The graphics card is a fairly easy install.  Graphics card fit into the PCI Express X16 slot.  Huh?  Well, if you don’t know what one of them is, and there might be two on your motherboard, don’t worry about it.  The graphics card will only fit into one or two slots on your motherboard, the longest ones, and they are keyed so you can fit them into any other slots.

Graphics Card

Before you hunker on down.  Let’s take this a step at a time.  Graphics cards usually come wrapped in an anti-static bag and are susceptible to static, so ground yourself to the computer case before you start and handle the board by the edges.  Take the card out of the packaging and anti-static bag.  There should be an instruction booklet and DVD disk.  Put them aside for now.

Look at the motherboard in the case, you’ll see the slots the graphics card can be plugged into, but before you can do that, you’ll have to remove a panel in the bag of the case so that the outout ports on the back of the graphics card will come out the back of the computer.  That way you don’t have to open the case to hook up your computer monitor.

There are two ways to remove the back case panel and mount the graphics card.  One is to unscrew the panel screw, slide the plate out, mount the graphics card on the motherboard, and screw the motherboard down by replacing the panel screw and catching the metal outcropping on the  graphics card with the screw to lock down the graphics card.

The other is to lift a handle that lifts up and is hinged on one side, like a door.  You can then slide the back case plate out, put the graphics card in,. and close the hinged handle, which also catches the graphics card outcropping to secure it in place.

If there are any other cables supplied with the graphics card, look at the instruction manual to see how their hooked up.

If you have purchased two graphics cards, install the second like the first one, and you’ll need to install a cable connecting the two graphics card together which comes with the graphics card.

That’s it, your done with the graphics card for the moment.

The specs on the physical dimensions of a hard drive and DVD drive are deceptive.  Hard Drives are actually 4″ wide, but the spec calls it a 3.5″ form factor.  The DVD drives are actually 5.71″ wide, but the spec calls it a 5.25″ form factor.  Go figure.  It really doesn’t matter since the computer case gets it right.

What it does say is that hard drives are not as wide as DVD drives, which means there has to be two cage sections in the case one with a small width for the hard drives, and a larger width cage for your DVD drives.

The problem with installing drives is that there are several different methods of installing drives in the computer case depending on the manufacturer and the size of the computer case.

Some basics, if you look at your hard drive, you’ll see 3 screw holes along each side.  Most of the mounting methods consists of screwing screws in these holes through holes in the case, which holds the drive.  Some cases have pull out cages that make drive installation relatively easy.  You install the drive in the pull out cage and then slide the cage into a slot in the computer case.  I recommend you check out the installation booklet that comes with the case to see the recommended method of installing hard drives in that particular case.  Each case is different.  The screws you got with the computer case are the screws you will use to install the hard drive.

DVD drives install slightly differently.  The front of the DVD drive has to go through the front of the computer case so you can load the DVD.  To do this install, some cases require you remove the front panel of the case, which is usually held on with plastic latches.  You’ll have to remove a plate in the front of the case for the DVD drive to come out the front.  You don’t have to do that with hard drives, since they are entirely internal. Because of this, there are different methods of installing DVD drives.   Some DVD drives require you screw in slider rails that you can move the DVD drive back and forth to align it with the front of the case.  Some slide in from the front and are locked in place by a sliding brake mechanism.  Others have the same screws in the side as with the hard drives.  Again check your installation guide that comes with the case for you case particulars.

Let’s talk about the connectors on the back of the drives.   If you purchased SATA drives, your all set.  Just install the drives in the case with the interface connectors on the back of the drives facing the motherboard so we can hook up cables.

If you did not, that means your hard drives and DVD drives use an IDE interface.  If you have IDE drives, you have to be aware of the jumper on the back.  This is a 6-pin connector on the back consisting of two rows of three pins.  There is a jumper over two of the pins.  If you have more that one DVD drive one of the jumper should be connecting the “Master” pins on the connector panel, and on the other DVD drive, you’ll have to move the jumper to the “Slave” pins.  If you have only one drive, the pins should cover the “Master” pins.  The pins are usually labled, if not check your drive installation manual.  The same goes for the hard drive.  The good news is with SATA drives, you don’t have to worry about that anymore and you shouldn’t see any jumpers at all.

Jumper to select Master and Slave Drives

Install your drives, will do the cable hook ups in another post.

We’ve gone as far as we can putting components on the motherboard before putting it in the case.  It’s time to marry the case and motherboard.

When you unpacked the motherboard, it came with a thin 1 3/4″ x 6 1/4″aluminum plate with a bunch of stencil like holes cut in it.  Sometimes the holes are labeled.  The aluminum panel has one side of the plate with a raised, curled border around the edges.  This snaps into the back hole of the computer case, the holes correspond to the ports on the edge of the motherboard.

The aluminum panel mounted in the case

You want to orient the motherboard so the ports on the edge of the motherboard will be toward the back of the computer case, but first the panel.  The aluminum panel mounts from the inside of the case.  You’ll find that the raised rounded, curved side of the panel will snap into the hole in the case.  But first orient the panel so the holes are aligned with the motherboard ports, and then snap the panel into the case.  You’ll find the panel snaps in place like a soda paper cup lid.

Next the motherboard slips into the case against the aluminum panel.  The aluminum panel has small strips that are around the holes.  These go around the ports of the motherboard.  Make sure when you slide the motherboard in to the aluminum panel ports that there is no metal strips in the way of using the ports.

Make sure there are no wires between the board and the bottom of the case.  They should be above the motherboard.

If you look closely at the nine holes going through the motherboard, you’ll find they align, or almost align, with the copper stand off posts you put in the case earlier.  In the bag of screws that came with your computer case, there are at least nine or more Phillips screws with flat polished heads.  Get out your trusty Phillips screw driver and fasten the motherboard to the case by screwing nine screws through the nine holes in the motherboard and into the top of the copper stand off posts.  The screws should be tight, but not super tight.

Motherboard in case

Congratulations, your motherboard and case are one.

The memory chips you buy for your system are determined by which motherboard you purchased.  The motherboard is designed to take a specific type of memory, and that is called out in the motherboard specifications.

Most desktop memory is on 240 pin memory boards, and most motherboards either have two or four  240 pin memory slots.  The 240 pin slots are keyed so you can only mount the memory card in one direction.

240 pin memory cards

My recommendation was to maximize your initial memory.  That translates to 4 Gb of memory for a 32 bit system.  That usually comes on two 2 Gb memory cards.  The memory cards are sold together as a pair and are a matched set.   The idea is that memory storage is interleaved between the two cards to improve performance.  It turns out the slots on the motherboard also are matched to take advantage of the matched memory cards.

On those motherboard that have two 240 pin slots, there isn’t a problem as the two cards will plug into the two slcts.  Most motherboards have four 240 pin slots, so you need to be careful about which two slots you use for the two memory cards.  The motherboard user’s guide that comes with the motherboard will tell you how the memory should be installed in the memory slots.   Usually, this is slot one and slot three.  If you don’t find how your slots are set up in the provided user’s guide, there is usually much more extensive documentation on the motherboard manufacturer’s web site.   Once you determine which slots to use, your ready for the install.

Take the memory chip out of the packaging.  It should be enclosed in a static free bag.  Memory chips are very susceptible to static electricity.  Before removing the memory from the bag, ground your self on a metal surface.  Handle the memory cards by the card edges.

