So you wanna build your own computer? It can easily be a daugnting task, but I hope with this document I can help make it a bit easier, save you some time, money and headaches. The first step is to know what you need to do with it, as necessity is the mother of invention and one might say you are inventing your own machine by buying separate pieces from different manufacterers and putting them together.
Being able to get on the internet, check email, send instant messages, surf the web, and do word processing is almost a secondary consideration for any computer build nowadays. It’s only modern games, cad, 3d animation, movie and audio editing, serving, and scientific research for the most part that will need more processing power than the cheapest ready to run machine you could buy from the store. So if you are absolutly sure you are not going to be doing any of that then go to Best Buy, Wal-Mart, eBay, etc. and do some quick Google searches and find the cheapest machine or parts you can. This will often be cheaper than building it component by componet as you can get bargans, rebates that will include the os (operating system) and monitor.
For best prices I use a combination of pricewatch, pricegrabber, and eBay for parts pricing, and often do Google searches to look up parts descriptions. I research until I’m bored and fight the best penny pinching deal I can find. I don’t make a lot of money, and I don’t mind spending the time to do the research. Caveat emptor, buyer beware when shopping from eBay or pricewatch. Look at the number of reviews and their feedback percentage. Another money saving trick is to wait until black Friday when things go on sale. I’ve found that computer parts are cheapest between Black Friday and Christmas. September might also have some good deals, as that is the slowest month for retail. Newegg is a great website for prices, very fast shipping, and product reviews from customers. In sevarl cases I feel that used parts are as good as new parts so long as they are well cared for (haven’t been overclocked). Things I won’t buy used or referbished: motherboards, hard drives, monitors, optical drives (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD and DVD burners), and psu’s (power supply units).
When looking at parts the first things to know is what parts dictate what other parts you'll have to get, and your budget. (I am going to assume for this document that you are not planning on building a machine mainly for audio/video editing. If you are, go with a macintosh paltform. The x86 platform lacks the high quality software for such operations to my knowledge.). Usually the first thing one thinks of when building a computer oneself is either the cpu, however some gamers will build their computer around their graphics card instead.
When it comes to cpu’s there are two brands: Intel, and amd (Advanced Micro Devices). Intel has better marketing, faster sounding numbers, and higher prices. Amd is in my opinion the only way to go. Ultimatly, benchmark scores determin wether or not a cpu is faster or not.
One decision you'll wanna weigh is whether or not to go 64bit. They aren't as fast as they are going to get, because not enough software has been written in 64bit code. A 64 bit version of windows has been written, but it’s little more than a 64bit notepad right now. But as time goes by, all computers will be 64 bit and faster for it. Cost is big factor for 64 bit machines and top of line 32bit processors are still cheaper, and you’ll need to buy an expensive motherboard. If you do go with a 64bit machine, socket 939 is the way to go. Socket 735 is a bit cheaper, but does not have dual channel ram controllers. What that bassically means is two sticks of ram are accessd as one which doubles the speed. Socket 940 is mainly for servers and are not geared in the least to consumers.
Any which way, you’ll probably want a processor that has it’s cache on-die. Athlon, Pentium, and Opteron all fit that bill. Celeron, Sempron and Duron do not. This makes a large difference in actual speed for all types of operations, but if speed is not what you need, celeraon, sempron and duron’s are cheaper. A few minimum numbers to consider for cpu speed based on a pentium processor (raise the number for a celeron, sempron, or duron, lower for an athlon):
web surfing by way of dial up modem; word processing 200Mhz
websurfing by way of ethernet, wireless, or broadband (cable or dsl modem) 400 Mhz
dvd burning 800 Mhz
video games 1.8Ghz+
The moatherboard is the next big thing to consider if you are building a computer around the cpu. All cpu’s have a socket or slot type and a fsb (front side bus speed) that must be matched with the motherboard. If they don’t match one simply won’t fit into the other. The motherboard, or it’s chipset specifically, then determines what type and how much ram you can have, what interface your grpahics card can have, and so on for hard drives. Motherboards can be very feature rich, or budget oriented. Short answer: asus. If you are new to building computers, I would recommend you going to newegg, selecting the secket type of your cpu, and reading the user reviews and selecting a mainboard from there. Several vendors on pricewatch offer motherboard/cpu combos that can also make it easier.
