Desktop Hardware Repair Portland
You might need a nerd if…
Common Terms
Hard Disk Drive
The hard drive stores all of your data. It is a box that contains multiple spinning platters. These platters contain data stored magnetically by the hard drive head
RAM
RAM means Random Access Memory, and is what your computer uses to store things that it is thinking about while it is on. When your computer turns off, everything in RAM goes away.
Graphics Card
The graphics card is a specialized computer that runs inside your computer and processes all the things on the screen. The more detailed the screen activity, the harder the graphics card has to work
Network Card
The network card handles your computer's connection to the internet. It translates the instructions sent by your computer into packets, that can be sent to another computer online.
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Questions nerds often hear about Desktop Hardware Repair Portland
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What parts of my desktop could be going wrong?
If you are interested in finding out the different parts of your desktop, read our article explaining basic computer parts here
USB Hub Repair Portland
A while back people decided that they needed to be able to attach more devices to their computer. All the flash drives, mice, printers, keyboards, and USB-powered desk foam missile launchers were just taking up more room than the computers were built with. So they invented the USB card. At the time this was a great and logical idea. It would provide a way to plug more devices in. You may have a USB card in your computer right now; however, technology evolves very quickly.
USB Hub Repair Portland
SD Card Reader Repair Portland
Portland is a very photogenic city. Many people love taking pictures of it, documenting the people here, or travelling the surrounding areas to take pictures of the majestic scenery. Now whether you’re a professional photographer or you just have an album on Facebook entitled “photography,” you probably want to be able to transfer your photos from your camera to your computer.
SD Card Reader Repair Portland
Sound Card Repair Portland
A long, long time ago, in a land not so far away, there was a woman. She lived in the sun-kissed hills around Portland with her horses, who liked to frolic in the fields and play Frisbee. Her great passion was music. She would often call upon the goddess Pandora, who would bless her wood elf named Sound Card with the gift of song. Sound Card would sing merrily in his crisp and clear tone and the woman would listen to it all day long. One day however, the woman woke up and found that Sound Card was deathly ill.
Sound Card Repair Portland
CD / DVD / Blu-Ray Repair Portland
Here in Portland we like our films. While so much is available on the internet these days, there is plenty that you can’t quite find online. For these you need your old CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive. Optical drives used to be all the rage, before the days of flash drive storage and internet speeds that could support high-speed transfer. Nowadays optical drives are beginning to be outdated, but they still serve their purposes.
CD / DVD / Blu-Ray Repair Portland
Fan Replacement Portland
The fans in your computer keep your computer cool. I’m sure that probably seems self-explanatory, but they’re an often-overlooked component of your computer. While Portland doesn’t get particularly hot, it’s sufficiently warm enough to necessitate cooling on your PC. The average computer has two fans: one on the processor, and one on the case that circulates the air to keep all the different parts cool. When these aren’t functioning at full capacity, your computer can heat up. And when your computer heats up, there can be problems. Components can be damaged irreparably, and the computer as a whole will run more slowly and less efficiently.
Fan Replacement Portland
Processor Repair Portland
The processor in your computer functions as the brain. So if the processor goes, the whole computer does. A good way to tell if your processor is starting to go is if the computer regularly just stops functioning – the mouse locks up and the screen stays on, but nothing responds. This can happen in a few ways. One way is simply if the computer gets old. Computers die after a while. Another way is if inadequate cooling allows the processor to overheat. You’ll know if this happens – there will be big black marks on your motherboard. Oh, and your computer won’t turn on. That will probably clue you in pretty quickly.
Processor Repair Portland
Network Card Repair Portland
Can you browse the internet…with your mind? No. No you can’t. That would be nice though. In the meantime though, all of us normal humans here in Portland will have to use some sort of network card to connect to the internet. Network cards come in a variety of different types. Some are the 3G modems in our phones, and then in our desktops we have wired and wireless PCI cards, not to mention all the different standards. There’s a lot of variation on one simple theme – getting you to connect to the internet. It’s a lot to keep track of, especially for something you won’t really be concerned with from day to day.
Network Card Repair Portland
Graphics Card Repair
Graphics cards control everything we see. Wait, no, I’m thinking of the media. Let me look this up and I’ll get back to you. Yeah, I was right the first time too. Graphics cards are basically computers within computers. Except they only deal with what goes on your screen. Your CPU handles all the back-end stuff – calculating math, connecting to the internet, and a bunch of stuff you probably didn’t even know your computer did. Your graphics card makes sure it all looks good. If you’ve ever used a design program or played a game with more complexity than solitaire, you probably already appreciate the hard work that your graphics card puts in for you. Even if you aren’t explicitly using graphics applications, you use your graphics card more than you think.
Graphics Card Repair
Motherboard Repair
PDX is a busy place – planes shuttling in and out of Portland, thousands of people pouring through every day, and all of the air traffic managed by a single control tower. Now imagine if that tower had technical issues, even briefly. The damage could be immense – even leading to catastrophic crashes. Your motherboard in your computer is a lot like this control tower. It coordinates all the different aspects of running your computer. All the other parts, like your hard drive, processor, and CD drive are all plugged into your motherboard and rely on it for function. So when your motherboard encounters an error, the entire computer suffers.
Motherboard Repair
Power Supply Repair
Here in Portland we kind of like our clean power. We want to make sure we have an efficient power supply – something that comes from renewable resources, like caged hamsters or wind. No nukes, am I right? So with all this concern for the power supply for our city, why aren’t we concerned more about the power supply that our computers use? Given, it’s not on such a large scale, but poor power supplies can reduce the efficiency of our computers and/or drain energy from our power bill and waste electricity. In fact, many power supplies that off-the-shelf computer ship with are incredibly poor. The computer companies can cut corners because most people probably won’t notice the difference right away, but as soon as that year-long-warranty expires, they tend to just go haywire. Add onto this the fact that it is likely either drawing too much power and wasting it, or drawing too little and damaging your computer, and you have good reason to get that power supply replaced!
Power Supply Repair
Desktop RAM Upgrade & Repair Portland
Maybe you’re in the hills and valleys around Portland herding your sheep. They’re all just bouncing along fluffily when out of the blue one of your rams keels over. He has broken a leg. You need ram repair right now! So you get on your smartphone, Google “ram repair” and come across this page. Well, I hate to break it to you, but…we can’t help you.
Desktop RAM Upgrade & Repair Portland
Desktop Hard Drive Repair
So, you decided to keep reading to find out what exactly what it was that we do? Good for you. One of the many devices that we can repair is the hard drive. The hard drive is a set of metal disks spinning around very quickly (seventy-two thousand times a minute) inside a metal case. Super-powerful neodymium magnets read and write the data on the hard drive but because all the information stored on your hard drive is magnetic, one of the things that you should definitely keep them away from is magnets. Magnets will seriously mess up your hard drive – although the shielding is better now than it used to be. The protection has improved and because it’s pretty uncommon for a hard drive to come in contact with another powerful magnet, this disastrous problem isn’t much of a concern for most people.
Desktop Hard Drive Repair