Place the memory card in the slot in the right direction and push down evenly to sit the card.  The card should go in fairly easily and latches on the end should pop up to catch the card and show its seated properly.

That’s it.   You now have your memory mounted on your motherboard.

The computer processing unit, or CPU, is so dense with computer circuitry that as you try to run the chip faster and faster, it heats up hotter and hotter.  Any chip you purchase now comes with a CPU fan to help cool the chip down.  The cooler the chip, the faster it runs.  Seems like a paradox.  Cooler is faster, but if you run faster, it gets hotter.

With our last post we put the CPU into its socket on the motherboard.  Now we want to attach a fan directly to the CPU chip to cool it down.  You can use the CPU fan that came with the Core 2 Duo, or you may have purchased a separate cooling fan.  If you purchased a separate CPU fan, then you should have also purchased, some thermal compound.  I believe I recommended a brand called Artic Silver.

If you look at your motherboard, on the four sides of the LGA 775 socket are four holes through the motherboard where the CPU fan is mounted to the motherboard.  There are two ways commonly used to attach the CPU cooling fan to the CPU and motherboard.

The first method is used with the cheaper fans, and involves pushing posts with two barbs that look like arrow heads into each hole.  A pin is then pushed down between the two barbed ends to expand them in the hole.  The barbs catch on the underside of the hole and the fan is secured.  To remove the fan, you twist the pin up and out from between the two barbs, reach under the motherboard and squeeze the two barbs together and push it back through the hole on the motherboard.

Intel push down CPU fan

This is the way the fan provided by Intel attaches to the motherboard.  I don’t care for this method, because the barb and pins, which are made out of thin plastic, can easily tear and break.  What happens is one of the barbs breaks in the hole.  Once a barb breaks off, you can no longer attach that corner of the fan to the CPU.  You’ll only have this happen once, and you’ll quickly move to mounting method two, which involves purchasing a separate CPU fan.

The second method is much more secure.  It involves putting a screw through a hole in the fan mounting bracket, through the motherboard, and into a screw bracket you have placed under the motherboard.  It’s like a sandwich, the two brackets have the motherboard in the middle.   The brackets have four holes in them that line up with the four holes on the motherboard.  You tighten the screws and the bracket is attached.  The fan then attaches to this bracket with two small screws.  To take off the fan, you unscrew the screws.

Third Party CPU fan. Bracket not shown.

The only problem with this second method is if you ever want to change your fan to a different one, with a different mounting set up, you will have to get to the bottom of the motherboard in the computer case.  That means unplugging everything and pulling out the motherboard.  A real pain, as you’ll see as we start putting our computer together.  You pick your poison.  Since I usually don’t switch fans, I prefer this method.

I’m going to assume you purchased a separate CPU cooling fan.  The one that comes from Intel is noisy, and barely gets the job done.  There are much more efficient and quieter CPU Cooling fans  out on the market.

Here we go.  Take the CPU cooling fan out of it’s packaging.  Be careful with the fan and cooling fins that you don’t bend them.   Carefully unwravel the power wire and plug from between the fan.  Before actually making any attachment, to see how everything will go together place the CPU Cooling fan on top of the CPU, and play with the mounting hardware until you understand how everything will attach together.  You have the square screw holder under the motherboard, the top bracket has a notch in it for the CPU latch to swing up, so the bracket should be lined up so the latch can be lifted.  You’ll notice a separate bracket with two screw holes that attach the fan to the bracket attached to the motherboard.  Once you see how everything goes together,  take the fan part off, and attach the bracket to the motherboard with the four long screws.

We’re ready for the thermal compound.  If your using Artic Silver, there is an instructional pdf on their web site on how to apply their thermal compound to the Core 2 Duo.  Read their instructions.  You only want to apply a thin bead in a line down the middle of the CPU and that’s it.  The thermal compound will fill in the microscopic holes in the fan and CPU plates to form a good thermal transfer.  Too much compound is not good.

After you apply the thermal compound, put the fan base on the CPU and attach it with the second bracket.  Note, if your using the Intel fan, they have provided thermal compound on the bottom of the fan plate already.

You’ll need to provide power to the fan.  Look around the LGA 775 socket for a white interface with four pins sticking up.  It should be labeled “CPU fan.”  Attach the wire with the plug to the interface on the motherboard.  It only goes on in one direction.  Congratulations, the CPU cooling fan is all set up on the motherboard.

Let’s unpack the motherboard and the computer chip and marry them together as a single unit.  First, we’ll get set  up to work.   Fold a towel that will not generate a lot of static electricity, i.e. an older towel, and place that where your going to place the motherboard after you take it out of the packaging.  An old plastic cafeteria tray underneath the towel is ideal.  Do not use a metal baking tray.  The purpose of the tray is to be able to slide the motherboard around easily without picking it up, and the purpose of the towel is to give you a little cushion as your plugging the fan and memory into the motherboard.  Be careful not to bunch the towel as you don’t want an uneven surface when your plugging in components which could bend the board.

Remove the motherboard from its packaging.  Do not take it out of the antistatic bag yet.  With the motherboard may be an instruction booklet, a cd with some software on it,  and some wiring, depending on the motherboard manufacturer.   There will also be a thin aluminum panel with holes in it.   Be careful with this, as it bends easily.   Put everything, but the motherboard, aside for now.  Ground yourself from static electricity by touching a something metal like a metal electrical outlet cover, or although at this point not the best, the computer case will work.  Take the motherboard out of the antistatic bag and place it on the towel.

Remove the Intel Core 2 Duo from its packaging.  You will find a computer chip and a CPU fan.  Put the fan aside for now.  When handling the computer chip handle it by the sides of the board it is on.  Do not touch the pins.  Put the chip down by the motherboard for now.

Looking at the motherboard, you’ll find a square with a gray plastic cover on it.  This is the LGA 775 socket where the chip will plug into the motherboard.  The socket has a latch on the side that is held in place by an outcropping on the motherboard.    Press the latch down and then out and it should pop up.  Once the latch is up you can lift the metal hinged cover over the socket, which will fold up like the page of a book.   The metal covers purpose is to apply uniform pressure to the chip.

Lift up the plastic socket cover, and remove it completely from the socket and motherboard.  Do not touch the socket pins.  You want to save the socket cover in case you have to return the motherboard back to the manufacturer.  They require you to have the cover in place when shipping.  Just put it aside for now.

The LGA 775 socket with cover open

Your now looking at the LGA 775 socket.  The socket consists of a bunch of pins sticking up in the air and flattened out at the top.  It looks like they’re flat against the back of the socket, but there not.  You do not want to push the chip down on top of the socket.  If you do, you could bend a pin and loose a contact point, or worse, end up with a pin touching another pin.  Inserting the computer chip into the socket should mean no pressure on your part.  Were going to let the cover do the work.

The socket has plastic outcroppings and the computer chip has notches that only allow you to place the chip in the socket one way.  They’re keyed.  Handling the chip by the edge of the card, gently place the chip in the socket in the correct position.   Do not move the chip back and forth, or push down on the chip.  The cover will apply the pressure.  Just place the chip gently on top of the socket.

Swing the cover down so it covers the chip, bring the lever down so it catches the end of the cover, and swing it underneath its anchor so it stays down in place.  Congratulations, you have just mounted the Intel Core 2 Duo to your motherboard.  All is well in life.

