Let’s start off our computer building purchases with the computer case.   The truth of the matter is, you don’t need a computer case.  Huh?  If push comes to shove, you could just place the parts of the computer out on your living room rug, plug the parts together, and theoretically, you could run your computer.  Of course, if the cat ran across the motherboard, he could get electrocuted, and it could start a fire in your rug,  and certainly it would take up a lot of space on the floor that visitors would have to be careful to step over.   The purpose of the computer case is to enclose all the computer parts, and that’s why it’s also called an enclosure.  It encloses all you computer parts in a nice, aethetically pleasing, neat, and safe environment.  Put a power switch and reset button on the case, a couple of connector ports on the front and wahlah!.  We have a computer case.

What are some of the things you should look for on the front of the computer case.  You want a power switch to turn the computer on and off, and a reset button to push to reboot your computer if your software hangs up.  And it’s nice to have a USB port for a mouse or jump drive, audio port for your speakers, and mayby a 1394 firewire port for fast data transfers.  Maybe a seta external hard drive port for external hard drive back ups.  Some cases have doors on the front to hide all these switches and ports, I personally think, there just a pain, as you’re constantly openning and closing the door.  On one case, I finally got fed up, and took the door off, aesthetics be dam.

Some cases are steel and some are aluminum.  The steel cases are billed as more rigid and less noisy,  They are definitely heavier.  I prefer the lighter aluminum, and find the well constructed cases just as rigid.

Computers put out a lot of heat.  Computer cases come with fans to push air across the computer parts to cool them.  The smaller the fan, the louder the fan.  Fans are measured in width in millimeters, mm.  Some fans are 80mm and some are 120mm across.  The larger 120mm fars are quieter, so I prefer them.  I like quiet in a computer.

Computer cases are made to easily mount the motherboard.  The two most common types of motherboards are ATX and Micro ATX.  Make sure your case is compatible with the type of motherboard  you select.

Cases come in several form factors.  A full tower, the biggest, usually is about 22″ high, mid-tower cases are usually around 19″ high, and then you have speciality horizonal and micro cases that have about 12” in height or width.  Be careful with the micro and horizonal cases, they only take a Micro ATX motherboard.  One other consideration is how big our your hands.  Hooking cables up in a small enclosure can be frustrating.  You may want to order the bigger case to make like easier during assembly.

Finally, you’ll want to mount your hard drives and DVD drives in the case.  Cases should have enough room for these drives.  Hard drives are usually 3.5″ across and DVD drives are usually 5.25″ across.  If you want 3 hard drives and two DVD drives, you’ll need at least three 3.5″ bays and two 5.25″ bays.  It’s nice to have extra bays, to spread things out in the case and helps to keep things cooler inside.  Some cases come with the power supply, some don’t.  I prefer buying the power supply separately.

What separates one case manufacturer from another, attention to detail.  Does the inside of the case have sharp edges that nick your hand when installing parts, are there little convenient labels on the holes to show you where to mount the motherboard screws, and are hard drives easy to get in and out with special cages.   Realistically, the only way to know this is to read the reviews about the cases and see which are highter rated.  After a while you’ll settle on a manufacturer you like.  Currently, I favor Gigabyte computer cases.

I wanted to cover tools you’ll need to assemble your computer up front, so if your missing any needed tools, you can order them now, when you order your computer parts, instead of getting half way through the assembly, and finding out you wished you had that special left-handed wrench snatcher that you needed.

What tools do you need in your tool kit.   A Phillips screwdriver should do the trick.  Yep, that’s it.   Seriously folks, you can assemble a modern day computer with just a Phillips screwdriver, although there are a couple other tools you might like to make your work go a little smoother.

