Basic Hardware Info:

There are several main parts builders need to know: the motherboard, CPU, power supply, RAM, video card, case, hard drives, optical/floppy drives, and sound cards. Most people believe that you build a system around the CPU, an AMD or Intel processer chip. That’s incorrect. A builder knows that when you build a PC, it’s based off of the motherboard. The motherboard is pretty much like a human skeletal system: EVERYTHING is put together from it.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what kind of a PC you want to build: Are you building a basic computer, to do Word and Excel and some web browsing? Or a pimped out, ultimate gaming rig? Or how about a nice Home Entertainment PC? Once you figure that out, you can then select the parts you will need. The big differences between these three is: 1) You only need basic parts for the basic computer, nothing extravagant. Don’t need a dedicated GPU (video card), when only a built-in GPU will work fine. Cheapest system to make, really. 2) You are going for the best bang for the buck or the highest priced parts available today. Budget gamers, and mid-gamers aim for the best bang for the buck method, sometimes building a system around the idea of using a certain part that they want (ex. they get the best video card they can, and skimp on the other parts as best as they can). 3) A HTPC (Home Theater PC) can be more expensive than a typical gamer’s rig because of the essential component in this PC: Silence. A HTPC is made to be like TIVO; go through TV channels, but you can also burn/record them onto your hard drive, and you can even do some web browsing on that nice 50″ Samsung LCD HDTV you bought a month ago. As such, HTPC makers biggest focus is on the CASE because that defines how big of a system they can make, and how much cooling they can get while putting as much of the best parts into it the case can handle.

As you can see, these 3 basic building functions are very diverse and different from each other. HOWEVER, thats just the pure build idea; a budget PC can be a budget gaming rig; and a decent gaming rig can also second as a HTPC. It comes down to how you build it and what you use.

Now, we’re going to work on the assumption that you are building a gaming rig, like most of us do.

1) The motherboard. YOU MUST DECIDE two things before selecting a motherboard, IMHO. A) Intel or AMD? If you’re worried about the flat dollar amount of the build, go with AMD as their CPUs are, AT THE MOMENT, cheaper. Bang for the buck, or best you can get, methods of buying will mean getting an Intel chip. Preferably a Core2Duo chip that’s based off their new FSB 1333MHz standard, and not the old 1066MHz. B) Graphic card: NVIDIA or AMD (originally ATI until it was bought by AMD). You can SLI your video card, or Crossfire it, which are two different methods of using 2 PCI-E video cards from Nvidia or AMD. Most of us use NVIDIA, though there are some good bang-for-the-buck models from AMD. There are several brands of motherboard makers out there today: ECS, Biostar, ASUS, Gigabyte, and Intel to name a few. They all offer various functions and features, and warranties. Personally, I like Gigabyte bc of their warranties, and they’ve been more reliable for me than ASUS been (I’ve used 2 different Gigabyte boards without a single failure, whereas Asus 1 and only did die on me). Other things to make sure about: Make sure the mobo you select supports DDR2, and even DDR3 speeds for RAM. Currently, the standard is now DDR2 800MHz RAM, but more and more of us are using DDR2 1066MHz RAM for that extra OOMPH! Just remember the two things you decided upon earlier, and your choice of MOBOs are cut in half.

2) CPU: Now, whichever socket the motherboard you bought supports, is the kind of CPU you need to buy. You bought a quad-core Intel chip for $ 300, but skimped on the motherboard and bought it for only $ 20. Oh no! The mobo isn’t the type of socket you needed; it’s an old P4 model, not the model that can support that quad chip of yours. LGA775 is the standard socket for Intel Core2Duo chips, currently. AMD’s is Socket AM2. Intel has gone from a 90, even a 65nm chip (the size of the chip) down to a 45nm chip. These new chips need less power and gives off less heat, but they do SO MUCH MORE processsing power, that whatever power and heating was saved is gone as you abuse and use that chip for everything in gaming. The sweet spot today for Intel chips, in my opinion, is the E6750, a 2.66GHz, core2duo chip, dual core and above, including the new 8000 series from Intel (the 8200 would be the 45nm equivalent of the 65nm 6750).
AMD Im out on the loop of, but there a number of great price-performance ratio CPUs on the market today.

3) Power Supply. There’s one rule of thumb here with a PSU: You get what you buy! There is absolutely NO POINT in buying the best PC parts in the world if your PSU is a POS. If a PC requires more power than given by a PSU, not only will it NOT run, but it may also fry and take your expensive $ 200 motherboard and $ 300 video card with it. There are several reliable manufacturers on the market, and RELIABILITY is the biggest pricing concern with PSUs. Targan, PC Power and Cooling, those two are the creme of the crop in PSU manufacturers. However, to get that nice 850 watt PSU from PC-PC, you;’re gonna fork over $ 180. A tad bit pricey. There are some budget PSUs on the market with good reliability, so they’re cheaper than others (just not as good). Depending on the build, a decent gaming rig will want AT LEAST 550 watts of power, and you need to make sure it has the cables you need to power everything correctly. I hit a roadblock when my PSU didnt have the necessary power (500 watt PSU) to power everything in my PC when I upgraded from a 6600GT 128MB video card to a 8800 GTS 320MB vid card. Ending up getting a “patch,” a dedicated GPU PSU, which has the necessary cable attachments to plug and power it. Beats spending another 80 bucks over the “patch’s” price.

4 RAM. One of the easiest, and hardest choices, to make. Simple because you really only need to, or should, buy is DDR2 800MHz. It’s hardest because first off, you gotta deal with ALL of the different RAM makers out there; GEIL, Patriot, OCZ, Corsair.. the list goes on and on. AND on top of that, there are MULTIPLE models for each RAM standard; Geil has like a dozen different models that fits under the DDR2 800MHz classification. AND on top of that too, do you want to stick with 800MHz or maybe cut a few bucks, and go only with DDR2 533 or 667MHz, or maybe spend a few more for that DDR2 1GHz RAM?

5) Video card: Only two manufacturers for these babies; AMD and Nvidia. AND though they have multiple models, most of them are based off the PCI-E socket, and don’t overlap each other in performance or price… usually. However, these two are Direct Competitors, so when one offers $ 150 over-performing video card, the other will certainly try to match, or beat, it. Or maybe give you slightly reduced power at a bigger reduce price. Personally, I recommend NVIDIA as they have the best performing video cards on the market. This is an easy hardware part to review for because you really gotta worry about two things only: PRICE, and performance. And to do that, well price is easy, just look online and see the prices. Performance? Anandtech.com, tomshardware.com, etc etc. Such sites give you video card performance comparisons. So you can see for yourself how good they are.

6) Case. There a variety of cases, but lets stick to the simplest three: HTPC Case, Mid-tower, and Full tower. HTPC are usually short in height, with long lengths and widths. Almost like a TIVO box, so to speak. Mid-tower and Full tower cases are what you are more familiar with. These are the cases that are rectangular with narrow widths, but moderate to big height and lengths. And obviously, a full tower is just bigger than a mid-tower. There are over 20 different case manufacturers listed on newegg.com, but there are certain brands that are better than the rest: Apevia, Antec, Thermaltake, Lian-Li. These manufacturers have built reliable, and performing, cases for a gamer, and though their prices can be high, its bc of the reliablility and brand rep that manufacturer has. The biggest concern with a case is: how big are the parts are you buying, and how do you want to cool them. If you’re getting a dual-slot video card, sound card, full size motherboard (yes, there are smaller motherboards), several optical and hard drives… you will need a full tower just to cram all that stuff in. But if you got a single slot video card, one HDD, 1 or 2 optical drives, etc. etc. You may only need a mid-tower. Anyways, I prefer full towers as they have better cooling, and just the extra room I can use for future upgrades. They are HEAVY to carry around, but its good exercise. That’s the biggest tradeoff between the two: weight (and price too). Additionaly, I look for a case with at least one 120mm fan. Now, the cooling concept is NOT how many fans you got, but how much airflow you can get. 2x120mm fans have better airflow than 3, even 4x80mm fans. Not to mention that they give off a lot less noise; it takes less rpm for a 120mm fan to generate the amount of airflow a 80mm fan does at full speed. Other features in a case to look for: hinge doors with locks, location of the USB, and sound ports in the front, and case windows. This is where personal style really does take effect as people normally only see the case; getting a case with a window, however, will let them see inside it and add a few cathode lights, it looks AWESOME!

7) The hard drives, optical/floppy drives, and sound cards are easy parts in comparison to the first six to understand. Hard drive is like your brain; it stores ALL the information you got. There are several kinds of HDDs on the market; only two to worry about today, really, maybe three, are IDE, SATA, and SSDs. IDE and SATA drives are called that based of the connection they use; either an IDE or SATA connection. Recommendation: Stick with the SATA drives as SATA connections are faster than IDEs (and easier to install!). SSD means Solid-State Drives. This is a new hard drive developed and produced on the market today based off of the RAM/Flash storage concepts. Regular hard drives has several, moving parts in it, reducing their reliability, and thus the reason why system errors can develop over time; the hard drive is just slowly dying out. A SSD, on the other hand, has NO moving parts and is pretty much RAM technology, configured as a hard drive. Only problem is that these babies are EXPENSIVE, and not that big. A 750GB Sata HDD can cost about $ 120, whereas a 30GB SSD can cost about $ 300. See the problem? The biggest saving grace about SSD is their speed, having 4x the read/write speeds of a regular HDD at times. Testing has shown that where it may take several seconds for Windows to load on a regular hard drive, you can’t time a SSD’s loading time as Windows just pops up immediately. It’s THAT FAST. Anyways, Look for AT LEAST a 250GB SATA hard drive, 7200rpm (not 5400). Faster RPM means faster speed, but reduced reliability as well, and more power being consumed. 7200RPM is today’s standard, and 250GB will work for most people’s needs. HOWEVER, if you save a lot of data, look for more storage if you can, and don’t forget, you can put several hard drives into the same PC. Only one HDD needs to have an OS installed on it, while the rest are just storage drives for it. I got 2x320GB hard drives, and 1x750GB hard drive. Only one of my 320GB drives has Windows on it, the rest are filled up with movies, music, and games. (Ask Elwoodini how much storage you have, it’s insane!)

You know what optical drives are: A CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-/+RW, or Blu-Ray. Simplest answer: Just buy a DVD-/+RW drive, or two, unless you want to play HD movies on

Thank you for your information