The motherboard is all-important in that respect, it determines CPU, ram, hard drive(s), graphics card, and case. But usually a buyer is looking at what kinda CPU they want and then buy the motherboard from there. Things to look for of course is if it takes the cpu you want measured by socket/slot type, fsb (front side bus), and maximum GHz; the speed and size of ram you want; it’s size (either mini or full, or extended atx), whether or not it has raid serial ata, or parallel ata 133 hard drive controllers; graphics card slot (agp x4/8) or pci express; usb 2.0; firewire (IEEE 1394); Dolby 5.1, ALC650, ac97 codec, or any other onboard sound; and onboard ethernet/LAN 10/100 or 10/100/1000mbs connection.
Asus is often the brand of choice for motherboards. Gigabyte, and MSI are also very good.
Another way to get more power out of your machine is to build a multiprocessor machine. In windows you will need an NT based os, and some programs may not benefit much from dual processors. If you have more money than time, you can even go into multimotherboard platform. Literally, the sky is the limit for building a PC.
Of course for a gaming computer the graphics card is a key element. And they can be a money pit. I'm seeing the top of the line cards going for as much as $350. Ram (64MB minimum), interface (agp X4, X8, and X16, higher being faster, and there’s a new pci form of interface), monitor connection, polygons per second, resolution are all things to consider when buying a graphics card for a gaming machine.
Ram of course in a gaming machine is highly important. You want as much as you can have and as fast as you can get it. If you are going to have more than two sticks you might need to get buffered ram. If you’re going to a 64bit platform you’ll need ECC (Error Correcting Code) registered ram. Good brands include Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, Pny, and Nanya. Lifetime warranty is the thing to look for there. Try not to mix brand of ram, and to some extent sizes of ram as that can cause errors in the computer. Even if you are not building a gaming machine, you might find a deal on two sticks rather than one. If you can afford it I would always recommend maxing out on ram. Depending on your operating system, applications will run faster, and in the future, programs will require more and more to be installed, and as you use the machine you’ll find that you’ve been steadily adding software to run in the background, all of which eats ram.
The ATX psu (power supply unit) isn't something that you should skimp out on (like I did) if you want your system to last a long time. Dual fans, total wattage, +12v Max Load amperage (15 volts minimum for a mid or mini tower), efficiency (70% min at full load), MTBF (mean time between failures) 50,000 hours is minimum, and safety mechanisms are things to look for such as over power protection and over voltage protection. You can never have too much wattage and in fact the more you have, the longer it’s likely to last. Please note that the P4 (Pentium IV) requires a special power supply, but these are now the most common, but just double check to make sure that it is p4 compliant (ATX12v version 1.3). Brand wise I like Thermaltake, Enermax, and Artec.
Case and power supplies are often sold together. In a case it's important to look for the number of fans it can have, the number of internal drives it can have, and it's composition (you want aluminum for the thermal conductivity). To get the best of both, you might wanna buy them separately, or find a vendor that'll let you pick and choose with their discount/sale. For a gaming computer you want a mid-tower. Mini-towers usually provide less cooling and coolness = longevity.
The hard drives can be another money pit. If you have more money than time than a 15,000 rpm Ultra SCSI 320 in a raid format is the way to go, but if you really do have more money than time, commission me to build it. JB=8) <-- smiling dragon.
Hard drives have three things determining speed: their rpms (usually in speeds of 5400 or 7200 but can go as high as 10,000 or 15,000), their interface ATA/UDMA 33/66/100/133 or serial ATA 133, and their cache 2MB, 8MB, or 16MB. Drive noise can also be a consideration. Please note that the new serial drives, while are the fastest, they need a special motherboard or pci card to work and a special power supply.
Brand is also important, if you want it to last longer than a nebulous nifty product. Seagate and Samsung are best from what I’ve heard.
Another way to boost speed is setting up drive into a RAID 0 configuration. To do that they must be identical and your motherboard must support this. This lets two HDD’s (Hard Disk Drives) act as one by sharing the binary between them.
