To Build Or Not To Build. (Parts 2-5 added)

[Merc]

Part One. Should I Build My Own

One question that eventually enters the mind of anyone who enjoys operating a PC is “I wonder if I could build one of these?” Many people think about it, a few take a look but when confronted with the jargon, throw their hands up and head for Dell online but then a small number actually venture forth and give it a shot. So how hard is it to build a PC and can anyone do it? Do you save a ton of money by building your own? Is it worth the effort? Where do I start? How do I do research and where do I go to ask questions. Hell, where do I go to buy parts? What support can I get in the cold cruel world?

In the following articles I hope to answer these questions for you and give you a direction to start in, places to go for help and the best places to shop for gear. Below we’ll discuss the real reasons why building your own rig may be the best decision you ever make with regard to computers. I’ll also point you to some of the better on-line forums where geeks like Pete and I congregate by the thousands and talk PC stuff to each other.

(Note: I’ll be using Dell and HP here as examples of off the shelf PCs. No insult is intended. Both companies do a fine job of making affordable PCs for the masses and have change the world as we know it. They are used as examples of normal purchase here since they are the biggest and baddest on the block.)

The question “Should I build my own?” is usually precipitated by one of the following statements:
1. Man, I want that super gaming rig but $2,000 is way to steep for me. I bet I could build it cheaper myself.
2. If Dell can make one of these things for $400 I bet I could make it at half the price.
3. (After two hours on the phone with tech support in India). Damn it, I am sick of this crap. If the moron on the other end of this phone can figure these boxes out I’m sure I can.
4. Well I have replaced the video card and have added RAM. I bet it isn’t much harder to build one of these things rather than deal with Dell again.
5. I want to be a geek like Pete!!!

Are any of the above true statements? Well yes and no. Let’s look at them one at a time:

1. Man I want that super gaming rig but $2,000 is way to steep for me. I wonder if I could build it cheaper myself.
If you are eyeballing that high-end gaming rig then you probably can beat the Big Boys price-wise. Top performing equipment such as high end video cards and CPUs need high end supporting parts like Power Supplies and RAM. It gets tough to cut corners here and not get laughed out of the park. Yes you can usually beat the big box guys here that isn’t the main reason to build your own high end gaming rig. The main reason is if you buy top end parts you can overclock them. That is where you really make your money and remeber, you can’t overclock a Dell. We’ll talk about overclocking a little later but for a taste, how about this. What if I told you that you can buy a $234 CPU and make it run faster than an $800 CPU? That is what overclocking buys you and it is a lot of fun to do as well.

2. If Dell can make one of these things for $400 I bet I could make it at half the price.
At the lower end it is difficult to compete with the massive purchasing power that HP and Dell command. They can buy CPUs, RAm and other parts by the hundreds of thousands which makes their prices hard to beat. Also, there is the little known secret of crapware from which Dell and HP make up for selling parts at a loss. Crapware is all those “helpful programs” that load when you start your PC up. Dell gets paid for each of those little helper-outers that you never, ever use. Crapware isn’t just an eyesore, it is a system killer. Every one of those little buggers takes up system resources that rob you of all that speed you thought you’d just purchased. When you build your own, guess what, NO CRAPWARE! None! You’re free of it forever. It is your Operating System and your rig (Operating System = OS from now on. OS is Windows or Apple OS-X). There is nothing on therethat youdon't want to be on there (except for Microsofts built-in crapware). Last thing is it may cost more to build a low end rig than what you can get it for from Dell but what you can't get from Dell is expandability. You can add things to your rig later on if you plan for it. You can swap out CPUs when your old one gets slow, plug in the latest video card add as many hard drives as you want etc. You have flexibility. Also, most parts you buy are guaranteed for 3 years. Lastly, it is a lot of fun to build your own rig, no matter the size and the feeling of accomplishment is a very special one.

3. (After two hours on the phone with tech support in India). Damn it I am sick of this crap. If the moron on the other end of this phone can figure these boxes out why can’t I.
One of the greatest benefits of building your own is that you will begin to understand the mystery box. To do it right you have to. Yes, I have known some guys that bought parts, threw them together and managed to get the box to run but it always ends in problems and an eventual cry for help. Freeing yourself from tech support will make you feel very good, I guarantee it, and eventually save you some money. We’ll discuss learning and research below but this will ultimately be the greatest reward of building your own.

4. Well I have replaced the video card and have added RAM. I wonder how much harder it is just to build one of these things rather than deal with Dell again.
If you have gone down to Comp-USA and forked over a couple of hundred for a video card, managed plugged it in yourself and actually gotten it to run then congrats! You have not only passed the first hurdle, fear of the inside of the mystery box, but also gotten a little lucky as most Dells and HPs don’t have the power to run a $200 card. You’ll know why later but the big thing here is you have taken the first step. There is no magic in there, just parts and you have broken the seal.

5. I want to be a geek like Pete!!!
When you can take the pebble from my hand Grasshopper…….

Clear as mud. Well, the above are my honest answers to the most often asked questions I get about building your own computer. If they aren’t good enough then you can stop reading now because those answers are pretty much reality. You won’t be saving oodles of money nor is it easy to build one of these things. Oh, the actual assembly isn’t all that hard but knowing what you are doing is. Knowing what you are doing is 90% of building your own (Build Your Own = BYO) computer.

Research, study and communicating with other builders will help you learn the ins and outs, the necessary jargon and also guide you to the best parts for your needs. This is the stuff that pays off in the end and helps you drop tech support forever, opens the path to picking the parts you want for the task you have in mind and the ability to fix the thing when it starts acting funny.

So where do I start? Well this ain’t a bad place right here. There are a few embedded geeks here that Pete has given a space of their own and who are all more than willing to get you going in the right direction. That is one of the first things you'll learn if you decide to BYO, the amount of help that other builders will readily give you. They love doing this stuff and enjoy helping other folks build their rig.

There are also countless forums and e-zines on the web that deal with building PCs, repairing PCs, overclocking PCs, etc, etc. You name it and you can find it. I Admin on one named Asus Independent that is dedicated to Asus motherboards. It is a mature board made up of some great guys. It is here http://asustech.15.forumer.com/ Tom’s Hardware has an OK forum located here http://forumz.tomshardware.com/index.php and a great tech e-zine to go with it right here http://www.tomshardware.com/ I use HardForum as well located here http://www.hardforum.com/ and they have an e-zine as well here http://www.hardocp.com/ There are many many many more and if you have a favorite please post it below.

Where in the world do I buy parts? Ahh, here comes the biggie. Please, forget you ever saw Comp-USA or Best Buy. They should be used for emergencies only. Their prices are ridiculously, obscenely, high. The best place I know of for all around service and good prices is an e-tailer named Newegg. You can find them here http://www.newegg.com If you do nothing else, click that link, head on over and take a look. They sell everything, have some great descriptions and reviews, outstanding prices and the best return policy in the business. There are many others but Newegg is a great place to start. ZipZoomFly is a good one as well located here http://www.zipzoomfly.com I'll start a list below and add to it as we go along.

In the next part I’ll discuss some of the latest tech, the basics of matching parts like sockets to CPUs, RAM form factors etc. I’ll also explain some of the gibberish you may have seen in the forums. The last thing I'll say here is one of the best things about building your own is the feeling of accomplishment you'll get when that bunch of parts scattered accross the floor boots up and comes to life for the first time. You'll be hooked. This stuff can be a lot of fun and today is the best time ever, literally, to build a rig. There is a price war on and we are the beneficiaries for as long as it lasts.

E-ZINES
AnandTech http://www.anandtech.com/
Tom's Hardware Guide http://www.tomshardware.com/
HardOCP http://www.hardocp.com/
FORUMS:
Asus Independent http://asustech.15.forumer.com/
HardForum http://www.hardforum.com/
Tom's Hardware Forums http://forumz.tomshardware.com/index.php
E-TAILERS
Newegg http://www.newegg.com
ZipZoomFly http://www.zipzoomfly.com
TigerDirect http://www.tigerdirect.com
Pricegrabber http://www.pricegrabber.com

[35Pete]

Excellent article Merc.

The great thing about building one is that it's really a lot of fun. You don't need one iota of tech knowledge in advance to do it. We can provide the basics here.

The three biggest advantages that I can think of are:

1. You set up a system that is upgradable. That means you replace outdated components one by one rather than dropping a ton of money every 2-3 years on a new PC.

2. You'll get performance for a lot less money over anything that you could purchase stock. Performance differences that are VERY noticable.

3. You'll NEVER be intimidated by problems with your computer again. NEVER. Everything becomes repairable.

Keep it up Merc. Rico said it's cool to discuss the system we're concepting for him.

How to build a screamer for $600 or less. Most of you guys are family guys and this is around your budget for a new machine. So pay attention!

[35Pete]

Merc.

I bought my DDR2, CPU, and a 250 GB HD from Newegg. But may I offer one more step:

Search newegg and tigerdirect to find the component that you like.
Then go to www.pricegrabber.com and enter the item there. It will list ALL the online stores and show their prices.

I've saved 15% over newegg doing this (my video card).

[Merc]

Part Two: Where Do I Start

OK, we have answered some of the questions a person contemplating building their own PC may have (if I missed any then I am sure Pete or one of the others will bring it up) and I’ll assume, if you made it all the way through Part One then you want to know “How do I get started?” What usually happens here is someone begins lifting the rocks and looking under them only to discover that the more they find out, the less they understand. After a few hours of looking under these rocks, they throw their arms in the air and walk away. Too much info, too many acronyms, the conversation is way to specialized etc. etc. Overwhelming. Forget it.

First thing is, STOP. Here is a little secret, NO ONE KNOWS ALL OF THIS STUFF. NO ONE. I guarantee that. It is too big for any one person to understand everything. That is why we have forums where we help each other. So slow down and try not to absorb everything at once. It will come with time and you only need the basics to BYO.

