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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.