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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.