By now I assume you have purchased the components you’ll need to assemble your computer and you either have a bunch of boxes unopenned, or you’ve openned everything, and are not sure where everything goes.

The first thing you should do is to get out your computer assembly tools, and set aside a working area to build your computer.  This could be an area of the floor, or a table.   This may or may not take you a couple of days depending on the time you have, so it should be an area where the kids or other people will not be picking up parts and moving them from one spot to another.  You don’t want the kids playing with the parts.  It should be a spot where you have access to a power receptacle or power strip.  Gather all the components together in your work area and let’s get started.

Open up the computer case box.  Remove the computer case from the carton.  Remove the protective cover.  Put the boxes and packing material out by the trash, unless your planning to ship the computer to somewhere when your done.

We now have a nice and shiny new computer case.  The first thing we want to do is remove the both sides of the computer case.  They are held on the case by four or six thumbscrews on the back of the case.  Remove the screws and slide the covers backwards to remove them.  They should be a little tight, apply consistent pressure and they will slide back.  On most cases the covers are aluminum, they will bend and scratch easily.  Put them in an out of the way place where no one will trip over them.  We will not need them until the computer is completely assembled.  Put the four or six screws right next to the panels.  That way you won’t lose them, and you’ll know exactly what there used for a couple of days from now.

You should find a bag of screws, and an instruction booklet.  The instruction booklet will be referred to as we start assembly of the components in the case.  Set it aside for now, and look at the bag full of screws.

Look through the screws for the cooper stand offs.  These are screws with a screw hole in the top of the screw.  There should be nine of them.  They are used to raise the motherboard slightly away from the case, and ground the motherboard to the case.  The ATX motherboard has nine holes in the motherboard.  The motherboard will rest on top of the stand offs, and other screws will go through the motherboard and screw into the top of the stand off posts to secure the motherboard to the case.

Stand Offs

For now all we want to do is screw the nine copper stand offs into the tray inside the case in the holes provided.  There are more than nine holes in the case.  The holes you need should be stamped with an “A” or some markings.  On the Gigabyte cases they are marked A1 through A9.  Screw the posts in tight, but not super tight.

When done, put the case aside, put the bag of screws inside the case with the instruction booklet.  We won’t come back to the case until we get the motherboard ready.

I thought it would be helpful if we went through picking out the components
we’ll need for a computer system as a way of a summary before we start
assembly.

Without picking the speed of the CPU, let’s decide on the Intel Core 2 Duo
chip as our computer chip. This chip mounts to the motherboard with an LGA775 socket.

Looking at motherboards with the LGA775 socket.  We count over 50
motherboards available. Wow! I would prefer a later designed board, so lets
look for later memory chip technology. Let’s look for motherborads that take
DDR3 memory.  We’re down to nine boards.  I favor a couple of brands in
motherboards, Asus and Gigabyte. There’s a Gigabyte GA-EP45T for $99.99, and the Asus P5P43TD for $94.99.  These two boards are pretty similiar with the Gigabyte getting better reviews. We’ll go with the Gigabyte motherboard.

One small understanding. This motherboard only has one PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot. That means you can not have two graphic cards on this motherboard as the graphic cards fit into this type of slot. If you want a gaming computer, you want to look for two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots on the motherboard that claim NVIDIA or Crossfire ready.

We need one graphics card.  We want a NVIDIA card, made by PNY, XFX or EVGA that runs the latest NVIDIA graphics chips. There is a NVIDIA GeForce 200 series that is still a little pricy. Let’s go with the 9800GTX. PNY makes a nice card with 512Mb of video memory for $109.99.

Let’s max out the memory.  On a Core 2 Duo that’s 4Gb’s. The Gigabyte motherboard has four 240 pin memory slots. We’ll use two of those and get two 2Gb memory cards.  The motherboard specs call for DDR32200(OC)/1333.  This means we can get DDR3 2200 or DDR3 1333 memory chips. DDR3 2200 240 pin chips runs $274.99. A tad too much for the latest technology. Let’s back off one step and go for 1333. Crucial makes two 2Gb 240 pin DDR3 1333 cards for $69.99. Done.

Next let’s do the computer case.  The motherboard is an ATX motherboard. This is simpler. I prefer Gigabyte cases. Instead of a Full Tower, let’s do a Mid Tower. There’s a GZ-X4 ATX Mid Tower for $34.99.

We need a power supply. We want a standard size, modular, and I’m partial to Corsair power supplies.  There’s a nice 620W modular for $149.99 with excellent reviews.  Get a good power supply it provides reliable, stable power throughout your system.

We’ll let you pick out the monitor, keyboard, mouse, tools, and any extra
cables you’ll need.

So we have:
motherboard:  $ 94.99
graphics card: $109.99
4gb memory: $ 69.99
case: $ 34.99
power supply: $149.99
subtotal = $459.95

Not bad, except for one thing, we’re missing a computer chip and fan. You can get the highest speed chip, or a lesser speed, and adjust your performance and overall system price by your choice.  For example the E8600 is priced at $269.99 and the E7400 is $118.99. The E7500 is $119.99, let’s go with that.

And finally the computer chip cooling. We need a CPU fan for the LGA775 socket. Let’s go with a Zalman for $39.99 and some thermal compound to make a good heat contact between the CPU and fan.  Artic Silver goes for $6.99.

Subtotal: $459.99
Computer Chip: $118.99
CPU Fan: $ 39.99
Artic Silver: $ 6.99

TOTAL: $625.96

This is a decent system, performance will be very good, graphics and video will be very good.  And the price is very good, given you still have not picked a monitor, keyboard, mouse, or any tools you’ll need, and you have to add your shipping.

If you have any questions about why I made some of the choices as far as brand names or specs, please see my posting on the components.  Let’s move on to assembly.

We started this series of articles stating that you could not beat the price of a Dell or HP by building your own computer from components.  Before we get into assembly, I thought we would double check how far off you would be by building your own system.

I thought it would be difficult to match their price, because Dell and HP have too many discounted contracts with manufacturers. Not only are they discounted pricewise, but the manufacturers get to offload their second generation products  that they would have a difficult time selling retail.

By building your own system, you can get higher quality components and an overall better system.  Our premise was, we thought the price would be slightly more than the Dell or HP eqivalent.  Let’s check it out.

We went online at Dell to try to find a computer that we could use as a comparison.  We had a tough time doing that, because not all the components are listed on their computer system.  They hide the specs.  We looked at an Inspiron 534s with one 640gb disk.  The price they were asking was $729, which was on sale.

Let’s do some parts pricing and see how close we can come by ordering separate components.  The CPU was a Core 2 Quad we found a price of $149.99.  Then Windows 7 Premium, we found the retail price of $199.99.    A 20″ hi-def monitor was $139.99.  The 16x DVD was $19.99.  The 4gb of memory was $29.99.  And the 640Gb hard drive was $59.99.  Add all that up and your at $599.99.  Mouse and keyboard were extra.  We would have to provide a micro motherboard with a built-in video card, and a microcase.   We priced the motherboard at  $49.99 and a micro case was $24.99.   That’s it.  Total price by adding the components up is $674.97.  The Dell price was $729.  Wow! so we could have gotten an equivalent system for less than the Dell.

Now having proven that we could indeed have matched Dell by ordering the components and building our own system.   Let’s talk about this.

We fudged the above numbers a tad by getting equivalent components. but staying on the lower price end of those components.  What happens when you build your own is you want the best components, and why not.  So you start ordering components of higher quality and more functionality.  The result, when you add up the price of the components, is a higher price than the computers made by a Dell or HP.