First, I like several sizes of magnetic Phillips screwdrivers.  The tool I use most was given to me by a good friend, and I remember him to this day, God rest his soul.   That tool is a one handed ratchet screwdriver with interchangeable magnetic heads.  I can change directions of the rathet with the same hand I am using to apply pressure to the screw.   Why magnetic?  It makes retrieval of that errant screw that drops into the computer after you have all the wiring in place that is impossible to reach any other way.  Insert the screwdriver through the wiring and the screw jumps onto the end of the screwdriver for extraction.  Wahlah!  Nice.  I like the ratchet part, because some time those little rascals are a little too tight, and it’s nice to have that little extra pressure.  This is a tough tool to find.   If you find one, and they are worth actively looking for, do not hesitate to get one.

I have occasionally used a nut driver that exactly fit over standard size case screws, because it’s quick, and the nut driver just seemed to jump into my hand.  And a little forceps clamp to pull plugs.  These are available in one of those $10 computer tool kits.

The next thing I like is a long neck clamp with a locking clamping mechanism.  I’m thinking of a long neck hospital hemostat.   Some of those case wiring pins, or master/slave pins on DVD drives are a little tough to get to with my hands, and the  hemostat is an ideal finger/hand replacement for this job.

I also find a need for a power supply testing tool that you can plug your power supply cables into that lights up if voltage is present.  A voltage read out is also a plus.   Any time your not getting power to your components, you always wonder if its not the power supply.  Plug the end of the power supply cable into the tester, and if it lights up, your problem is not the power supply.  A quick and easy way to check your power.

Static electricity can damage your motherboard, your hard drive, and your memory with just a little static spark.   You can prevent this by keeping grounded to your computer case with a wrist grounding strap whenever you are assembling your computer.  There’s a reason these parts come wrapped in static proof bags folks.

I like a little plastic box with compartments.  I use this to drop loose screws into when assembling and disassembling a computer.  This way you don’t loose screws in the carpet, you keep track of which screws go where, and you won’t  jump high in the air, followed by an expletive, the next time you step on a errant carpet screw with your bare feet.

Finally, a high intensity flash light.  It’s some times tough to see in the case for plug labeling, and where the pins on the plugs are. One of those clamp on the book reading lights will work as long as the light is bright.  One that will clamp on to the case and keep your hands free is ideal.

That’s not a lot folks, you can still do it with a Phillips screwdriver, but life’s a lot less frustrating with some of the other tools I mentioned above.

What can I say about these accessories.  You absolutely need them, but which one you acquire is mostly a personal preference or depends on how much money you want to spend.  There are not a lot of  technical details you need to be concerned about.  You’ll need to get one of each of these for your computer.   I will add some thoughts you might want to consider.

On the monitor, get the biggest size that stays within your budget.  LCD monitors are the current best choice.   As HDTV’s are starting to come with computer monitor capability, so computer monitors are starting to come with built in digital tuners and HDTV capability.  I expect the two to merge.  Your buying decision will then come down to how big a monitor you can afford.   Most of the other specs are not that important.   There are several good manufacturers of monitors.

On mice, I recommend a wired optical mouse over a wireless mouse.   I find that there is a lag in the wireless mice before they wake up.  You have to shake them a little to wake them up, while the wired mice always seem alive the instant you touch the mouse.  What that means to you is how responsive the mouse feels.  I personally want a very responsive mouse, especially for computer games.  Wireless mice can be very frustrating at times.  If your farther away from the computer than the standard 6 ft.  wire on a mouse, a USB extender cable can be used to extend the distance.

The keyboard is another story.  I prefer a wireless keyboard. over a wired one.  When your typing, you don’t need the quick response of a mouse.  I have had no problem with wireless keyboards.

Beyond this both mice and keyboards come with various features to make your computer use easier.  It is mostly a personal choice as to which one you purchase.  I personally prefer Logictech mice and keyboards over other manufacturers.

Speakers are a user specific, personal choice.  If your an audio surround-sound affection-ado, you’ll have a surround sound receiver with a bunch of speakers, if you just want sound out of the computer, you’ll just have a couple of computer speakers.  The choice is yours.  Today’s computers can output some very sophisticated digital sound, which you will then plug into the speaker or receiver of your choice to hear.

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.

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.