Yet another trick that I employ is having two hard drives for different purposes. I have my faster 7,200-rpm drive to run windows and all my programs, and my larger 5,400 rpm drive for all of data such as. jpg’s, .avi’s, and mp3’s. This way Programs load quicker, and they tend to take longer than my data to load, even though my data is often bigger than the program. The reason being that the program has to be processed by the CPU. The data simply goes into ram, over to the soundcard, or the like. The fewer files, and the smaller the total size of your files the faster the hard drive will run, at least in FAT32. If you’re building a brand new machine from scratch go with NTFS5 for your hard drive format if you can.
Sound is almost an afterthought nowadays as most motherboards have onboard sound. You need to upgrade is you’re building a machine to do sound editing, in which case you probable wanna go with a Macintosh (same thing for movie and 3d editing). The difference in onboard sound is merely stereo vs. surround. Speakers are a different matter. Size, number, and wattage matter in varying degrees. Size can boost clarity, but not always. Wattage can boost volume but not always. Number is required for the surround effect, but more than five can be overkill. Clarity (the most important part to me), to my understanding, is a matter of response bandwidth. Ideal for human ears is approximately 20Hz-20, 000Hz. The lower the first number the better the base and the second higher number is the high-pitched sound.
The monitor can be a very important part, since that’s the part that’s going to have most of your attention. Flat screen monitors (plasma and LCD) require a flat screen graphics card, but a regular CRT monitor can be adapted to a flat screen card. Resolution, clarity of colors (particularly the darkness of black and the brightness of white), and warranty are things I’d look for in a new monitor, as well as size of screen. Over all if you’re considering a 21” or better, then getting two monitors and two graphics card might be a cheaper solution and give you more ‘desktop’ space.
A few other things to worry about: once you’ve decided on your CPU, you need a CPU heat sink/fan combo, thermal paste, and a copper shim. The thermal paste for me is a no brainer. Artic silver three is the best since I last did research, but for $1.99 at radio shack their thermal past is still one of the best cooling wise, and it is very easy to use. It doesn’t dry out and cleans up quickly. While you can without a copper shim, thermal paste is a must, and greatly preferred over the gunk that will come on a new heat sink. For CPU heat sink/fan Thermaltake and Coolermaster are the best, always fighting neck and neck for cooling to noise ratio. If you want the best cooling and no noise you can always go water-cooling. Excellent for over clocking and peltier cooling. Price and leakage are the two concerns there. Only if you can’t stand the noise your pc makes or if you’re going to overclock would I recommend a water-cooling system.
Extras: 80 pin, shielded round cables for your hard drives can cut down on magnetic distortion coming from within your case, further they look cool, are easier to plug in and out, and they help cool the computer by being aerodynamic compared to the flat cables. A surge protector that protects not only your computer proper, but also can do the cables from the cable modem, and the phone cords from the phone modem. Remember: you can’t plug a surge protector into a surge protector. An even more expensive way to go is with an uninterruptible power supply.
Case fans. You can get very fancy here, especially if you have a window in your case and wanna light it up. The two measurements here are dB (lower the better) and cu ft./minute (the more the merrier). Longevity or hours of operation can also be a consideration.
Optical drives: Well yer gonna want a DVD drive, and maybe a cd burner or even a DVD drive. Things I’ve learned to consider: listed drive speed such as 48 x 24 x 48 doesn’t always mean that’s what the drive will do. Make sure that it has at least 2mb of cache. When buying from a store, find out what burning software is included. Typically it will be some version of Nero. If you are going to burn disks often, it may be worthwhile to get one with the full version of Nero as opposed to Nero express. But don’t spend and arm and a leg as there are free burning softwares on the web such a deepburner.
Printers and scanners are often unnecessary and overpriced accessories. Ink is a scam. Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy new ink. If you’re going to buy a new printer, going laser can save you on the black ink a bit, and finding a kit that matches your ink cartridge to refill it yourself is the real cash saver. Printers and scanners are very prone to breakage even if you don’t use them often. One solution is to simply not buy them and to go Kinko’s or any coping place and pay them a small fee to print out your documents.
Keyboards are keyboard and mice are optical scrolling mice. Fancy keyboards with extra internet buttons can be cool, but I’ve never seen them work right or save much time surfing. For your mouse, go for an optical scrolling mouse. Any brand will do, but if you’ve got money to burn it can be really cool to get them in colors that match your case and monitor. They also sell wireless versions.
Of course once you’ve picked your hardware, software is an equal concern. I’m not an expert on operating systems, so I’ll stop after saying that if you build your own machine you’re probably going to need to buy an os. I’ve seen Microsoft’s Windows xp pro for as cheap as $50 on the web (8/11/04).
Software security can be a concern. The short answer Adaware (free) + Spybot Search and Destroy (free) + Spyware Blaster (free) + Sygate personal firewall (free) + Nod32 ($40 a year, but it is hands down the best antivirus out there). You’re internet surfing habit is also key to keeping your machine safe. Update windows and your security programs whenever possible. Most of these can be setup to update themselves whenever necessary. Using a web based email provider such as Yahoo! can prevent you from downloading infected attachments.
If you’re going broadband for internet (cable modem, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), T1, T2, T3, ethernet, etc.), and building a gaming machine that’s the likely course of action, a router is preferred over a switch, hub, or a direct connection between modem and computer as it has a hardware fire wall which is ideal to keep out hackers. For ethernet cables you’ll want cat (category) 5e or 6 non-crossover. Length doesn’t matter so long as it reaches, which isn’t true of printer cables and most other computer wires. If you go wireless (WAN) be sure that you secure it so others (you’re neighbors) cannot piggyback or hack into your system. You don’t want ISDN, as it’s not much faster than 56k (only 64k) and the service is more expensive. See your future broadband provider for what kind of modem will work for your system before you go out to buy. When picking broadband, of course price is a consideration, but so is stability (Many tell me that dsl is more stable than cable and I agree), and total upstream and downstream bandwidth.
If you’re stuck with dialup, you’ll want at least a 56k v.92 hardware based modem. If your ISP (Internet Service Provider) supports it, you could go with a courier modem to maintain your internet connection better and longer. Another trick is to have two modems, two phone lines, and two ISP accounts to double the rate. If you can understand most of the technical jargon in this article then you don’t need to go with aol, msn, or any other high priced ISP’s. Last time I had dialup I paid $5.95 a month from access4less.net.
Lastly, you should know how to keep your computer running forever. The biggest killers of a computer not including toddler’s spilling their milk into the case are dust, heat, and surges. Dust is the easiest to deal with. Simply open the case and vacuum it. But if you have pets like me, you’ll have to do a little more and take a cotton swab and clean off the fans to the cpu fan, case fans, the fan on the graphics card, and the psu. To make the job quicker some will use a can of compressed air, sold at any computer supply store. Heat is another biggie as semiconductors (microchips) are the most efficient means of producing heat know to man and it is most often an unwanted side effect! I always encourage overkill. Spend the extra $15 on a case fan that is more than what your pc calls for. It is also advisable to have good case fans and proper ventilation all around. And last but not least we have the surge protection. Buy one that not only has enough outlets for your computer and its peripherals, but also protect the modem lines. Makes sure you get one that has a warranty for your computer, make sure that warranty is good in your area (many don’t offer the warranty in Florida as that state gets twice the lightning strikes of any other) and fill out and mail the registration card. Look for a clamping voltage of less that 400 watts, a response time of one nanosecond or less, and an energy absorption of 300 joules or better. An extreme money saver can be buying one that protects the whole house right at the circuit breaker. Go to your hardware store or call your electrician for one of these. I heard they only cost about $40 for the part. Normally a surge protector cannot be plugged into a surge protector, so you may want to inquire about that (and let me know how it works out so I can update this).
Disclaimer: I accept no fault or responsibility if you follow these recommendations whole or in part. This document is based on my experiences, and I offer it as such. If your machine fails to work, or works great, it is not my fault. It is your free will choice to follow or not follow these advices laid out here.
I hope this answers some or all of your questions. (If I’ve got any of my facts wrong, please let me know so I can correct them.) Visit my links section for some more links to everything including some nifty pieces of free software. Feel free to email me as well captengle@yahoo.com
Home Goodly’s lair III Links Jokes Updates Computer
Security.rtf