The other thing to take note of is the integration of the video with the motherboard.  I don’t recommend this, because the integrated video chip set uses main memory for video memory.   This can slow the performance of your system down, but it does allow the Dell’s and HP’s of the world to cut their price.  I much prefer a separate graphics card with its own memory.

You can look at it two ways.  It turns out you can beat the Dell or HP price by building your own system from components as long as you go for inexpensive components.

Or you can, instead, purchase high quality components and build a system you will be proud of with high reliability and performance, but it will cost you a little more.

The motherboard is where it all comes together for a PC.  The motherboard connects everything together in your computer.  The CPU may be the heart of your computer.  The motherboard is the skeleton on which everything connects to and comes from.  All your ports, and connectors are on the motherboard.  What motherboard you pick out will determine what other components you buy, and for that reason, I recommend you pick out the motherboard first.

You have to be very careful with the specs on a motherboard to get the motherboard you want. Let’s go through what to look for and what the spec is telling you.

The motherboard has a socket for your computer chip.  Since at this writing I recommend the Intel Core 2 Duo chip set, this will mean that your motherboard must have an LGA 775 socket. There are other sockets out there, like the LGA 1366 for example, so search for LGA 775 motherboards, if you want the Intel Core 2 Duo chip set.

Next memory, memory needs 240 pin slots, some motherboards come with two slots and some with four slots.  Since memory comes in matching card pairs, and the current memory cards max out at 4 Gb per card, the most memory you can have on a two slot motherboard is 8 Gb’s.  You may think that you want four slots, in which case you will be told the motherboard supports 16 Gb of memory.  This is misleading.  In order to use more than 4 Gb’s of memory you need to use a 64-bit CPU, which we are not using.  The advantage of the four slots is you can chip away, literally, and gradually add memory to your system in the future.  Come on, this is hooey, too.  Do yourself a performance favor and maximize your memory right from the start.   And that, with the Core 2 Duo, is 4Gb.  You can order it with two 2Gb cards, or four 1Gb cards.  With the former you’ll need two memory slots on your motherboard, with the later you’ll need four slots.

While we’re talking memory, motherboards are designed to use a particular type of memory and memory speed.  There is DDR2 and DDR3 memory, and runs at various speeds.  DDR3 is the latest technology.  Currently there are not a lot of DDR3 motherboards made as technology catches up.  It’s ok to use DDR2.  Try to get a memory speed number that is over 1066.  This will mean your motherboard is a later model.   No matter which memory you end up with DDR2 or DDR3 you must match the memory you buy to the motherboard type and speed of memory called for in the motherboard spec. They have to match.

Now to graphic cards, graphic cards connect using a PCI Express 2.0 x16 socket.  All motherboards have one.  You may want two slots, if in the future you want to expand to use two graphic cards.  If your not a gamer, this shouldn’t matter, however if you are a gamer, not only do you need two slots, but they need to be the proper distance apart so you’ll look for motherboards that claim their SLI ready for NVIDIA boards.  You’ll also then need to look for graphic cards and power supplies that are SLI-Ready.  For ATI graphic card users will look for the word “Crossfire.”  If you are ok with one graphic card, then a one slot PCI Express motheboard will be fine.

Since you will be buying a separate graphics card, you do not want a motherboard with an on-board video chipset.  See my graphic card post for more explanation.

Next SATA connectors, Each of your hard drives will need to connect to the motherboard.  Since you will be getting SATA hard drives, you’ll need SATA connectors on the motherboard.  Also the newer DVD drives use SATA connectors.  I recommend you have a minimum of four SATA connectors on the motherboard.

You may, or may not, want to use RAID when hooking up your disk drives for safety. This is a entirely new topic, which I will address in another post. For example, to mirror your disk to another disk drive you will use RAID 1, which implies you will purchase two identical disk drives.  Each RAID set up requires a different number of physical drives, and thus may require more than four SATA connectors and more power.  Since we are building a basic computer, I will not recommend you use RAID at this time, so for now just ignore the RAID specs.

Audio – today’s motherboards have sophisticated audio built into the motherboard.  Bear in mind you will have to purchase a set of computer speakers or output your computer audio to your audio-in on your stereo receiver to hear anything. Look for something like Realtek 8 channel audio on the spec with 6 audio ports.

You want an Ethernet RJ45, better known as a LAN chipset.  And as many USB 2.0 ports as possible.  The latest keyboards and mice use USB connectors, then you may want to plug in a USB jump drive or back up disk.  It should have a minimum of four USB 2.0 ports.  Most boards have an IEEE 1394 interface, called firewire.

You want an ATX motherboard for your ATX computer case, unless you want to go for a small case and use a microATX board.  Make sure your case fits an ATX board, most do.

You can purchase a motherboard for as little as $41 and as much as $269.  How do you choose?  There are a lot of motherboards out there.  The most popular boards are made by Asus and Gigabyte.  Some boards have a wireless lan built-in to the board, most don’t.  Most of the higher price boards are built for two graphic cards, you don’t need that if your not going to buy two graphic cards.

Other than that, I would read the reviews, see what other users are saying about the board, is it reliable, how’s the support, what kind of problems are others having.  You get the idea.

One of the most frustrating things that can happen when your building a computer system is to try to plug a cable in, and find out that the cable you have is too short.  It stops you dead in your tracks. Pow. Go on-line and order a longer cable.  What a pain, plus extra shipping charges, and will the cable you order be long enough?  Let’s stop and measure.  Maybe Radio Shack has it, jump in the car, nope.  You get the idea.

The most common problem you’ll have is the cable is too short.  Most of the manufacturers that provide cables with their components always provide short cables.  They want to keep their costs down and still provide their customers with everything they need.  The result, short cables.

What I propose is for you to have a couple of extra longer cables, so that this won’t slow you down.  What cables should you have in your kit?

DVD’s hook to the motherboard either with an IDE cable, or the newer DVD drives use SATA cables.  The IDE cable is usually an 18″ ribbon cable.  The ribbon cable is relatively wide, and stiff.  It get’s in the way of hooking up other cables and impedes air flow.  If you have a full tower and put the DVD in the upper slot, there’s a good chance the 18″ cable will not fit.

I prefer the round IDE cables.  Better air flow, not as stiff and easier to route in the case.  So the first cable you should get is a 36″ round, not flat, IDE cable, $4.99.

Round IDE Cable

Next SATA cables, SATA cables are used to hook up hard drives, and maybe your DVD drives.  Same sceanario SATA cables are too short, let’s get a couple of extra longer SATA cables.  Two 39″ SATA cables, $1.99 each, or $3.98.

SATA Cable

At this time, I’m not going to cover audio or video cables.  They depend on your components, the ports you have available, the distances between components, and what functionality you want to achieve.  We’ll leave these to later.

Current motherboards usually give you over four USB ports.  You can get USB externder cables to increase your cable distance, and USB hubs which allow you to hook more than one USB device to a single port.

RJ45 Ethernet cables, these are the cables you’ll use to hook computers to the network, to the Internet, and to hook to other computers.   There are two types of Ethernet cables.  Regular RJ45 cables that you hook from your router to your computer.  I recommend you get a 50 foot cable, 50 feet?  Yes, that way you can string a cable from the network, to your computer no matter where it is in the room.  I found a long ethernet cable is invaluable.  Friends come over with laptops and their computers, and you want to get them connected to the Internet.  It’s a lot easier to string cable that move hardware.  The cable runs $6.99.

Ethernet Cable

Crossover Cable

The other type of Ethernet cable is called a “Crossover” cable.  This is a cable that switches the wires inside the cable so you can plug two computers together, and have them talk to each other, which gives you an instant, high-speed network.  Ethernet cables are normally color coded with crossover cables being orange, and normal cables being light blue.  A 50 feet crossover cable runs $8.39.  You can also get a Crossover Adapter Plug for $13.99 and skip the orange cable.

Crossover Adapter

Power supplies are a bag of worms, and I mean this in more ways than one.  You have a mess of wires, and you have a mess of specs, you have a mess of power requirements, and yet out of all to this comes a smooth running computer.

A computer power supply takes 120 volts AC that you get from the power outlet in your home into its black box and out comes DC voltages +12v, +5v, and +3.3 volts that the computer uses to power its components.  The power supply is really a power converter.  Since it has these different voltages being output to different components, each of which has its own standard power plug, what you have out the back of the power supply is a mess of wires with different plugs attached to the wires.  And it is a mess.

Power supplies are described mainly by a wattage rating, for example 450w.  This stands for 450 watts.  The higher the watts the more power or current going to the components in your computer.  Well that’s simple, Not.  It turns out the different manufacturers have different ways to determine the wattage of their power supplies depending on how they state their specs.  You’ll see specs calling out peak power, continuous power, and multiple rails with current limits all of which can be twisted depending on how their stated or not stated.  The fact is there is no standard for describing and specifying power supplies, and as a result there are some pretty shoddy power supplies out there. The specs are a mess.

In fact it is so bad that I need to caution you about taking a Dell or HP power supply out of your old computer and using it in your new computer.   Dell and HP went so far as to make power supplies with standard internal connectors with different voltages on different pins.  Plugging this into a modern motherboard and components could instantly damage those components.

How much power do you need?  Unfortunately, most component and graphic card companies do not state the power needed in their specs. The idea that you can add up all your power requirements to get the total amount of power needed is also a mess.

Let’s approach this from a different perspective and see is we can pick out a decent power supply for your computer.  Most computers without a lot of components run on about 350 watts.  Now having said that, I would not purchase a 350w power supply and think your all set.  I don’t think they make one anyway. You always want to go over the watts you’ll need.  So for the average system, nothing fancy, I recommend a 500 watt power supply.  Now if you start adding multiple disk drives, hot graphic cards, or double graphic cards, then you are going to need a lot more power, at least a 750w power supply.  Those basically are the two main sizes you’ll see for the home computer. Disk drives not so much, but as soon as you go hot graphic card, which now require their own power connector, I would move to the 750w power supply.

Next you want a power supply that has the letters ATX in the spec.  What this means is it is compatible with an ATX motherboard.  It has the proper plugs and proper power to the pins for an ATX motherboard and components.   When you turn the computer off or go to standby power with the software,  the power supply to do the same.  All most all power supplies have this, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.  Some power supplies also state they are ready for Crossfire or SLI.  This refers to running two separate graphic cards in your computer, see my previous graphic cards posting for more on this.

Get a power supply with an on-off switch on the back.  This allows you to absolutely kill all power to the computer. Power supplies without the switch means you have to pull the power plug to get the same effect. You want to kill power when your working on the inside of the computer, in lightning storms, and when your computer hangs and you can’t shut it down.

Some power supplies are modular, which means that you are given a separate bag of internal power cables and plug them into the back of the power supply only if needed.  This cuts down considerably on the wires inside the box and improves overall air flow, reducing heat.  It use to be modular cabling led to problems if the cables became loose, most modular cables today have positive latching to make sure that doesn’t happen, but you will not find this anywhere in the specs.  Non-modular power supplies come with all the cables coming out of the back of the power supply.  Cables you don’t use have to be pushed into corners of the case. I recommend a good modular power supply.

Power supplies come in a standard size of 5.91″ width, 3.39″ height, and 5.52″ depth. And as a result you will not see dimensions stated with your power supply specs.  This size fits perfectly into your computer case which is built to include a power supply with those dimensions, easy.  Well not so fast.  The first two dimensions are the closest thing we’ll find to a standard in power supplies, but the last one depth you have to watch out for. On your bigger power supplies, the 750w version, some manufacturers have elongated the case to about a 7.48″ depth.  They’ll sneak this into their spec by stating dimensions, and not say anything else.  I do not recommend elongated power supplies.  They may or may not run a tad cooler, but they can create problems in fitting into your case as you start to wire up your computer.  Stick with the standard size.

Which bring us to heat, power conversion takes energy which is expelled in the form of heat.  Power supplies get hot.  Every power supply includes a fan that cools the power supply.  The problem is noise. I recommend the power supplies with the bigger fans rather than the smaller fans.  Smaller fans run faster and make more noise.  Curiously, fans always are mentioned in the spec.  Stay away from the 80mm fan. Some manufacturers will stress quiet in their fan spec. That’s goodness.

In picking out a power supply, look at the reviews and awards.  As I said, because of all the messes above, there are some shoddy power supplies out there that will crap out on you after a very short use, and have flaky and unstable voltages.  Unstable voltages can cause all sorts of problems in your computer that you will have trouble tracing back to your unstable power supply.  Currently, I am using Corsair modular power supplies.  Look for the word “modular” in the spec as they make both kinds of power supplies.  At this writing, they make a 520w, 620w, 650w, 750w, and 850w modular power supply.  I have used  both the 520w and 750w with good results.

The number one thing you can do to improve the performance of your computer is to increase your memory size.  I’ve heard this for a number of years, and I beieve it is true. Why?  Let’s start with speed.  Currently DDR3 memory has a transfer rate of around 9,000 Mb per second. The latest SATA hard drives transfer data at about 300 Mb per second.  Memory is about 30 times faster.  This doesn’t take into account disk latency, or the time it takes the disk to arive at the right spot on the disk to transfer the data.

When your computer runs an application, it loads your application into memory from the disk.  If you open another application, another space is set aside in memory for that application, and so on until there is no memory space available.  If another application is loaded after that, your computer starts to do what is called paging.  The oldest application is taken out of memory, and loaded to a swap space on your disk.  As you go back and forth between your applications.  You swap your pages in and out of memory from your swap space.  Needless to say this going back and forth to the disk slows the performance of your computer.  The more memory, the less swapping.  Enough said.

The only problem is when you turn the power off and shut down your computer, you lose everything in memory, while your hard disk retains all your data and applications on the disk surface.  You need both memory to run your applications and hard disks to store your data.

Let’s look at a typical memory name:  OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel.  What is all this gobly-gook or should I say gobly-geek?

Let me take it apart a step at a time.  OCZ is one of your top memory board manufacturers.  OCZ Reaper HPC is the brand name.  4Gb(2 x 2GB) means there is a total of 4GB of memory in two sticks of 2GB each. 240-Pin is the number of pins needed on the socket of the motherboard. DDR2 SDRAM stands for double-data-rate two synchronous dynamic random access memory.  What’s important here is the type of technology, DDR2.  DDR2  describes the DDR chips themselves, whereas PC2 8500 denotes theoretical bandwidth, and is used to describe assembled DIMMs. 1066 is the bandwidth, the higher the faster the memory.   Dual channel implies that it will work with a motherboard that can transfer data on a dual bus for improve thoughput.

One other way a spec might be presented is: DDR3 2000(O.C)/1600(O.C)/1333 This is usually what you’ll see as a memory spec for the motherboard.  This says the motherboard takes DDR3 memory boards running at one of the following bandwidths: 2000, 1600, or 1333.  The O.C. means the memory can be overclocked.

You always want two matched pairs of memory cards and thats the way their sold. No worries. DDR3 is the latest memory technology replacing DDR2 and they both use a 240-pin socket.  DDR3 is faster than DDR2 for the same clock rate.

Ok, here’s what you need to know.  When picking out memory, you have to match the memory board to the motherboard.  If you don’t you’ll have a heck of a mess as the motherboard may not work and you won’t know why.  If you look at the above motherboard spec, that motherboard requires DDR3 memory, not DDR2, and the bandwidth on the memory has to be one of the three speeds listed: 2000, 1600, or 1333.  You may be able to get away with a lower frequency, but I don’t recommend it. I recommend you look for DDR3 2000 memory for that motherboard.

If you look at the first example that memory is made for a motherboard that requires DDR2 memory that can handle a 1066 bandwidth.  I recommend you pick out your motherboard first, and then purchase the memory called out for by the motherboard spec, not the other way around.

Graphic cards have been around since around the 1990’s.  The idea then, as it is today, was to off load the drawing of the display on the monitor from the central processing unit to speed up the computer.  This has not changed in all these years, and yes, graphic cards are very much needed today.  With the continued improvement in computer gaming software, the continued increase in both the resolution and size of monitor displays, and the movement toward hi-definition video, graphic cards have become a critical part of the computer system.

From the start, graphic cards have plugged into slots on the motherboard, and have their monitor output plugs on the card come out the back of the computer.  In the beginning graphic cards used a shared PCI bus to plug into the motherboard. Soon technology began to push the limits of the shared PCI interface, and a new interface came along called, AGP, accelerated graphics port. This provided a dedicated path to the CPU. There were several versions of AGP with different voltages required to run the card, and you had to be careful which version your motherboard could use.  Because of the confusion, and the need for even higer tranfer rates, starting in 2004 a new interface was introduced that all modern graphic cards use called PCI Express, or PCIe, or PCI-E, depending on the specs. There all the same.  To give you an idea of technology improvements. PCI had a data rate of 250Mb/s, AGP had a rate of 500Mb/s, and PCIe has a rate of 1Gb/second.

Graphic cards work by building a display in the graphic cards memory of what you will see on the screen and then transferring that display image to your monitor.  As games got faster, more graphic card memory was needed to build displays in the background, so as one image was being displayed on the monitor, the next image was being built in the graphic card memory.  High definition video and realistic 3d computer games have progressed to the point that two physical graphic cards are used to draw alternate images and to make your display operate like your television.

How do you pick a graphic card?  Well, you have three choices.  Intel has been pushing its graphic chips to be included with the motherboard, and thus manufacturers, like Dell and HP, would not need to provide a graphic card with their computers.  This resulted in a great savings to the manufacturers, and this technology is pushed today.  Buyer beware.  I view this as step back, not forward. Why?  Well these chips do not have their own graphic memory.  They use the computers main memory to draw their images. So your main memory is being used for all your computer operations, which can slow down your overall system performance, in addition, it requires you to load up on memory if you want to have decent performance.  My advice, your building your own computer, don’t get a motherboard with built-in graphic chips that run off of main memory, and hamper your overall performance.  Buy a separate graphic card.

That was choice one, back to the other two choices.  There are two companies that design and make the graphic chips, ATI and NVIDIA. They do not, as their main business, sell graphic cards, but manufacture the chips. Other vendors sell the cards with their chips on it. Most people that I know either are ATI or NVIDIA users, they don’t switch back and forth. I personally have used both, but currently favor NVIDIA.  Both companies use to be independent, but in 2006 AMD the competitor of Intel purchased ATI.  What this means is now AMD can compete with the built-in graphic chip set of Intel. Microsoft just announced they will use the AMD and ATI for their next generation Xbox so the merger is paying off.

You will choose one of the other, either ATI, or NVIDIA, and this will affect which motherboard you purchase, as will see later.  One other wrinkle is the use of two graphic cards instead of one in your computer.  I do not recommend this unless you are a state-of-the-art computer gamer.  One card is usually enough.  ATI calls their dual graphic card set-up, “Crossfire.” and NVIDIA calls theirs, “SLI.”  You’ll see motherboards and power supplies that claim the are either “Crossfire-compliant” or “SLI ready.”  There are pluses and minuses of each.  If you decide to go the two card route, I recommend you research the differences first.

Since the graphic cards plug into the motherboard, you will have to pick a motherboard that fits the graphic card, or visa versa pick a graphic card that fits the motherboard. For example, if you want two graphic cards, your motherboard must have two PCIe slots the proper distance apart on the motherboard.  More on this when I talk about motherboards.

My recommendation is you get one of the latest graphic cards, that fit in your budget, produced by a graphic card manufacturer, like XFX, PNY, or EVGA.  You can get two card compatibility, i.e. SLI ready, and just buy one board with the idea of picking up the second board later, but do some reading first, if you want to go that route in the future.  You want a good chunk of memory with the card.  Usually the higher the number of the card, the better performance, and the higher the price.  Just like computer chips.

There is an exception to this.  NVIDIA recently got to their 9800GX2, and instead of going into GTX10000 for their next products decided to start their numbering over with the 210.  There latest is the GeForce GTX 295.

Computer chips use a lot of power in the relatively small wafer area of the computer chip. The computer chip, CPU, offers resistance to that power as it does its work. The result of that amount of power with that much resistance is heat. The same thing happens with a light bulb. You push a lot of power through the filament to produce light, and the result of this is a lot of heat or a very hot light bulb.

The faster the computer chip, the hotter the computer chip. The heat if it gets too hot can start causing problems in the operation of the chip and the motherboard. The way around this is to use a heat sink with a fan placed directly in contact with the computer chip to dissipate the heat. Thus we have the CPU cooling fan. All current computer chips require a CPU cooling fan.

There’s a couple of ways to go. When you order a cpu, it comes with a fan. You’re all set. However, most computer enthusiast don’t think those fans are good enough, and want to order a better fan for their computer for a number of reasons: they anticipate overclocking the cpu, producing more than normal heat; they want a super quiet fan, as the packaged fan usually is noisy; you want your rig to look good, you can get lights with your fan.

If you would like to order a CPU cooling fan. There are some things to consider: The first is noise. CPU fans can be noisy. You can replace the CPU fan with a less noisy fan. Look on the CPU Cooling Fan specification for the Noise Level. The lower the dba the better.

Cooper heat sinks exchange heat better than aluminum.

CPU fans/heat sinks are made for certain computer chips and sockets. If you order a Intel Core 2 Duo, which has an LGA 775 socket, you need to order a fan made for that socket and chip.

CPU fans attach in two ways. There are four holes through the mother board around the chip socket. The heat sink of tha fan sits on top of the computer chip. The fan body either has four push pins that push into those four holes in the motherboard and are held firmly in the holes by expanding the pin after it is through the hole. Or you screw the fan into a plate on the underside of the board. I’ve found the push pin types are flimsy and the pins break easily. I prefer the type where you screw into a plate on the back of the motherboard. “Zalman” is a brand name that uses this technique.

One other thing you’ll need is thermal grease. This is a grease mixture that you place between the CPU chip and the heat sink to enhance the heat transfer.  I recommend a brand called “Arctic Silver.”  It comes in a tube with an applicator for about $7.

I want to make a slight digression from building our new computer system to take a closer look at Windows 7 which is due out on Thursday, Oct. 22nd.  I find it curious that the next release of Ubuntu, 9.10, is due out on Oct. 29th one week later.  Is Microsoft starting to get a little worried about Ubuntu?  My thought is they should be.

To review Window 7. I looked at their features page. So here’s why you should spend money to upgrade from Vista, or if you were smart and our still running XP, from XP.  This is taken right from their Windows 7 feature page.

Windows 7 takes the headache out of sharing files and printers.  I thought your printer software took care of setting up a network printer.  My recent Cannon MX850 software went in smoothly with a couple of mouse clicks, since you have to install a printer driver from the printer manufacturer, what is Microsoft possibly adding to the mix here.

Speedy access to your favorite picture and documents.  Ah, didn’t Microsoft include this with XP.  Hello, what’s new?

Snap a quick and fun way to re-size and compare windows on your desktop. Wow! Windows finally figured out how to split a screen.  I have to admit this has been a pain when copying files between folders in explorer, I can’t think when else I have needed this feature.  Microsoft says it will be fun though.  I wonder if my 9 year old boy will think so?

Windows Live Essentials. 7 great programs for free: Mail, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and more…I believe you can have any one of these programs for free anyway.  I’m thinking of Thunderbird for email.

Windows Search. We’ll finally we come to something that’s worthwhile. It’s taken Microsoft how many years to finally figure out they need a better search engine then the one they’ve been using.  Microsoft searches have always been slow and just plain awful.  So much so that I went to third party search utilities to do the same thing.  This is an improvement, and maybe worth the upgrade price.

Window Taskbar, better thumbnail previews.  Another area that Microsoft has been lame is allowing users to decide how to customize the taskbar.  What their pushing is easier-to-see icons and previews.  That’s questionable.  More ways to customize is an improvement, I think.

Full 64bit support. It looks like Microsoft is taking us into 64 bits.  We have the processors available, but until Microsoft supported it, application developers would not embrace it.  This is a good thing, but it will not affect your running of Windows 7 at home, it is more a gift to developers.

Remote Media Streaming.  So your going to log onto your home computer, which of course needs to be running, and listen to a song….why not just dial up Pandora?

Window 7 Touch…ah, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to touch my monitor and leave fingerprints on the display, that I constantly have to clean off the monitor.  I have to be convinced on this one.  Maybe…

You can run XP programs in compatibility mode…ah, pardon me.  We’ve been able to do this since Windows 95.  This just means Microsoft has added XP to the list of old operating systems to be compatible with, so they can retire XP and get more revenue,  to force users to upgrade their operating system.  They’re trying to force users off of XP any way they can.

So to sum up. This is typical Microsoft puffery marketing.  Telling you about features that you really all ready have in a new light.  My kids can’t stand their TV ads.  The big thing in this release is improved search, which is really a rework of the Vista search, and for the future full support of 64 bit, but as I said this should not be important in your use of the computer at home or work for awhile.

In the future, it will mean Microsoft will sell you the 64 bit version of all their applications.  After all, you always need something new to sell consumers to keep that revenue stream going. They’ll claim faster performance and quicker applications, you’ll see.

Windows 7 is just the next release of their operating system, just like a week later Ubuntu is releasing their next release of their operating system.  Only Ubuntu is free, and you do not have onerous registration licensing with Ubuntu.

Computer chips are made in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”  Kudos to a 1926 short story by Ernest Hemingway.  I don’t think Hemingway anticipated today’s computer clean rooms and complex nanometer manufacturing technology. After all in 1926 computer chips didn’t even exist.  We’ve come a long way since then.

Two companies dominate the computer chip market, the market leader, Intel, and the “Avis” of computer chips, AMD.  Not that there aren’t other manufacturers, it’s just that your x86 desktop architecture is dominated by these two companies. Intel created the x86 architecture back in 1978 and it is the architecture, by making sure we can always run legacy code, that persists to this day.  You would think that this would make it easy to make a choice. But…if you go to the Intel web site and look at all their processors, you’ll be at a loss to pick the right computer chip for the system your building.  AMD, which also supports the X86 architecture, has less choices, but there’s enough processors to still make it difficult to know which one to choose.

We could go through a bunch of specs, comparing this against that, but you would still be overwhelmed by the choices. We are going to approach this slightly differently.  Since the computer chip is mounted on a motherboard, computer chips and motherboards are intimately connected.  It does you no good to pick out a super fast chip, and not find any motherboards that can run the chip.

Computer chips are mounted in sockets on the motherboard.  In order to increase your  overall system options, we want to pick the cpu socket that has the most motherboards available.  For Intel the current socket of choice is called “LGA 775.” LGA stands for “Land Grid Array” and the socket has no holes, instead it has posts that mate with pins on the bottom of the chip.  The current popular chip that uses that socket is the Intel Core 2 Duo.  Yes, there are faster Intel chips, like the i7 with 45nm techology that takes a “LGA 1366″ socket, and other Intel chip types, like Quad core, but at this point in time in software development, the Core 2 Duo is more than adequate.  You can tell one Core 2 Duo chip from another by their “E” number.  The higher the number, the faster the chip, and the higher the price. E numbers E6850 and below are 65 nanometer technology and E7200 and above are 45nm technology.  The 45nm are denser and faster.  That’s about all you need to know.  I admit this is simplistic, but you can’t go too wrong with this approach.  The chip you pick will be the highest E number Core 2 Duo that fits in with your overall budget.

Intel Core 2 Duo

LGA775 Socket

Let’s take a peak at the AMD chip set.  There are actually two sockets we could choose with AMD.  The AM2+/AM2, or AM3.  Theoretically the AM3 will work in an AM2+ socket, while an AM2+ chipset will not work in an AM3 socket. To be safe, if the chipsets calls for an AM3 socket use an AM3 socket motherboard only.  This corresponds to the Athlon X2 chipset for the AM2+, and Athlon II and Phenom II processors for the AM3 socket.  The chief difference is the Athlon X2 chip set uses 65 nanometer technology and the Athlon II and Phenom II uses 45 nanometer technology. Just like with Intel the higher the number of the chip the faster the performance. Both the AMD chips are Intel chips are fairly equivalent.  See my previous blog entitled, “Quad Core Battleground coming in 2009,”  for some more details.

AMD Athlon II

AM2+ socket

I favor the Intel chips sets at present, but I have to admit I don’t have experience running an AMD chip set. I don’t see any problems in using AMD, as long as the motherboard has the correct AMD socket.

Now which chip to purchase?   This is dependent on how much money you want to spend on your overall system.  You could buy an expensive chip, bear in mind, that you will probably then want to buy an expensive motherboard, and an expensive graphic card. The next thing you know, you may be way outside your budget unless you are planning on building one of those dream computer gaming rigs.  If your outside your budget you can move to the next lower E number chipset or lower number AMD chipset. I think you’ll find unless your building the hottest system you can imagine, a processor running above 2.6 Ghz is probably adequate at this point in time for a home computer.  If your going to run a Microsoft Windows7 you’ll probably want a fairly fast chip as all those 3d graphics on the desktop come at a performance price.

In talking about hardware components, we’ve covered computer cases, tools of the trade, monitors, keyboards, mice, hard drives, and DVD drives.  These components can be pretty much purchased independently of the rest of the system components.

We are about to get into the heart of the computer, and talk about power supplies, graphic cards, cpu chips, and finally motherboards.  All of these components inter-relate with one another.  For example, if you purchase a computer chip it mates to a particular type of socket on the mother board, so you need to be careful when you purchase your motherboard that it comes with that socket.

Do not purchase one of these components until after you read about all of them.  Each component has to mate with the other components in your system.  And if your careful, you’ll find that everything will come together neatly, if your not, you’ll be exchanging and returning parts. A royal pain.

At the end of the hardware components, I’ll summarize everything you’ll need to buy with cautions about what you need to make sure you have with the part you purchase.

Nuff, said.

As technology has progressed, we have seen recording media change.  We’ve had IBM computer cards, paper tapes, tape reels, 45 records, 33 1/3 records, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes, beta, VHS,  Cd’s, DVD’s, memory sticks, HD DVD, Blu-Ray, and now various digital formats. like mp3, and toys to store the digital formats. I’m sure it will change again in the future.  After all, nothing endures but change. The sad thing is every time we have one of these technology changes, every one has to run out and re-buy all their old music and videos on the new format.  Well that’s the American economy,   let’s change the format, and we’ll make big bucks on old songs.

What characterizes each of these formats was the amount of information it could store, and of course, the shape and fragility of the physical media .  Presently, a lot of software and recordings are coming over the Internet. I expect that to continue in the future, but in the meantime, the software and recording industries, still are selling software on DVD’s, and DVD recordings retail.  Yes, it’s declining and one could argue you don’t need a DVD drive on your computer.

DVD drives are useful for other reasons, to backup your data to a DVD, to backup your music, and videos to DVD. To give a friend a playlist of songs for a party, you might want to record a DVD/CD for him.  You get the idea to write data to the DVD.  These are referred to as “DVD burners.”  I recommend one internal 5.25 inch wide, DVD “burner” drive for your computer at this point in history.

I’ve seen drives priced from $20 to $240. What’s the difference and what should I look for? Let’s lay out some simple specifications for ourselves.  We want one drive that can both read and write DVD’s.  It would be nice if the transfer rate was high, perhaps a SATA connected drive. SATA cables have replaced the older IDE cabling, because of their higher transfer rates. I prefer SATA, but there are some cautions with SATA cabling. I will talk more about this when we talk about cabling. We want to mount it in our computer, so it should be an “internal” drive.

Optional is the ability to read the Blu-ray format.   If you would like to watch a Blu-ray movie on your computer, that may be connected to your Hi-Def TV, then also get Blu-ray capability, of course, at a higher price. The alternative is either not to jump into Blu-ray movies, or buy a separate Blu-ray drive for direct connection to a Hi-Def TV.  You could do both.

Neat. All set.  Well hold on here, what are all these crazy letters after the drive like: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-ROM, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM,  Let’s take this a step at a time. All those DVD-XXX are different formats that are used to record on plastic disks that are made for that particular format. You mean I have to be careful on what type of blank disks I buy? Well, you may depending on the drive you select.

Let’s declutter here a bit.  DVD stands for DVD, duh.  DVD stands for “Digital Video Disc.”  The R alone stands for read-only, as does the ROM. The drive will read media, but not record media.  And you guessed it RW stands for read and write, which is what we want. RAM is later technology that is extremely fast at both writing and reading.

Throw out all those drives that just have the R and not the RW. Darn, there go those cheap $20 models.  This leaves us with three competing formats DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM.  You want your drive to read and write all three, any other formats are optional to me. If you have some old CD’s floating around, you’ll find most of these drives will read the CD format also.

Then we have the X’s, as in: 4X, 8X, 24X, etc. this is easy, the higher the X the faster the drive, each format on the drive will have a different X next to it to indicate how fast it can read and write. The higher the X the better.

There is one other optional feature called, “LightScribe.”  This is a disc-etching technology that allows you to etch a label on the non recording side of the DVD. It could take about 20 minutes to do this, and tends to slow the overall drive down, I don’t care much for it, your choice.

As far as manufacturers, there are several good one’s out there like: Pioneer, PLEXTOR, ASUS, LG, and Sony. I prefer Sony, they’ve been reliable, and they originated the Blu-ray format.

We finished all the periphery equipment outside the computer case.   It’s now time to dive in and go inside as we get ready to build our computer.  Let’s start with disk drives.

Disk drives use to come with Mb’s of storage, that’s megabytes, then the hard drive manufacturers started being able to make Gb, gigabytes, drives, and in the last year we have seen Western Digital come out with a 2TB, terabyte, drive.  Disk drives are one of the best bargains on the market as the price per byte (equivalent to one letter of text) has steadily declined.

Besides competition from each other for the biggest, most quiet, and fastest hard drive with the latest technology, the other thing driving  disk manufactures is the steadily declining price of solid-state storage. Solid state storage’s big advantages are no moving parts so they are more reliable and they’re fast.  Hard drive manufacturers have also increased their reliability over time and speed.  For now, solid state drives are still pricey, so will stick with hard drives for our system.

What do you look for in a hard drive? Manufacturer’s have tried for years to come up with something unique to separate themselves from one another. We have the quietest, the most power efficient, the most reliable,the most storage, and the fastest hard drives.

The first three features are for system builders who build specialized computers. The quietest is used for ultra quiet computers. If you want to check how much noise the drive makes, drive specs come with a sound rating in db, decibels.  Go for the lowest db’s. The most power efficient is used for people who are worried about how much power the comptuer wiill use.  How green are you? And the most reliable drives are used with servers that require a lot of drives and storage. They look for specs like mtbf, mean time between failure.

The last two features I mentioned are where we want to put our focus. The faster the disk drive the faster your system will seem to be. You want the fastest drive possible. By fast, I mean how fast can the disk read and write data to and from the computer’s memory. The manufacturers have several ways to increase the transfer rate. They can spin the disk platters faster with higher revolutions per minute, rpm. They can add more disk platters and have the disk controller read from several platters at once, and you can add cache memory to save some of the most recent accesses and retrieve from cache. Retrieving from cache memory can be a good 30 times or more faster than directly  from the disk.  Despite all these techniques, it all boils down to transfer rate.  Today’s technology feature Serial ATA, SATA, connectors and
transfer rates of 3Gb per second. This is what your looking for when you select your drive.  Get SATA drives for their high transfer rate.  SATA drives also have superior connector cables over the older IDE connectors.

The most storage is mostly a matter of how much you want to spend.  I highly recommend you buy two identical hard drives.  Just to put a number up in the air, I would say for a majority of users, two 300Gb drives is more than enough room for today’s computer usage. You can get by with a lot less.  You use the extra drive for setting up a mirror drive, or a super fast back up of your key data. It also can be used for media storage of your music and DVDs.  Some server providers set up RAID configurations which helps protect data by duplicating your data across mulitple drives in different configurations, in which case, you may need even more than two drives.  If your a home  enthusiast, however, I’d just go with two disk drives.

As to which manufacturer, I think as long as I can remember, I have been partial to Western Digital hard drives, but there are many good hard drive manufacturers, so you can’t go too wrong no matter which manufacturer you choose.