Secondly, every person out there building PCs was a “noob” at one time or another. Those knowledgeable folks that are guiding you through your first build were in exactly the same position as you, once upon a time. They aren’t born knowing this stuff, they had to learn it. Most are glad to help but there is always that stray jerk who will harass you. Just sign off and move on when you meet him because 90% of the folks in this community are glad to help.

Lastly, expect to get a lot of back and forth between folks trying to help you design your first build. This is normal and is actually one of the great things about BYO. There are many ways to skin this cat and everyone has their opinion on what parts are best. Your choices are nearly limitless and you can tailor your rig to what you need determined by what you can afford.

Bottomline, don’t be overwhelmed. Read a little and when you have a question, ask it. Get to know the terrain and the terminology and remember this stuff is changing fast so we are all learning, all the time. Also, there is always something new just around the corner but sooner or later you have to jump in, so suck it up and except that the rig you build today will be old stuff in a few months. It is the nature of the beast.

So, now that you, hopefully, feel less intimidated, let me throw a few terms out that you absolutely have to know in order to move forward. There are a lot of them but these are the basics you need to ask questions:

CPU - Central Processing Unit
The Central Processing Unit has, wrongly IMHO, been called the brain of the PC. Think of it more as an exotic calculator turning strings of ones and zeros into an image on your monitor. It is a small chip, created in a clean room in a Fab (Fabrication Facility) and composed of millions of transistors squeezed into a small space. The smaller you can make the CPU the more transistors you can fit into that confined space and the less electricity you need to run it.

You'll hear 90nm (nanometer) architecture and 45nm architecture in your research. This number denotes the size of the smallest component on the chip itself. The smaller the components, the more chips you can make from a wafer (a huge disk of Silicon Substrate upon which CPU chips are etched). The more chips per wafer, the lower the price and the smaller the component size the less voltage needed to run the chip. The less voltage, the better the overclock

Most people have never seen the CPU because it is concealed beneath a block of metal with a fan on top. This is the Heat Sink Fan (HSF) unit and its sole purpose in life is to draw off the heat from the Processor and dissipate it into the air. On the chip itself you'll find the Integrated Heat Sink (IHS) a metal cap that covers the actual CPU and what you see when the CPU is deliverd by Fedex,

Heat is the main reason that CPU architecture has changed. The chips were running so fast that they were becoming difficult to cool. Recently CPUs have left the track of more speed and adopted a different architecture. Simply put, this architecture uses more pipes to do more calculations simultaneously rather than a few pipes that do fewer calculations faster. The reasons are many and the science is daunting but suffice it to say that the faster CPU is not always the better choice.

Lastly, both AMD and Intel, the primary manufacturers of X86 processors, have begun making dual and quad core CPUs. These CPUs are just what they sound like, two independent Processors, or cores, running in tandem on the same chip. They provide incredible performance and this performance will only increase as more and more software is written to fully utilize both those cores (multithreading).

Motherboard (mobo)
The motherboard is that big Printed Circuit Board (PCB) sitting in the middle of your case. Everything plugs into the motherboard (mobo) and power is distributed to your components through the mobo. The mobo is designed around a socket for the CPU. Different CPUs use different sockets and usually the socket is named after the number of pins the CPU has to connect to the mobo. As an example, a newer Intel CPU will have 775 pins that terminate in the mobo which connect to 775 contacts on the bottom of the CPU. Intel’s last socket was a 478 and AMD used a 939 pin in its last generation. This is important because you can't plug a 775 CPU into a 478 mobo.

The mobo also has chipsets. Chipsets are integrated circuits, attached to the motherboard, through which all communication and traffic to and from the CPU is controlled and routed. Chipsets are the central nervous system of your PC. Newer mobos even contain your Ethernet connection port, and audio and video chips.

The motherboard also holds a CMOS chip which contains the basic code for your mobo called the BIOS. This is the base level Operating System (OS) of your system. The BIOS interface is that screen which pops up briefly before your Operating System (usually Windows XP) starts to load. BIOS is where we talk directly to the motherboard and make it do all those things that a BYO type enjoys, such as overclocking.

The mobo is truly the focal point of your PC as it touches every single component in your case. Your choice of mtherboard is vitally important to your build.

Chipsets
All mobos have a Northbridge (NB) chipset and a Southbridge (SB) chipset. Generally the NB is the more powerful and is the closest to the CPU socket. The NB on Intel PCs connects the video cards and the RAM to the CPU via a fast trace or bus on the mobo. The SB usually contains those components that don’t require the extreme speed that graphics and memory (RAM) require. Things like the Hard Disk Drives (HDD) the Optical Disk Drives (ODD) like your CDROM drive, Ethernet and PCI bus are found in the SB.

Chipsets are very important to your build as each brings its own functions to your system. AMD chipsets differ from Intel in that the AMD CPU doesn’t use the NB for communicating with memory or RAM as AMD CPUs have the memory controller designed right into the CPU itself, rather than located in the NB. You pick uyour motherboard by deciding what capabilities you want fromthe chipsets it hosts.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
The Hard Drive is your system's long term storage. Data is written to metalized platters spinning at high speed inside the hard drive case by a mechanical arm. It is relatively slow but unlike RAM, your hard drive does not need power applied to keep the data intact. It is written there forever or until a strong magnetic field is applied to change the data or erase it.

The more data you have, the more disk space you need and given the growth of digital data, storage is paramount. Adding hard drives to your system will not speed it up or slow it down measurably but will allow you to have all your data close at hand. Thankfully hard drive prices have dropped considerably in the last few years. There are several different types of hard drives with EIDE/IDE/PATA (same thing) being the old type and SATA being the latest. The differences are many but the important thing to know is the two are not compatible. SATA uses a small, flat connection wire while IDE uses that huge ribbon cable we all see in older PCs. Suffice it to say if you are building today you will be using SATA.

RAM or Memory
RAM, also referred to as memory, is the fast access, short duration storage your CPU uses to store the data it needs to complete a program process. It is a volatile storage medium which means that when you turn off your PC the RAM, unlike the long term storage HDD, loses any data that is stored on it. Generally speaking, the more RAM you have and the faster it is, the better. The current form of RAM being used is DDR2 and I am happy to say that prices are the lowest in history. I will get into much more detail regarding RAM in Part Four below.

Form Factor (ATX mATX)
ATX and MicroATX (mATX) are two of several form factors that all manufacturers agree to build to in order to make everything interchangeable. With motherboards you have ATX (Advanced Technology Extended) which is basically a mobo designed to a certain size with mounting holes in the board that will match up to the mounting holes in your case. Generally they are 12" wide by 9.6" deep. MicroATX is just a smaller version of mobo that will fit in a smaller case. Generally they are 9.6"x 9.6". Power Supply Units (PSU) are also designed to the ATX spec as well as rear connectors and a dozen other things. Form Factor is what allows us to mix and match parts.

Power Supply Unit (PSU)
The Power Supply Unit or PSU is one of the most important parts of your build. It is also one of the most overlooked. I'll get into much more detail regarding the PSU when we discuss parts but suffice it to say that a PSU is as important as the mobo or CPU and you should NEVER buy cheap here. Designed to the ATX form factor a PSU basically converts AC from your wall into DC for your system. It does this at 12v, 5v and 3.3v, with 12v being most important. As I said we'll talk PSUs later.

RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization)
This isn’t a technical term but you’ll se it a round. RMA is a number you need to get from an e-tailer or a component manufacturer in order to return a part that is broken or you just don’t want.

Last thing is a quick analogy of how a PC works:
One way to think of your system is to compare it to your kitchen when you are preparing a large multi-course meal. The CPU is the oven, it is where everything is cooked and delivered to your guests. Think of the RAM as your kitchen countertops where all the ingredients are placed and prepped before going into the oven for cooking. Your pantry and refrigerator are the hard drives where the basic ingredients are stored long term and the dining room table is your monitor.

Using the above analogy your system works like this. When you command your PC to perform a task or when you are cooking a meal, you first pull all the wrapped and unprepped ingredients out of the cupboards and refrigerator and place them on the countertops. Your CPU does the same thing when it tells the hard drive to deliver the unprepped data to your RAM. RAM is controlled by a memory controller and the data is sorted and stored on a "most likely to be needed first" basis and readied for the oven.

When the oven or CPU, is ready for the data the memory controller tells the RAM to get the prepped data and deliver it to the CPU, just as you take the pan of prepared, raw food and place it in the oven. After the CPU is done processing it, the now cooked data is sent back to the RAM, as cooked food is sent to your countertops and then off to the table or monitor.

As soon as one command, or dish, is completed and served the process starts all over again. This all happens thousands of times a second in your PC and efficiency is of the utmost importance.

Staying with the above analogy you can see that if you run out of countertop space, things will start to slow down. The countertops, or RAM, can only handle so many dishes at a time, just as your CPU can only handle so many commands at a time. When either is ready for the next cycle the ingredients must be ready to go or you have slowdowns. What happens if space is limited is that you must clear space so that the necessary ingredients can be prepped for cooking.

This flush and fill takes time and while it is occurring the CPU is waiting. Anytime the CPU has to wait your system is slowed down. If you don't have enough RAM the system will have to flush the data out of RAM, load the new data and then send it to the CPU. It will also try and use the hard drive as memory which is very slow. You can tell this is happening if your hard drive light is continually blinking.

Newer and faster CPUs, more complex programs and greater demands means the CPU is constantly waiting for data and if that data is not in RAM then the whole process just crawls along. Remember, while the CPU is running your browser it is also running your virus software, the OS, the firewall and your Spyware program. All of these need RAM to store the data the CPU needs.

Brutal, I know, but the above will be enough to get you through some of the forums. Consider it a building block. In the next part we’ll talk about what parts are hot right now, and how to match what you want, what you need and what you can afford.

