another motherboard, will I be able to run my system there?
The short answer is "It depends - but most likely you can migrate the disk".
LUKS supports a number of ways of decrypting a drive (it has a header which accepts, from memory, up to 8 ...
- 71.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible