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Whatever.. if you have one, use it, otherwise buy one that suits your tastes. The biggest features I try to look for are pretty much standard anyway. I like front-panel USB slots (so you don’t always have to reach around to the back to plug in a hard drive or something). Be wary of built-in Power Supplies – they are usually junk. One of the most common ‘weak links’ in a computer is insufficient power to the right components. I would be prepared to swap it for a new one, and save it for an emergency in case you good one get fried in an electrical storm or something
Ah... the brain. I have always been an AMD fan. Not sure why at this point other than the fact they have been consistently less expensive than their Intel counterparts. In this day of dual-core mayhem, that trend has reversed, with AMD pricing almost double that of Intel. Benchmarking across several forums has shown the AMD x2’s to be a better performer than Intel’s though. Time will tell weather the price is worth it.
Right now, you have your option in the AMD world for an Athlon x2 (dual core) in two flavors – socket 939 or socket AM2 (socket refers to the interface where the chips mounts to the motherboard – like a lock and key set). The only major difference between the two is that socket AM2 motherboards are capable of running ram at speeds higher that PC3200 (400 MHz). I will cover this in a little more detail in the RAM section, but to sum it up, new socket = faster RAM support. By all accounts though, this is a negligible increase, and personally, I feel not worth the headache associated with testing out new technology for hardware vendors. Wait a year (‘till summer 2007) and see if all the hype is worth it). Right now, my money is staying with the established socket 939 chipset.
Short and sweet.. you are looking at RPMs and Buffer sizes first. I would not get anything smaller than 7200 RPMs (and any larger adds minimal performance increases) and a good 8 meg buffer should suffice (though I have seen 16 meg buffers). This is basically how fast can the head read across the disk (like a record player) and how much information can it ‘remember’ to spit back on the fly.
After that you are looking at weather you want standard ‘old school’ IDE interface or the newer SATA interface. SATA offers more configurations and a faster interaction speed, but for more money, and a bit more of a headache to install. SATA does offer different setup configurations called RAID setups. One configuration gives you the ability to either do instant redundant backups (if you have two identical SATA drives, right after you write to disk 1, the same data is copied to disk two. Not useful for virus-related disk crashes but cool if one disk just fails physically). Another setup works similar to dual-channel RAM where one disk writes while the other reads. All in all though, these performance boots only add up to a collection of fractional milliseconds.
This is the backbone of your computer. It is what everything else plugs into. The first thing to determine is your socket size. Every CPU (processor) has a different pin configuration, and so there are motherboards with different sockets to accept these CPUs. Being a long-standing AMD fan, I would strongly suggest a 939 configuration. This is a well established socket size with a variety of CPUs to choose from (which means better upgrade potential). I recently jumped from a single-core 2.0 GHz CPU to a dual-core 2.4 GHz CPU and didn’t have change any other thing – I didn’t even have to reinstall Windows.
Manufactures are widespread in the MoBo universe, but there are only a few that are worth their salt. I have used ASUS board on most of my setups, and while their customer service is terrible, their product is very solid (which means you may never have to use their customer servie!) I am currently using their A8N-E and am very satisfied. It has onboard LAN (network) and audio, as well as Firewire support, 8 USB 2.0 connections and both IDE and SATA hard drive interfaces. It has some good, stable overclocking features built in as well, if you ever decide to get into that kind of thing. MSI puts out a solid board or two as well. I would avoid cheap vendors like PCChips or BioStar, as their boards have a reputation for just plain dying on you. In 10 years of assembling computers, I have only had one ASUS board die on me, and it was D.O.A. when I got it – I promptly returned it for the same model and it still works today.
One thing I would look out for right now with motherboards is the chipset. This is where the sub-level communication happens between all of your components. There are two big chipset manufacturers, NVIDIA (with their nForce 4) and VIA. I have had ups and downs with both as I have needed to upgrade hardware (and therefore update the chipset drivers). So far, I have been very happy with the nForce 4 chipset (often abbreviated to NF4). That is what the ‘N’ in A8N stands for (I also have an A8V – for VIA, but I am happier with the stability of the A8N). What I would watch out for though, is ATI’s new chipset. I have not heard good things about it’s stability – what good is your computer if it crashes, right? This might be smoothed out in later releases.
There is more to a PSU than its wattage rating. There is also the efficiency ratio (which is usually difficult to determine) but over 80% is ideal. Most importantly is the voltage output. Computers have varied voltage needs broken down into ‘rails’. Your 5v & 3.3v rails feed many of the integrated components of the motherboard, as well as your peripherals. More importantly though is your 12v rail. That feeds amps your processor – and in newer PCIe enhanced boards (24 pin configuration vs. 20 pin) there is a second 12v that feeds your video card. For future-looking usage, I would not go less than 30 – 35 combined amps here. Ideally, I would go over 20 on both. More juice means the components have less fears of hitting a lull in the power feed during a heavy load – which means less fear of system instability.
As I mentioned above, RAM comes in different speeds. AMD has (until recently) maintained a cap of 400 MHz on the RAM they support, while Intel has gone much further (over 1000 MHz). Why would a major manufacturer intentionally refuse to embrace ‘faster’ technology? The answer to me is where you place your performance. In a car, would you put a fantastic, rigorously tuned engine into a body that had no airflow and a busted exhaust system? RAM has more than one place where is performs. MHz is like the engine – how fast is it able to crunch data. At some point that law of diminishing returns pops up and you need to look at how fast all of that number-crunching is being spit back out to the computer. This is where RAM timings come into place. I will not go into extreme detail here because it would take forever, but in a nutshell, the ‘cycles’ it takes for RAM to read and return data can be just as important as how long it takes to compute. The lower your RAM cycles (measured in nanoseconds) the faster it can reliably process the information and return it. With that in mind, PC 3200 RAM (running at 400 MHz) with good timings can be far better performance-wise than PC 6400 RAM (800 MHz) with only moderate timings. When looking at RAM you will see the phrase ‘Dual Channel’. If you get dual-channel RAM (that is a ‘matched pair’ of RAM sticks) and insert them into a motherboard that supports dual-channel (most do) the theory is that one stick will write (send out information) while the other is reading (taking in information) resulting in more efficient data handling. Again, the performance boost here is minimal with poor timings, but can be nice in a well-oiled machine.
The most important thing to consider with all of the different types of RAM out there (DDR, DDR2, SDRAM etc) is to get the kind of RAM your motherboard supports! This will be listed with your motherboard.
This can be a ‘make-it or break-it’ component. Weather you want to play the newest game or just move comfortably around in the Maya viewport, a good video card is a must. Luckily, there have been some new improvements in the Video Card world – namely the PCI Express form factor (PCIe). This has replaced the AGP format in most newer motherboards. PCIe, in addition to getting its own, dedicated power feed, gets a wicked-fast ‘private line’ to the processor, enabling it to really scream. There are two big GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) makers, ATI and NVIDIA – they in turn sell their chips to many manufacturers like PowerCooler, BFG, XFX and so on. I have been an ATI vid-card fan for years, but have recently switched over to NVIDA because my motherboard runs on an NVIDA chipset (thought that would give me more compatibility). So far, no complaints.
The best advice I can offer on video cards is, honestly, to shop by price. There will be a newer, faster video card out within a few months after you buy your beast. This will put your beast down to half the price of what you paid for it, and reduce it performance-wise to a mere kitten compared to the latest & greatest beast. My advice: buy the #3 card. If the #1 card just came out, the #2 is still trying to be competitive, but the #3 will be dirt cheap by comparison, and seeing as how six-eight months ago it was probably the most awesome thing you night have ever seen, it will probably do the trick just fine. My target price for a good card is around $150 (give or take $25). Pay more than that and you will cry in a month.
A new thing the NVIDIA has nailed down is SLI. This is an option where if you have two of the exact same SLI-enabled cards, and two PCIe slots, you can bridge the cards together, causing them to work together. One word….. bitchin’. So get a nice card now and in a year buy a mate for it for $60.
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