[Merc]

Part Three - CPUs

Well, if you are still with me through all the boring stuff then you must be serious about building your own PC. Great, so let’s move on to the fun stuff, buying the actual kit! This is probably what you have been waiting for and is what, in your mind, is the only important topic to cover (it isn’t, research and learning is, but enough preaching).

I’ll break this up into several parts and cover each in detail. Part Three will cover CPUs. Part Four Memory and Motherboards. Part Five will cover video cards, sound cards and hard drives and Part Six will cover cases and PSUs.

Picking a CPU
We discussed the CPU briefly above. Here I will discuss things in more detail. First of all you have two flavors of CPU today, those made by Intel (Chipzilla) and those made by AMD (Chimpzilla). Intel is the big boy on the block and owns about 75% of the market and AMD is the smaller company with the rest of the market.

AMD and Intel have been going at it for years and up until about a year ago, AMD made the best CPU in the world. AMD’s a64 chips were so good that they took nearly 20% of the x86 market away from Intel and became the darlings of the industry. This all changed a year ago when Intel finally pulled themselves up off the floor, scrapped their market plan and released the Core 2 Duo.

The Core 2 Duo showed up in the summer of 2006 and AMD went from the performance king to second rate in a day and began to lose hard won market share to Intel. AMD has yet to strike back but their next generation CPU is due in the fall and there are high hopes that this will be a Core 2 Duo killer. Why this is important to you is because the ups and downs of these two companies must be factored into your decision about what side to go with. Their fortunes and plans will directly affect your build and its future upgrade path.

Intel’s current socket is the 775 (775 pins in the mobo socket) and it is home to the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors. Yep, I said quad or four CPU cores on one CPU die. That means that little CPU you plug into your motherboard could have 4 separate CPUs on board acting in tandem. The Core 2 Duo is obviously a dual core processor with two cores on the die acting in tandem. The Core 2 family is built on a 65nm architecture with 45nm in the bullpen warming up for a fall debut. Right now the 775 socket should be around for at least the next year and a half so you have a fairly stable upgrade path available.

Core 2 Duo is a monster of a chip. I have to say it is the best CPU ever made. It pains me a bit to admit that because I am a huge AMD fan and have built many wonderful rigs with AMD parts but give the devil his dues, the Core 2 rocks. It overclocks with ease to extraordinary speeds and even at stock will knock the pants off AMD’s best AM2. Does this mean forget AM2? Absolutely not, please read on.

AMD’s latest socket is AM2 (940 pins in the socket) and was the ho-hum replacement for the best ever 939 socket. AM2 brought AMD into the DDR2 world and made some other minor changes that are largely irrelevant to most of us. AMD’s AM2 socket is home to the AM2 Processors which are 65nm ships scaled down from AMD’s venerable K8 architecture that ruled the world until Core 2 showed up. AMD has yet to introduce their next gen. CPU, the Phenom, which is designed for the AM2+ mobo. The Phenom will also be a 65nm part and is rumored to be 40% faster than the Core 2 line. Happily, if you buy an AM2 mobo right now you should be able to run a Phenom chip in it this fall or winter. You’ll lose some functionality but if the Phenom is as good as AMD claims, it won’t matter.

Right now AMD has no quad core CPU available but the Phenom will have a native quad core design. AMD says that their native quad core will be leaps ahead of the Intel quad core because all four cores will communicate with each other across the die itself rather than across the bus in the NB like the Core 2 Quad. The Phenom is built from the ground up as a quad whereas the Core 2 Quad is simply two Core 2 Duo chips on the same die with no communication path between them. The cores communicate across the NB. Whether this matters or not we won’t know until AMD introduces their new chip in the fall.

So Core 2 is the best ever and AMD is playing catch up with last years stuff. Fine, but you’re building now so just forget AMD, right? WRONG. Here is where you need to look at what your needs are and what your budget is. One thing that I didn’t mention in all of the above verbiage is that the fierce competition between Intel and AMD has brought CPU prices down to the lowest prices I have ever seen for such high quality product. The Core 2 rocks but guess what, so does the AM2. Yes the Core 2 is more powerful, especially if you are an overclocker, but if you don’t plan on overclocking, or just want to game and do internet stuff, then you will love the AM2. It is an incredibly powerful CPU that is selling below cost at the moment. It is an extraordinary value and you will never see the difference between a Core 2 Duo and an AM2 unless you do some highly specialized tasks or plan on building a powerful gaming rig. This value won’t last forever so take a look at AM2 before the prices go up. I have built rigs for folks using both types of chips, based on what they need, and have never heard a complaint from either side. Pick a chip that fits your budget and right now you can't make a mistake. They are all incredibly good.

If you do plan on building a very high end gaming rig, or overclocking, then you probably need the power of the Core 2 Duo. If you want to do advanced photo editing, rip loads and loads of DVD's and/or music then the Core 2 will be worth the extra cost. If you just want the best chip around regardless of whether you need it or not then get the Core 2 Duo.

Just a couple of more things that you may find as you cruise the forums. First lets talk about Cores. Enthusiasts talk cores all the time. The core name is the code the manufacturers use to denote the various forms of their CPU's.

Core 2 Duo is built using the Conroe core and Allendale core. Conroe is the deluxe version with 4MB of cache on board and Allendale has 2Mb of cache on board. Yes, some Conroes come with only two MB of cache but they actually came out of the fab with 4MB with 2MB were disabled, usually because the die was bad. Allendale is made from the ground up with 2MB of cache so Allendale is cheaper to build. Allendale is also less complicated than a Conroe in that it lacks some advanced functions, like virtualization, the Conroe packs.

AMD’s upcoming cores are the Barcelona and Agena. There isn’t a lot out there about either, but the Barcelona will be a server level chip and the Agena will be the desktop part. AM2 cores have a myriad of names but it is all about the same as Conroe and Allendale above.

Cache is the last thing here. Cache is like super-RAM built right into the CPU die itself. It is very, very fast memory the CPU core uses real time. So more cache is better than less right? Well, yes and no. AMD chips generally have less cache than Intel because they don’t need as much. See, AMD has the memory controller printed directly on the Core itself so it accesses the memory much faster than an Intel chip can because the Intel has to go through the NB chip to talk to memory. Core 2 loves cache so get the chip with more, with AMD it isn’t that big of a deal. Less cache means less cost to manufacture so you save money by being smart here rather than just going for quantity.

So now that we have an idea about the two companies that make CPUs, the capabilities and futures of their latest offerings and what we want from that CPU we need a home for it, so let’s move on to Motherboards in Part Four.

[35Pete]

:clapper:

Pay attention Rico. LOL

[nehemiah]

fantastic stuff.

can i just say that i was a total noob and i still built my own comp... including re-mounting my processor to solve a overheating issue.

best. time. of. my. life.

too many people are scared of computers. open that sumbitch up and get at it.

[Merc]

Well said nehemiah. It really is a great feeling when that first build comes to life. Flown Tomcats, road motorcycles across the country in rallies but I still remember when my first build booted. Can't buy that. Hooked for life and would never buy an off the shelf again. How could you?

[35Pete]

fantastic stuff.

can i just say that i was a total noob and i still built my own comp... including re-mounting my processor to solve a overheating issue.

best. time. of. my. life.

too many people are scared of computers. open that sumbitch up and get at it.

When did you do that?

I noticed that you are developing geek symptoms. Lack of fear over PC technology, citing IEEE standards, hanging out in here.

[35Pete]

fantastic stuff.

can i just say that i was a total noob and i still built my own comp... including re-mounting my processor to solve a overheating issue.

best. time. of. my. life.

too many people are scared of computers. open that sumbitch up and get at it.

What's in your rig?

Nice to say goodbye to tech support, huh?

[nehemiah]

When did you do that? a while back.

i posted a thread and merk (and somebody else) helped out alot.

[Merc]

Picking a Motherboard & RAM

Motherboards (mobo)
Now that you have pretty much decided on a CPU you can click on the motherboard category and find the perfect match for it. You choice of CPU dictates the socket and type of motherboard you can use, a core 2 requires a 775 socket, AM2 an AM2 socket so right away you’ve cut the universe of thousands of motherboards down to a few hundred .

So just hit the order button and you’re home free right? Well, no, fortunately for us it isn’t that easy and once again the beauty of BYO comes into play. Your choices are wide and varied here and you can pick and choose what you want based on your needs and budget. I talked about motherboards in Part 2 but let’s go into a little more detail on some of the specifics you need to address when selecting a motherboard.

First let’s look at the standards being used as of the Spring of 2007 on system motherboards. Besides the CPU Socket, you have slots for memory, slot(s) for the graphics or video cards, ports for you ODDs and HDDs as well as the Floppy Disk Drive (FDD), PCI slots for add-on cards and of course the back panel ports for your Ethernet connection, USB devices and other hook-ups depending on the complexity of your mobo.

All of these slots and ports are built to specific specs and these specs change from time to time to accommodate more powerful, faster running components. Graphics cards are now using a PCIe 16x slot rather than an AGP slot. PCIe or PCI express, is a new spec that has much greater bandwidth than AGP and provides more power to the graphic card installed. AGP is fading from the scene and few mobos are built with an AGP slot. PCIe is also an expandable spec in that you can have PCIe 1x slots, 4x slots 8x slots and 16x slots. PCIe will eventually take the place of the old PCI slots. It is much better than PCI as far as speed and power provided and will itself be replaced by PCIe 2.0 starting in late 2007(don’t worry, it is a backward compatible change)

Another big change is the slow fade from the scene of the . EIDE/IDE/PATA ports. These ports were used for the ODDs and HDDs and all mobos still have one for the ODDs. PATA (Parallel ATA) is being replaced by SATA (Serial ATA), a much faster and more compact connection that provides a channel dedicated to whatever is plugged into it. As with PCIe, SATA is slowly replacing the IDE/PATA interface and many boards come with only one now. Unlike PATA, SATA requires no signal jumper (master or slave) as it is on its own dedicated channel. SATA is also hot-swappable and privides throughput far beyond what most HDDs can provide.

Memory is discussed at length below but pay attention as to how many memory slots you have available (two or four) and that the slots match the RAM your CPU will use. An AM2 CPU requires DDR2 RAM, same thing with the Core 2 processor. Sorry but that “old” DDR stuff is useless in a new rig. Believe it r not, DDR2’s replacement will make its debut this year and will probably replace DDR2 as the standard within 2-3 years.

You then have the PCI slots into which you can plug your wireless card, sound card etc. As I said above, you will start to see, over the next few years, more and more add-on cards coming out designed to the PCIe spec and eventually there may be just one PCI slot on your board before it disappears completely.

The great thing about today’s advanced mobos is you really don’t need any add-on cards. Most mobos come with onboard sound, an embedded NIC or Ethernet connection, graphics in some cases and many other things depending on how deep your pockets are. Mobos have become a system unto themselves and the trend continues.

You know the socket category but now you have to consider your budget and what you want to do with your PC. If your budget is on the tight side you may want to select a motherboard with Integrated Graphics (IG). If you’re a gamer this probably isn’t the best choice as IG are fairly anemic but if your graphics needs aren’t that great then IG is fine. IG is built into the NB and you should read about the capabilities of the various offerings available. As an example, ASUS sells the same board with two different graphics options, Quadro and 6100. The Quadro chip is better suited to an office environment or someone who does CAD/CAM design whereas the 6100 is great for light gaming. IG isn’t the end of the video road for you as most mATX mobos come with a PCIe 16x slot into which you can plug a Video Card down the road. IG really is a nice option as it offers low buy-in cost with the option to move up later on. Mobos with IG are normally found on a mATX mobo (see form factor in Part 2) which means real estate on the board will be limited, but mATX mobos are usually much cheaper than the full ATX boards so for a builder on a budget, mATX is a great deal.

If you want a mobo with more to offer and greater stability then you move up to ATX. These larger boards normally do not carry IG but they can have as many as 4 LAN ports and 8 SATA ports as well as 8 channel audio and 8 phase power to handle greater voltage loads at better stability. The top of the line desktop mobos come with two, full, PCIe 16x slots for dual video card configurations. This dual video card setup comes in one of two flavors, SLI for Nvidia cards and Crossfire for ATI/AMD cards. The gamer who wants the absolute best in graphics can have two video cards rendering the scene for him or her through an SLI or Crossfire NB chipset.

This top of the line capability doesn’t come cheap. Whereas a very nice mATX mobo with IG can be had for $75 you can spend up to $400 for the best of the best enthusiast mobo. That $400 mobo needs a lot of support as well in the form of an excellent case cooling and a strong, stable, high quality PSU. Don’t panic at the price, though, as very capable SLI mobos are available for as low as $135.

Last thing is drivers. If you buy and Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus mobo it will have two Nvidia chipsets on it. The board needs drivers to run correctly and these are available at Nvidia’s website. The same goes for a Crossfire mobo running ATI/AMD chipsets. Mobos always come with a CD, however with all the drivers needed to get you up and running but updating drivers is a necessity if you want the most from your rig.

RAM (Memory)

We briefly mentioned RAM above but I am going to go into some detail here as there is a lot of terms related to RAM and you need to know most of them. Physically RAM and that flash stick everyone carries around are very similar. A stick of RAM, and a flash stick, is made up of a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) with memory chips mounted on it, a controlling chip at the end and pin outs that connect the stick to your motherboard, in the case of RAM, or a USB connector for a flash stick. In the case of RAM, each of these memory chips is usually a 64MB sized chip strung together to give you the total. A 512MB stick of RAM will have 8 chips and a 1GB, or 1024MB, stick will have 16 chips. Some manufacturers are now using 128MB chips. Flash sticks are much the same although the chip sizes differ.

The similarity between a flash stick and RAM ends at how it functions. A flash stick is non-volatile memory. You write to the memory and the 0s and 1s stay as set with no power applied. RAM is volatile memory and requires a constant charge to keep the data written to it stable. Pull the power and a RAM stick is completely erased. The advantage to this is that RAM is exponentially faster than a memory stick.

The best way to think of how RAM stores data is an excel spreadsheet. Each chip has rows and columns that address a cell. This cell, located by a row and column address, is where the memory controller stores some bit of data that will be used by the CPU in an upcoming process. When folks talk about low-CAS memory they are actually discussing the Column Address Strobe cycle or how many CPU cycles it takes to locate, erase and address a Column. When the CPU requests data via branch prediction it places an order for it through the memory controller where that data is stored on the memory for processing.

How much RAM to get:
-256MB of RAM = Lousy performance and barely enough Ram to run XP and your Virus software. Launching anything will begin the flush to Virtual Memory.

-512MB of RAM = The minimum I would consider putting in any XP machine. You can run simple programs if you open only one or two at a time. Encoding DVDs or something just as stressful will bring your system to its knees.

-1024MB (1GB) of RAM = The optimum level of RAM for most Windows XP machines. You can open several programs simultaneously and they will run quickly and efficiently. 1GB of RAM is the best balance between cost and performance.

-2048MB (2GB) of RAM = The optimum level of RAM for a heavy duty Windows XP gaming machine or DVD/Photoshop encoding platform.

-More than 2048MB (2GB) of RAM = Except for a very few programs that can expressly use extra RAM (you will know it if you have such a program) anything more than 2GB of RAM on an XP machine is a waste. In addition, Windows XP can’t even address more than about 3.5GB of RAM due to system limits in the OS. The RAM is there but XP cannot address it. If you want to run Windows Vista you can take all the above numbers and double them for about the same results. Yep, for many reasons, Vista needs much more memory than XP.

Let’s go over a few terms related to RAM that confuse many:

-DDR = DDR stands for Double Data Rate. DDR is a little trick that system and memory manufacturers use to double the performance of your RAM. Your system works on a clock with a signal that resembles a sine wave with the bottom half cut of. What you are left with is a series of waves, from zero to one, with each peak being one clock cycle. DDR means that your RAM performs a read or write on the up side of that wave and performs another on the down side of that wave. In effect your RAM performs two actions for every clock cycle. So DDR 400 Ram actually runs at 200MHZ but since it does two actions per clock cycle you get RAM that appears to run at 400MHZ or DDR400.

-DDR2 = The next generation of RAM, DDR2 works at a much higher frequency than DDR RAM and whereas DDR RAM connects to your motherboard through 184 pins at the bottom of the PCB, DDR2 uses 240 pins. The chips are smaller and the stick uses les electricity to operate as well.

-DDR3 = DDR3 is the next generation of RAM and although it too will have 240 pins it will not run on a DDR2 board. DDR3 will not be used till the middle of 2007.

-Dual Channel = Dual channel is another little trick that manufacturers use to get more performance out of your RAM. Dual Channel requires you have two sticks of nearly identical RAM installed in specific slots on you motherboard. When your two sticks of RAM are installed in the proper slots, your memory controller will work with them as a team and can do things like write to one stick while reading from the other thereby doing two things at the same time.

SPD = Serial Presence Detect is a small chip on your RAM stick that “talks” to your motherboard and tells it how fast or slow to run you RAM stick. SPD is usually very conservative performance-wise.


Let’s finish up by discussing the cost of RAM. When you hit the eTailer and drill down to 2x1024MB kits of DDR2 RAM you will be confronted with prices ranging from $75 to nearly $650 for the same type RAM from the same manufacturer. Pretty amazing disparity when you think about it. SO what should you buy?

RAM is based on chips, as stated above and these chips, although designed to the same spec, are of varying quality. Generally speaking the faster your RAM the better off you are system speed-wise, however, at a certain point the performance increase is nearly impossible to see by any but the most avid enthusiast.

I can’t recommend what RAM you should buy because I have no idea what type of system you are building. You must do your own cost benefit analysis and go from there. I will say that real world performance gains fall off precipitously near the top end in a nearly direct proportion to how much the price has increased. I can offer this advice and feel safe, if you are building on a mATX platform then DDR2-667 RAM is probably going to be fine for your system. If you are building a gaming rig then you are probably fine with some good quality DDR2-800 memory. Don’t get me wrong , the higher priced stuff offers some amazing performance and if you are planning n overclocking then you need to do your research here but for most reading this the above advice is sound.

[35Pete]

Picking a Motherboard & RAM

Motherboards (mobo)
Now that you have pretty much decided on a CPU you can click on the motherboard category and find the perfect match for it. You choice of CPU dictates the socket and type of motherboard you can use, a core 2 requires a 775 socket, AM2 an AM2 socket so right away you’ve cut the universe of thousands of motherboards down to a few hundred .

So just hit the order button and you’re home free right? Well, no, fortunately for us it isn’t that easy and once again the beauty of BYO comes into play. Your choices are wide and varied here and you can pick and choose what you want based on your needs and budget. I talked about motherboards in Part 2 but let’s go into a little more detail on some of the specifics you need to address when selecting a motherboard.

First let’s look at the standards being used as of the Spring of 2007 on system motherboards. Besides the CPU Socket, you have slots for memory, slot(s)the graphics or video cards, ports for you ODDs and HDDs as well as the Floppy Disk Drive (FDD) PCI slots for add on cards and of course the back panel ports for your Ethernet connection, USB devices.

All of these slots and ports are built to specific specs and these specs change from time to time to accommodate more powerful, faster running components. Graphics cards are now using a PCIe 16x slot rather than an AGP slot. PCIe or PCI express, is a new spec that has much greater bandwidth than AGP and provides more power to the graphic card installed. AGP is fading from the scene. PCIe is also an expandable spec in that you can have PCIe 1x slots, 4x slots 8x slots and 16x slots. PCIe will eventually take the place of the old PCI slots.

Another big change is the slow fade from the scene of the IDE/PATA ports. These ports were used for the ODDs and HDDs. PATA (Parallel ATA) is being replaced by SATA (Serial ATA) a much faster and more compact connection that provides a channel dedicated to whatever is plugged into it. As with PCIe, SATA is slowly replacing the IDE/PATA interface. Many boards come with only one now.

Memory is discussed at length below but pay attention as to how many memory slots you have available (two or four) and that the slots match the RAM your CPU will use. An AM2 CPU requires DDR2 RAM, same thing with the Core 2 processor.

You then have the PCI slots into which you can plug your wireless card, sound card etc. As I said above, you will start to se over the next year, more and more add-on cards coming out designed to the PCIe spec.

The great thing about today’s advanced mobos is you really don’t need any add-on cards. Most mobos come with onboard sound, an embedded NIC or Ethernet connection, graphics in some cases and many other things depending on how deep your pockets are.

You know the socket category but now you have to consider your budget and what you want to do with your PC. If your budget is on the tight side you may want to select a motherboard with Integrated Graphics (IG). If you’re a gamer this probably isn’t the best choice as IG are fairly anemic. If, however, your graphics needs aren’t that great then IG is fine. IG is built into the NB and you should read about the capabilities of the various offerings available. As an example, ASUS sells the same board with two different graphics options, Quadro and 6100. The Quadro chip is better suited to an office environment or someone who does CAD/CAM design whereas the 6100 is great for light gaming. IG isn’t the end of the video road for you as most mATX mobos come with a PCIe 16x slot into which you can plug a Video Card down the road. IG really is a nice option as it offers low buy-in cost with the option to move up later on. Mobos with IG are normally found on a mATX mobo (see form factor in Part 2) which means real estate on the board will be limited, but mATX mobos are usually much cheaper than the full ATX boards so for a builder on a budget, mATX is a great deal.

If you want a mobo with more to offer and greater stability then you move up to ATX. These larger boards normally do not carry IG but they can have as many as 4 LAN ports and 8 SATA ports as well as 8 channel audio and 8 phase power to handle greater voltage loads at better stability. The top of the line desktop mobos come with two, full PCIe 16x slots for dual video card configurations. This dual video card setup comes in one of two flavors, SLI for Nvidia cards and Crossfire for ATI/AMD cards. The gamer who wants the absolute best in graphics can have two video cards rendering the scene for him or her through an SLI or Crossfire NB chipset.

This top of the line capability doesn’t come cheap. Whereas a very nice mATX mobo with IG can be had for $75 you can spend around $400 for the best of the best enthusiast mobo. That $400 mobo needs a lot of support as well in the form of excellent case cooling and a strong, stable, high quality PSU. Don’t panic at the price, though, as very capable SLI mobos are available at $135.

Last thing is drivers. If you buy and Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus mobo it will have two Nvidia chipsets on it. The board needs drivers to run correctly and these are available at Nvidia’s website. The same goes for a Crossfire mobo running ATI/AMD chipsets. Mobos always come with a CD, however with all the drivers needed to get you up and running but updating drivers is a necessity if you want the most from your rig.

RAM (Memory)

We briefly mentioned RAM above but I am going to go into some detail here as there is a lot of terms related to RAM and you need to know most of them. Physically RAM and that flash stick everyone carries around are very similar. A stick of RAM, and a flash stick, is made up of a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) with memory chips mounted on it, a controlling chip at the end and pin outs that connect the stick to your motherboard, in the case of RAM, or a USB connector for a flash stick. In the case of RAM, each of these memory chips is usually a 64MB sized chip strung together to give you the total. A 512MB stick of RAM will have 8 chips and a 1GB, or 1024MB, stick will have 16 chips. Some manufacturers are now using 128MB chips. Flash sticks are much the same although the chip sizes differ.

The similarity between a flash stick and RAM ends at how it functions. A flash stick is non-volatile memory. You write to the memory and the 0s and 1s stay as set with no power applied. RAM is volatile memory and requires a constant charge to keep the data written to it stable. Pull the power and a RAM stick is completely erased. The advantage to this is that RAM is exponentially faster than a memory stick.

The best way to think of how RAM stores data is an excel spreadsheet. Each chip has rows and columns that address a cell. This cell, located by a row and column address, is where the memory controller stores some bit of data that will be used by the CPU in an upcoming process. When folks talk about low-CAS memory they are actually discussing the Column Address Strobe cycle or how many CPU cycles it takes to locate, erase and address a Column. When the CPU requests data via branch prediction it places an order for it through the memory controller where that data is stored on the memory for processing.

How much RAM to get:
-256MB of RAM = Lousy performance and barely enough Ram to run XP and your Virus software. Launching anything will begin the flush to Virtual Memory.

-512MB of RAM = The minimum I would consider putting in any XP machine. You can run simple programs if you open only one or two at a time. Encoding DVDs or something just as stressful will bring your system to its knees.

-1024MB (1GB) of RAM = The optimum level of RAM for most Windows XP machines. You can open several programs simultaneously and they will run quickly and efficiently. 1GB of RAM is the best balance between cost and performance.

-2048MB (2GB) of RAM = The optimum level of RAM for a heavy duty Windows XP gaming machine or DVD/Photoshop encoding platform.

-More than 2048MB (2GB) of RAM = Except for a very few programs than can expressly use extra RAM (you will know it f you have such a program) anything more than 2GB of RAM on an XP machine is a waste. In addition, Windows XP can’t even address more than about 3.5GB of RAM anyways due to system limits in the OS.

I you want to run Windows Vista you can take all of the above numbers and double them and have about the same results. Yep, for many reasons, Vista needs much more memory than XP.

Let’s go over a few terms related to RAM that confuse many:

-DDR = DDR stands for Double Data Rate. DDR is a little trick that system and memory manufacturers use to double the performance of your RAM. Your system works on a clock with a signal that resembles a sine wave with the bottom half cut of. What you are left with is a series of waves, from zero to one, with each peak being one clock cycle. DDR means that your RAM performs a read or write on the up side of that wave and performs another on the down side of that wave. In effect your RAM performs two actions for every clock cycle. So DDR 400 Ram actually runs at 200MHZ but since it does two actions per clock cycle you get RAM that appears to run at 400MHZ or DDR400.

-DDR2 = The next generation of RAM, DDR2 works at a much higher frequency than DDR RAM and whereas DDR RAM connects to your motherboard through 184 pins at the bottom of the PCB, DDR2 uses 240 pins. The chips are smaller and the stick uses les electricity to operate as well.

-DDR3 = DDR3 is the next generation of RAM and although it too will have 240 pins it will not run on a DDR2 board. DDR3 will not be used till the middle of 2007.

-Dual Channel = Dual channel is another little trick that manufacturers use to get more performance out of your RAM. Dual Channel requires you have two sticks of nearly identical RAM installed in specific slots on you motherboard. When your two sticks of RAM are installed in the proper slots, your memory controller will work with them as a team and can do things like write to one stick while reading from the other thereby doing two things at the same time.

SPD = Serial Presence Detect is a small chip on your RAM stick that “talks” to your motherboard and tells it how fast or slow to run you RAM stick. SPD is usually very conservative performance-wise.

When you go and buy RAM you need to be aware of the above numbers to ensure that you buy the right stuff. If you have a one year old Dell then you are probably running DDR2 RAM. If it has one 256MB stick of RAM in it you can get a huge boost in performance by buying a second stick of identical RAM (remember dual channel above) and installing it in the second slot. The increase in performance will be amazing. Same thing with a single stick of 512MB of RAM, buy a second stick, install it and you will get a very good boost in performance, albeit not as great as 256MB to 512MB.

Good article except that I take exception with the bolded statement.

I disagree. Having that much DDR2 allows me to do anything and everything. I've already hit 2.4 GB of usage Merc. And the 4 GB is used. It's just treated as reserved memory and thus doesn't show up in any indicators. Google it. The explanation is on a lot of MBs.

And stay away from DD3 for a while. Let the price come down and the bugs get worked out.

In technical terms we say that "DDR clocks on both (rising and falling) edges". Just an FYI.

[Merc]

Pete-
There is always exceptions and remember I am addressing the 90%, not the 10% Those who use more than 2GB of RAM know they will need it and what all the restrictions in XP mean. They are advanced users and wouldn't be reading my article anyways. In general, 2Gb is plenty for even the most RAM hungry games and most folks will be fine with just 1GB. If you are running Vista then the sky is the limit and 4Gb is a very good idea.

[35Pete]

Pete-
There is always exceptions and remember I am addressing the 90%, not the 10% Those who use more than 2GB of RAM know they will need it and what all the restrictions in XP mean. They are advanced users and wouldn't be reading my article anyways. In general, 2Gb is plenty for even the most RAM hungry games and most folks will be fine with just 1GB. If you are running Vista then the sky is the limit and 4Gb is a very good idea.

Well, true. I've hit 2.4 GB when running an HVR tuner on mute, mediaplayer, virus scan, an excel spreadsheet, and a mozilla window. LOL

I also have two monitors so I can do that. ;)

Ohh Merc? Not even a hiccup!! *such a proud daddy of this rig*

[mikgaes]

Now this is some very interesting stuff. I trust there is not an accompanying thread regarding building bombs.

http://www.world-of-smilies.com/wos_sonstige/FettGrins.gif

[35Pete]

Now this is some very interesting stuff. I trust there is not an accompanying thread regarding building bombs.

http://www.world-of-smilies.com/wos_sonstige/FettGrins.gif

It'd get ripped out of here in a heartbeat. That's for sure.

Now, back on topic.

[mikgaes]

It'd get ripped out of here in a heartbeat. That's for sure.

Now, back on topic.

One should hope so. Let me ask a neophyte question. How is DDR 3 faster than DDR2 if it uses the same number of pins?

[35Pete]

One should hope so. Let me ask a neophyte question. How is DDR 3 faster than DDR2 if it uses the same number of pins?

A number of advantages:

The pre-fetch buffer is 4 bits vs. 2 bits. This is a memory cache located on the RAM where data is stored before it is actually needed. So one of the bottlenecks is cut in half.

Max bandwidth for DDR2 is 1066 MHz. 1600 MHz for DDR3.

Lower power usage = longer operating life and cooler running machine.

[Merc]

Lower power usage = longer operating life and cooler running machine.

.......or higher overclocks :partysmilies:

[Merc]

Part 5: Picking a Video Card, Sound Card and Hard Disk Drives (HDD)

This may seem like a lot to cover in one Part but as complicated as this topic can get the real world decisions one needs to make here are really not that involved. Video Cards change every 6 months so your new op-of the line card is old stuff in a year. Sound Cards are becoming irrelevant to all but the most demanding audiophile or gamer as the mobos incorporate fairly good audio chips nowadays and the Hard Drive market has been whittled down to just a few manufacturers while the technology is getting really exciting.

Video Cards:
Let’s take a look at Video Cards first. If you’re building a gaming rig then this is your meat and potatoes, the thing that will make your games run at those high FPS (Frames Per Second) with all the eye-candy on and the resolution high. If that is all gibberish to you then you probably don’t need a high end video cards and IG is probably fine. If you just want to make DVDs of your baby then a mid level card is fine and if you want to do CAD/CAM you need something completely different.

Right now you can plunk down $800 for a top of the line BFG watercooled Nvidia 8800GTX video card that is DX10 capable and can run in tandem with another 8800GTX to double your pleasure. That’s $1600 just for video cards! That is more than most spend on their entire computer. Nuts huh and who would buy something like that? Plenty of people, believe me, and I work with them everyday trying to get their system balanced so as to get even more speed out of those unbelievable video cards.

At the other end of the spectrum is the EVGA 6200 with turbo cache that costs just $35 and puts a great image on your screen. If $35 is too much then get a motherboard with a 6100 IG chip on it and let the mobo run your graphics. Honestly, it is a nice little chip although it does take up to 128MB of your system RAM to run.

Doing CAD/CAM or high level engineering, then you may want to look at a $2400 FX Quadro. It will render incredibly detailed graphics but games about as well as the 6100 above.

The point of the above is that user’s needs are myriad and their choices in how a scene is rendered are just as diverse and numberless. It would be impossible for me to recommend a video card for your system as I have no idea about your needs, what your budget is and what kind of display you are running. You are going to have to spend a little time doing research here and figure out how much you want to spend as well as the power supply you’ll need to run the card. There are some general rules, however, that I can relate and you can use to make an intelligent and rational choice.

Vista or XP: If you are planning on Microsoft Vista as your operating system then I recommend you bump all your hardware up to the next level. Vista has enormous hardware requirements as compared to XP and you have to budget for it. I recommend a fast card with at least 256MB of GDDR2 RAM onboard if you want the aero interface to run correctly. XP’s display requirements are negligible and IG is fine for a baseline XP machine. I like the Gigabyte 7300GT with passive cooling. It is about $85, is silent and does a great job.

DirectX 9 or 10: DirectX is the Microsoft developed codec that game developers use to design their games. Dx9 has been around for years and its requirements are well known. Any card you buy today can run Dx9. Dx10 is new and is a completely redesigned codec that is NOT backward compatible with Dx9 gear. If you want to play the games of the future then you must buy a Dx10 capable card. Right now that means the Nvidia 8 series or the AMD/ATI 2 series. Nvidia’s 8 series have been around for over 6 months, as of this writing, and Nvidiahas cards at all price levels that are Dx10 capable.

Display: There isn’t much use buying a card that can run Battlefield 2 at 2560x 2048 if your monitor can’t hit those numbers. Match the card to the monitor and vice versa.

Power: A powerful video card requires a powerful PSU. The top of the line vid card can use 250 watts of power so plan on getting a better PSU if you want the better card. Always buy a bigger PSU than you need, IMHO, as you’ll have room for growth in the future and a bigger PSU will not draw any more current from the wall than a smaller unit (PSU’s draw only what they need).

SLI or Crossfire: If you plan on running a dual card system then make sure you get similar cards that match up to the capabilities of the motherboard and your PSU.

Your needs: if you are just surfing the internet, watching YouTube and ripping MP3s spend your money elsewhere, IG is plenty for your needs. Doing Photoshop, then you want a high res monitor and a card that can run it but not necessarily a card that can run games at 150FPS. Get a mid-level here.

Cooling: High speed cards put out a lot of heat. Make sure your case is well ventilated or you’ll be having problems with heat. Lot’s of fans please.

Research: PLEASE do your research. Ask questions and read about the architecture of the various cards. Read reviews, make sure your system can handle what you plan and get the best you can afford.

Sound Cards:
I am not going to say much here about sound cards as I am not that familiar with them and IMHO they aren’t a necessity any longer for most users out there. Onboard sound provides adequate audio for the vast majority and can even give you incredible 8 channel surround.

If, however, you need very high quality audio or that which is coming form the onboard is poor then consider a sound card. They do make a difference and if you use your rig to play music then get a Creative X-Fi card. Audiophiles please do get a sound card, you will not be happy with onboard.

Let me say that the folks I know who have high quality sound cards swear by them. They love them and wouldn’t build a system without one. There isn’t much of a choice out there with Creative providing the bulk of the cards. Also, onboard sound can have distortion problems due to the interference coming from the other mobo components. If you want high quality audio and have money leftover in your budget then get a sound card and enjoy.



Hard Drives:

I described what a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) is in Part 2 so I won’t go into that here. What I will say is that HDDs have become a commodity and their storage capabilities have changed radically over the last two years. Perpendicular recording has greatly expanded the storage space on HDDs and we are now seeing 1Tb (that is one terabyte!) of storage on retail HDDs. Cache has increased and SATA has more throughput than present drives can use. Plus, the price per gigabyte has dropped to about 45 cents. Simply put, it is a great time in the world of data storage for consumers.

How much storage space you need depends, like everything else we have discussed, on what you do with your rig. Is 1TB overkill? Well if you like making movies of your new baby you’ll want to factor in that one, 1 hour MiniDV tape uses 13GB of space on your HDD. Remember when PCs came with 20GB HDDs and we never filled them? LOL
Remember that you need room for storage and space is always limited in a PC case. A mATX case may have room for only one drive and if your storage needs are high then you may want to budget for a 500GB model. SATA should be your choice since IDE is disappearing and is actually more expensive than SATA now. If you have an IDE drive in your old rig, consider putting it in an external HDD enclosure and using it as backup.

Let’s talk about some terms you may have seen and need to know.

SATA 1.5 and 3.0: SATA stands for Serial ATA and is the new standard for drive interface. It uses a small wire interface and provides a dedicated channel for each drive connected. 1.5 and 3.0 are the standards you’ll find out there and simply refer to the throughput of the bus. They use the same plug but 3.0 can pass 300MBps (300 megabytes per second) whereas the slightly older 1.5 can pass 150MBps. SATA 3.0 is backwards compatible to 1.5 but go 3.0 if you are buying new and your mobo supports 3.0.

SATA brings a lot more to the table than just speed. The drives are hot swappable meaning you can unplug them with the PC running without hurting anything (just not the drive with the OS on it), they are RAID capable and they are very fast. Very fast but not many drives can use the throughput of even SATA 1.5 but go 3.0 anyways.

Drive Cache: HDDs come with a little bit of memory onboard that acts as a prefetch and short term storage. Generally speaking, get as much cache as you can on the drive but don’t break the bank.

Spindle speed: As said in part 2 above, the HDD is made up of a bunch of rotating disks, spinning at high speed and read by a moving arm. Obviously, the faster the platter spins and the arm moves, the faster the drive can be read and written to. Currently, the fastest SATA drives you can buy are the Western Digital Raptors with a 10,000RPM spindle speed. Most drives in the 3.5” category spin at 7200RPM.

3.5” or 2.5”: These are simply the size of the HDD itself. Drives that you use for a desktop rig are 3.5” and laptops use 2.5”.

RAID: RAID stands for Random Array of Inexpensive Disks. There are many types of RAID but the most common are RAID 0 and RAID 1. RAID 0 is called stripe and simply put, uses two, separate HDDs to make one big one. Two 80GB HDDs in RAID 0 yields 160GB of storage with the data striped across them.

RAID 0 uses a RAID controller in the chipset to take the data you are writing to the drive and spreads it across two separate drives. The benefit of this is you write a part of the data to drive one and the rest of the data to drive two, simultaneously, thereby getting a speed boost. When you need to read that data the RAID controller reads the first part from drive one and the rest from drive two, puts it back together and delivers it to the RAM and CPU.

RAID 0 increases read write speeds by as much as 25% at a very low cost. The downfall of RAID 0 is if one drive dies, you lose all your data. This means that you are increasing the likelihood of complete data loss by a factor of the combined MTBF of both drives.

RAID 1 uses the RAID controller to write the same data to two drives simultaneously. In other words, drive two is an exact, real time mirror of drive one. The benefit of this is that if one drive dies it is nearly irrelevant to you as the second drive is writing the exact same data simultaneously to itself. You simply unplug drive one and keep moving on. When ready, put a new drive in and tell the controller to rebuild the array.

The downside of RAID 1 is that there is no boost to write speed and only a slight boost to write speed. It is also relatively expensive. Two 80 GB drives yield only 80GB of storage since they are mirrors of each other.

One note on RAID 1: RAID 1 is NOT back up. It is simply a way to make sure that drive failure doesn’t affect your data. It isn’t back up because if you get a virus on your system then both drives will be infected. A corruption to the OS means both drives are corrupted.

Back-Up: I always recommend that you back your data up to an external HDD that is not continuously connected to the system. Use your old HDD and put it in a external enclosure connected via eSATA or USB or whatever your system has available.

[Merc]

Part 6: Pick a Case and Power Supply Unit (PSU)

So finally we come to the part that you show off to the world and the part that makes all the lights come on. Both the case and the PSU are vitally important to your system’s health and longevity as well as its stability. Last but not least, the case is how the world views your first build and it should not only be functional and easy to build in but also reflect your personality.

The case
The case is the about the last thing you should select in your build. Your build’s size and cooling needs will dictate the size of your case, your own personal tastes will dictate the look. A case can be anything from a silver box that can sit on your shelf along with your stereo equipment to a huge server case designed to swallow watercooling pumps and radiators. Your case can howl like a banshee to the tune of ten 120mm high performance fans to nothing but a soft whisper. It can light up the room with LEDs and cool cathode tubes or be an understated aluminum box that exudes quiet elegance. Bottom line is you should balance your selection of a case among needs, looks and functionality as well as your budget constraints.

Cases are designed to the ATX spec which dictates the where fittings and stand-off holes should be, the make up of the front panel connectors where access is provided and the size of the various compartments that will hold your PSU, HDDs and ODDs. It will have holes in it for fans and a removable side panel for access to the insides. Other than that it is up to the manufacturer on the material and look.

The basics of a case are:
1. Motherboard tray - A large area where you mount the motherboard. Generally called the motherboard tray it is a flat area with threaded holes in it designed to match up with mounting holes in the mobo. The case comes with “standoffs”, 1/4” nuts that screw into the holes in the tray and to which you screw the mobo. The standoffs hold the mobo off the metal of the case and allow air to circulate under the mobo for cooling. You screw the standoffs into the holes that match up to the holes in your mobo, set the mobo on these standoffs and then screw the mobo into the standoffs.

2. PSU Compartment – This is where the PSU is mounted. Designed to the ATX spec, you slide the PSU in and screw it to the case. Some PSUs are longer than others so make sure your PSU matches the space available. The PSU compartment is normally located at the top so the PSU fan can draw hot air out with its fan.

3. 5.25” bay – This is where your ODDs line CDROM drives and such go. Located in the front there is usually a punch out panel you use toget at the front of the drive and rails to hold the drive in.

4. 3.5” bay - Used for Floppy drives and sometime s HDDs

5. HDD cage- A cage for mounting your HDD(s)

6. Front fan- Most cases come with a front panel access hole for a fan which will draw air into the case for cooling.

7. Front Panel Connectors – These are wires with which you connect the HDD LED light, Power on led, on/off switch and any USB or audio ports. Sometimes these are individual pins and sometimes a block that connects to your mobo.

8. Rear Panel access - These are panels where your PCI cards, vid. cards and the mobo ports peek out through the back of the case. Cards use individual slots that are covered by a removable panel into which the card access ports can be screwed for support. Moxt mobos come wit a rear access panel shield that matches your mobos rear panel configuration and snaps into the case.

Case materials:
A case can be made out of just about anything but most likely it will be constructed of steel or aluminum. I prefer aluminum as it is light and wears well but steel is robust and stable. Either one is fine as long as it fits your needs.

Size:
Personally my case is an old Lian Li 7077A server case I modified myself by cutting holes for a radiator and 250mm fan. It is huge but has to hold two individual watercooling loops as well as all my other gear. Most people can get away with using a mid-tower ATX case or even a small mATX case like the Coolermaster Centurion series. Make sure that the case size can comfortably hold all your gear and projected gear and has adequate cooling. If you have little kids or not so trustworthy roommate get a case that locks up with a key.

Cooling:
Cases generally have at least cutouts for ‘case fans”. Most come with a few fans installed. Fans generally come in two sizes, 80mm and 120mm.and mount via metal threaded screws. I can’t emphasize enough that you adequately cool your case. Generally you want some cool air coming in the back and the hot air exhausting out the rear. There may also be blowholes in the top or fan holes in the side panel..

Bling:
Bling is blinking LEDs cool cathode tubes windows etc. Yes you can get a side panel with a window in it so your friends can marvel at your creation. Bling may come built in or you add it yourself. Just be sure you get what you want here as buyer’s remorse sucks.

Power Supply Unit (PSU)

Last but certainly NOT LEAST, we come to the PSU. I have saved the PSU for last because you need to know exactly what you are working with and may be adding in the future, before buying this important component. Most people reach this part on their list of parts and, having added up the numbers, decide it is time to go cheap here and save some money. DON’T. DO NOT GO CHEAP WITH YOUR PSU.

I capitalize that because I have seen more problems caused by a cheap PSU than any other single component. All that wonderful gear on your list needs stable DC power to make it work right. You need to have adequate watts and amps for your gear , delivered from a steady, stable PSU or you will never, ever have a good build. You will be plagued with weird crashes, data corruption and system freezes right up until that $20 piece of crap dies, or worse, blows up or catches fire. Yep, they do both.

Don’t get sucked in by the boys that rail against good PSUs on the various forums. The will tell you that they have been running fine on a $15 PSU for a year and you’re an idiot if you spend more than that on a PSU. Dig deeper, usually these experts are plagued with unstable systems or have had to replace the thing twice.

So how do you pick a PSU? First go here and punch in your gear http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp This calculator will give you a basic wattage your system will draw. Now add what you expect to buy over the next year and punch that in. Now add 30%. This is the general wattage level you should be looking at. Remember, a bigger PSU will not draw anymore power from the wall than a smaller unit as PSUs draw only what they need. Efficiency is the key here.

Wattage is only half the story. You have to be a little smart here and understand the numbers. Watts are only as good as where the amps are applied. The formula is Volts x amps = watts. On a PSU you have 3.3v, 5v and 12v rails. The most important rail is the 12v Look at the label or spec and see how many amps are applied to the 12v rails(s) and then look at your gear, specifically your video card, and make sure you have enough amps on your 12v rail for the card.

Some specifics:
1. The 12v Rail - This rail is the most important on your PSU. Modern systems are more and more dependent on the 12v rail for powering the various components.

2. Multiple rails – Many people the more 12v rails the better as it isolated the delicate CPU and RAM from the ‘louder” components such as HDDs and ODDs. Actually the multi 12v spec was written as a safety measure which limited the 12v to 240 watts max (12x 20 = 240 watts). This spec was outdated before it was written because today’s hungry video cards sometimes need upwards of 240 watts just for themselves. Many manufacturers simply join the rails up inside the PSU itself thus paying lip-service to the spec. PC Power & Cooling never even signed on and always use just one big 12v rail.

Multiple rails are a kind of industry joke and if the 12v is really split they can be a problem. What if you have 16 amps of 12v on two rails in a PSU. You plug in some components on one rail that draws 8 amps and the other rail is powering 18 amps worth of components? You have surplus n the one rail and a deficit on the other and therefore an unstable system.

3. Plugs – Make sure the plugs on your PSU match the plugs on your other components. If you have SATA drives the PSU needs to have SATA power plugs. Bigger video cards require a 6 pin power plug and newer cards are moving to an 8 pin design. Motherboards have two power plug needs. Older boards use a 20 pin main power plug and newer boards a 24 pin. You can use a 20 pin in a 24 pin socket but try not to. Boards also require a 4 pin supplementary plug and many are now coming with an 8 pin supplementary socket. You can run with the 4 pin plug in the 8 pin socket but try and get a PSU with an 8 pin plug if needed. You’ll hear the term Molex when discussing power plugs. Molex is just the array of 4 pin power plugs standard on all PSUs that power drives, fans and lights. All plugs are keyed to fit a specific socket.

4. Fans - Some PSUs use 120mm fans and some use 80mm. Generally the 120mm is quieter. Just make sure your case has access fro the fan.

5. Maximum Power and Peak Power – maximum power is the number you want to look at. Maximum power should denote the amount of power a PSU can deliver at a specific temperature indefinitely. Peak power is what a PSU can supply to cover those momentary surges. Maximum power is important as it shows the strength of the unit and the higher the temperature the unit is tested at, the better.

6. PFC - Power Factor Correction is a system inside the PSU corrects true power (watts) divided by apparent power (volts x amps or VA) for a more efficient DC . (Pete, please feel free to edit PFC LOL)

There are many other factors with PSUs but this should be enough to get you started. Just remember that there are a lot of lies and misleading advertisements out there in the PSU world so buy a quality brand, even if you need to sacrifice somewhere else. Personally I like PC Power & Cooling, FSP and Sparkle brands.

[35Pete]

Great stuff Merc. It really is spot on...except..

OK. You didn't expect a lack of a peanut gallery, did you?

As an electrical engineer that designs microcomputers for a living (pentium caliber systems smaller than a credit card) I TOTALLY DISAGREE with your single 12V supply comment.

Don't care what the self-proclaimed gurus on the net say. Don't care at all. When the rubber meets the road and my technical credibility depends on my decision on a power distribution network I ALWAY CHOOSE multiple rails. Always.

Mixed-signal PSR (power supply rejection [noise], load regulation, transient isolation. Plain and simple. Yes, multiple rails waste overhead, but the benefits far outweigh the losses.

They can call themselves experts. I do it directly for a living. Sorry. :)

[Merc]

Pete-
I acknowledge your expertise and if you notice I left a note in there asking you to please post your recommendations in my post. Please do, as I always appreciate an expert's opinion I fully acknowledge my lack of expertise there. BTW, i knew that would get ya. LOL. Please post inside my thread so we can all learn.

[35Pete]

Pete-
I acknowledge your expertise and if you notice I left a note in there asking you to please post your recommendations in my post. Please do, as I always appreciate an expert's opinion I fully acknowledge my lack of expertise there. BTW, i knew that would get ya. LOL. Please post inside my thread so we can all learn.

Monday evening I'll bring in actual data (oscilloscope pics, audio analyzer data, ect) to demonstrate my point. Of course I cannot mention product specifics as I am sure that you can understand. In fact, I'll use cancelled product data to boot. It will all make more sense then.

[Merc]

Disclaimer to the folks thinking of building their first rig, which is what this article is all about.. The argument Pete and I are having is not only an ongoing one in the enthusiast community but also instructive. Pete is absolutely a master of his craft and I always learn something new when I challenge him. If you read the first part on this series you will see, in capital letters, my attitude towards this hobby. No one knows everything and the beauty of BYO is getting to the point where you can argue with the pros and learn things from them . I am quite sure, despite Pete's expertise, there are things that I know that Pete will readily PM me about and ask my opinion. That is just a prt of this community. We all help each other.

BYO and join the fray, your input is always welcome and a true builder NEVER stops learning. Besides the great feeling you get from watching your first build come to life you also sign on to one of the most diverse and crazy communities I have ever seen. Rule 1 is never stop learning.

Argument w/ Pete starts here.
PC Power & cooling designs, arguably, the best power supplies on the market. All of their PSUs are single rail. Given the current spec for ripple on the 12v rail I don't believe that x86 parts are that affected by the loss of isolation. Also, if you go by the spec and limit each rail to 240 watts you are seriously compromising yourself given the power needs of high end video cards and the always suspect numbers of less than reputable PSU retailers.

Pete, the day of the dual rail is over. It doesn't make any sense to limit your 12v rails to 240 watts. Not when you can offer all the 12v power on one rail and use high enough quality components to minimize the ripple and fade.
I am no where near the expert you are but I will say that most high end rigs you read about use a PC P&C PSUs. They work at high temps and deliver stable power no matter the load.

[35Pete]

Disclaimer to the folks thinking of building their first rig, which is what this article is all about.. The argument Pete and I are having is not only an ongoing one in the enthusiast community but also instructive. Pete is absolutely a master of his craft and I always learn something new when I challenge him. If you read the first part on this series you will see, in capital letters, my attitude towards this hobby. No one knows everything and the beauty of BYO is getting to the point where you can argue with the pros and learn things from them . I am quite sure, despite Pete's expertise, there are things that I know that Pete will readily PM me about and ask my opinion. That is just a prt of this community. We all help each other.

BYO and join the fray, your input is always welcome and a true builder NEVER stops learning. Besides the great feeling you get from watching your first build come to life you also sign on to one of the most diverse and crazy communities I have ever seen. Rule 1 is never stop learning.

Argument w/ Pete starts here.
PC Power & cooling designs, arguably, the best power supplies on the market. All of their PSUs are single rail. Given the current spec for ripple on the 12v rail I don't believe that x86 parts are that affected by the loss of isolation. Also, if you go by the spec and limit each rail to 240 watts you are seriously compromising yourself given the power needs of high end video cards and the always suspect numbers of less than reputable PSU retailers.

Pete, the day of the dual rail is over. It doesn't make any sense to limit your 12v rails to 240 watts. Not when you can offer all the 12v power on one rail and use high enough quality components to minimize the ripple and fade.
I am no where near the expert you are but I will say that most high end rigs you read about use a PC P&C PSUs. They work at high temps and deliver stable power no matter the load.


Nope. Gotta disagree. Hey. You've written on about 30 items. I disagree on one. That's pretty darn good agreement if you ask me. The "quality" of the components, particularly those aspects that immediately affect performance, relate to what are known as "parasitics" (equivalent series resistance, lead inductance, ect..). These are finite. Can't reach zero. At low loads with a high quality regulator you won't see detrimental performance. But at high load and/or fast transients you certainly will. Now a big reason for my rig is multimedia. And I have some nice audio connected. So that PSRR is going to affect audio quality. Those high current load transients (you'll never see them on a multimeter) are going to cause spiking when big inductive loads like a sata drive kick in. Put enough of them in "daisy chain" and with that current loading you will see out of spec transients. May not affect performance right away, but they sure will affect lifecycle of all the 12V peripherals on the chain.

First rule of thumb in power network design: Though shalt not daisy chain. Starburst configuration is always preferred and inherently that's what multi-rails are.

This is fun Merc. Let's keep it up. :)

Ohh. And you know some stuff about personal computers that I am now learning, so I don't have a monopoly on knowledge here buddy. That's the beauty of this thread. Learn and challenge. But you are touching on an area that I have worked on in the design environment for 12 years. And I happen to not agree. :D

[Merc]

One thing you have to remember is many manufacturers claim to have multi-rails setups, but ifn fact join the rails up inside the PSU. They have to as a true spc complinat multi-rail system is limited to 20amps on any single rail (for 240 watts max on the 12v) and that just ain't enough for today's systems. Not when you have a vid card that can pull 150 watts all by its lonesome. Put the CPU on that same rail and boom, your out of power. (see http://www.jonnyguru.com/ for the reviews that show the lining of the rails)

One solution is to label multi rail and join the rails inside, another is to make as many as four rails for the 12v. Of course at that point you are up into the high end of PSU's. Also, you can't deny the trapped watts-on -a rail issue.

I understand completely what you are talking about but once again I have to ask, how many rigs out there are used in the same way as yours? You, once again, have very specific needs for a very specialized purpose, and I am addressing, when I talk about PSUs, the 90% who are looking to build decent gaming machine at acceptable prices. On that type of system a single rail is the best option. PC P&C builds single rail PSU's exclusively and on every Dream Machine or Ultimate PC in the magazines a single rail PC P&C PSU is used.

I don't deny that for what you are doing you need to isolate the rails from each other but the majority of the folks building enthusiast class rigs need all the 12v they can get.

[35Pete]

One thing you have to remember is many manufacturers claim to have multi-rails setups, but ifn fact join the rails up inside the PSU. They have to as a true spc complinat multi-rail system is limited to 20amps on any single rail (for 240 watts max on the 12v) and that just ain't enough for today's systems. Not when you have a vid card that can pull 150 watts all by its lonesome. Put the CPU on that same rail and boom, your out of power. (see http://www.jonnyguru.com/ for the reviews that show the lining of the rails)

One solution is to label multi rail and join the rails inside, another is to make as many as four rails for the 12v. Of course at that point you are up into the high end of PSU's. Also, you can't deny the trapped watts-on -a rail issue.

I understand completely what you are talking about but once again I have to ask, how many rigs out there are used in the same way as yours? You, once again, have very specific needs for a very specialized purpose, and I am addressing, when I talk about PSUs, the 90% who are looking to build decent gaming machine at acceptable prices. On that type of system a single rail is the best option. PC P&C builds single rail PSU's exclusively and on every Dream Machine or Ultimate PC in the magazines a single rail PC P&C PSU is used.

I don't deny that for what you are doing you need to isolate the rails from each other but the majority of the folks building enthusiast class rigs need all the 12v they can get.
My rig is built around multimedia. I can't get 7.1 surround with 117 dB SNR if I've got a few millivolts ripple voltage on my supply.

Certainly can't maintain it with 4 SATA drives and two spinning at the same time.

I've got 6 20 amp rails. More than enough. I just split the loading up. If I ran all 6 at max the PSU itself would be out of spec. So there is overkill built in.

Ohh, another member asked about building. So this thread is a diamond. Thanks.

[Merc]

6 20amp rails is outstanding. 1440 watts on the 12v side. What PSU is that?

That's great that somebody is thinking of building and I hope this thread can help get them started.:boogie:

Good thread for single vs. multi rail PSUs http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1701&highlight=single+rail+vs.+multi We're both right. LOL

[35Pete]

Merk. What's the word on the latest AMD socket AM2 chips to come out? Are they expected to compete with Intel.

And would you mind explaining the transition from front-side bus to hypertransport?

Thanks.

[Merc]

Barcelona and Agena are the next gen chips due out from AMD. Agena (now called Phenom) will be the desktop version and will work in current AM2 motherboards with a BIOS flash, albeit with some reduced functionality. Agena is PCIe2, DDR3 and HT3 capable which, obviously, current AM2 mobos aren't. AM2+ has these capabilities as well as the ability to run at different power planes which means 1 or 2 cores can be slowed down and the vcore dropped when not in use.

So, as promised, AMD's new gen chips will run great in an AM2 mobo. It is a native quad core that acts like a dual core does now in that the cores communicate with each other on the die rather than across the NB like Intel's quads. How much impact this intracommunication will have on performance is anyone's guess.

There are no real benchmarks available at this time and the Agena won't hit until late fall early winter. Barcelona will be out in the summer and it works on the current 1207 boards. It should give us a good idea about the perfomance of AMD's next gen.


FSB and HT are a little confusing. We still use the term FSB when we overclock AMD CPUs but there really isn't a FSB on a AMD board. On an Intel setup the memory controller is on the NB chipset. The CPU and memory controller communicate across the FSB. Obviously there are latencies introduced from this arrangement which is why Intel keeps boosting their FSB speeds.

AMD has the memory controller on the CPU die itself. In effect the CPU talks directly to the memory, and controls it across a Hypertransport link. HT is a serial interface with two separate lanes, one for CPU to memory and the other for memory to CPU. Both lanes run at a native 1000MHz so in actuality you have a 2000MHz communication between the RAM and the CPU.

HT really isn't a bus. It doesn't direct traffic since there are separate lanes for read and write but we call it FSB because , I guess, it is the traditional way of describing memory to CPU speeds. Interestingly enough, as much as Intel craps on the idea of onboard memcontrollers, their next gen will have one.