Salty Security: Building your home computer

Asus P8Z68-V LX
Intel i7-2600K
Intel SSD 520 Series 120GB
WD Caviar Black 2TB SATA
Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR3
Corsair TX750 V2
Corsair H100 Hydro Series Liquid CPU Cooler
Corsair Graphite Series 600T Special Edition
Sapphire 7950 3GB OC GDDR5
Dell U2312HM x 3

One of the most common and annoying questions I'm always asked, is "Hey Paul, I'm in college now, what kind of computer should I get if money is not an object?" As annoying as that is I feel as if I'm obliged to recommend everyone I don't want to explain what an SSD is to go out and buy a Mac. Well here it is ladies and gentlemen the answer to all your grinding questions.

Always buy technology based on your needs.

Ask yourself what will you be spending most of your time doing. Word processing? Watching movies? Rendering videos? Decompiling code? Playing games? Finding out that much will indeed give you the most value for your dollar and will help narrow down your search on which component in your computer is going to be the most valuable.

(Please note I am only going through them very briefly there are hosts of resources online that you can look up on your own)

Processor

This is the bread and butter on your computer/laptop and 40-50% of your budget should be associated with this. A processor is the brain in your computer. It interprets the information from the hardware, makes the appropriate services available to other parts of the system, presents user interfaces and interprets the user input. It then runs every piece of code and processes all the data generated. Everything else on the machine is only there to make it possible for people to use the processor.

Processors are broken down into 3 tiers.

Netbook Oriented (Atom)
Laptop Oriented (Celeron vs. Sempron)
Desktop Oriented (Core vs. Athlon)

...and 3 companies that produce them:

Intel
VIA
AMD

Without getting too much more into it just remember: #1 prices don't fluctuate on these unless a newer generation processor is coming out; #2 higher speed = higher price = higher heat; #3 hardcore builders have loyalties toward either AMD or Intel; #4 buy something with an Intel processor unless you game heavily in which case go AMD

For more information on Intel processors: mintywhite.com

Motherboard

In many ways, the motherboard is the heart of the modern computer system, as it affects almost every other component. Choosing a motherboard is extremely easy. Take some time to think about how you'll use your system. Someone with a power meter that requires a serial port will care a lot more about the peripheral features than the average user will, while the hard-core gamer will probably focus on the GPU, CPU, and chip set while ignoring peripherals and form-factor issues.

In a nut shell, everything you buy will connect to your motherboard. This is the base plate of where you are stacking your legos. But there are a couple things to keep in mind before you buy. Most retail stores will offer rebates if you buy your board and processor together. Keep in mind that a motherboard for an AMD processor is different than one for an Intel. Pay most attention to the chipset and where you stand in regard to the newest vs. oldest and make always make your decision based according to your desired storage, audio, processor socket, and memory options. (later explained). As long as you make 100% sure your motherboard and memory will be compatible all the extra features like the amount of on board I/O ports, amount of expansion slots, or the reliability can be requirements depending on the purpose of the computer you are building.

Memory (internal / external / solid state)

RAM

Corsair Dominator TWIN3X2048 DDR3 with built in heatsink keeping the memory cool.

Memory can be extremely confusing as are different roles for both internal and external memory. Let's first take a look at the role RAM (Random Access Memory) plays in your computer. There's a couple different kind you system can use: DRAM (EDO or FPM), SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, or RDRAM. All four types are mounted on one of three module types: DIMM, SIMM, DDR DIMM, RIMM. If I haven't lost you yet, keep in mind your motherboard will determine which type of RAM you will buy. The higher the amount of RAM you have in your computer the better multi-tasking you will have for RAM-hogging applications (i.e. Photoshop, Outlook, Firefox) Having more memory wont make your PC faster, it just allows it to do more things at once. So when you see someone advertising for an Dell i7-2600k 8gb 750gb harddrive that 8gb is referring to the amount of RAM that computer has. I haven't even scratched the surface, but if you want to know more I would urge you to look up how latency, timing and voltage affect speeds in RAM and in price. The bottom line is this...

If you are a regular user, just light browsing, IM, or YouTube, you are probably just fine with 2GB of RAM
If you consider yourself a power user but don't use Photoshop or virtual machines, you should probably have 3-4GB of RAM installed.
If you are a power user with virtual machines or you do heavy audio/video/image editing, you should consider upgrading with as much RAM as you can afford—just keep in mind that you'll need a 64-bit version of Windows to take advantage of it all.

Reference: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/the-8gb64-bit-advantage-more-ram-doesnt-always-mean-better-performance/2354

Hard Disk Drives / Solid State Drives

A hard disk drive is a series of spinning metal disks that allows users to save or store information on a computer. It is considered the secondary memory of a computer, with RAM being the primary memory. The hard drive is the component where data is saved, even after a computer is powered off. Think of it as just a giant USB stick that is connected directly to your motherboard, where you save and install all your documents/music/misc stuff. Couple things also to keep in mind when buying a harddrive. Aside from capacity dictating the prices you have, rotational speed, seek speed, buffer, interface and RAID compatibility are all things you may want to look up in your free time. Personally for me I would stick with an internal hard drive with a SATA interface as nearly all internal drives in new PCs use it. SATA supports maximum transfer rates of either 150MB or 300MB per second. The drives with a 300MB maximum transfer rates cannot take advantage of their wider bandwidth in typical desktop use, though they shine in RAID combinations.

A solid state drive on the other hand is fairly new technology. A typical SSD uses what is called NAND-based flash memory, this is a non-volatile type of memory. What does non-volatile mean you ask? The simple answer is that you can turn off the disk and it won’t “forget” what was stored on it. This is of course an essential characteristic of any type of permanent memory. During the early days of SSD rumors floated around saying stored data would wear off and be lost after only a few years. Today this is not true, you can read and write to an SSD all day long and the data storage integrity will be maintained for well over 200 years. In other words, the data storage life of an SSD can outlive you! An SSD does not have a mechanical arm to read and write data like its HDD counter part, it instead relies on an embedded processor (or “brain”) called a controller to perform a bunch of operations related to reading and writing data. The controller is a very important factor in determining the speed of the SSD, decisions it makes related to how to store, retrieve, cache and clean up data can determine the overall speed of the drive. We won’t get into the nitty gritty of the details for the various tasks it performs such as error correction, read and write caching, encryption and garbage collection to name a few but suffice to say, good controller technology is often what separates an excellent from simply good SSD. An example of a fast controller today is the SandForce SATA 3.0 (6 Gb/s) SSD controller that supports up to 500 MB per second read and write speeds. Bottem line? Buy an SSD and install your operating system on it, everything else should be installed on your HDD. When purchasing I would stick with the big brands like Samsung, Corsair and Intel.

Graphics Cards

Not even going to touch this subject as there are just too many resources online for what graphics cards to get. This is really just determined on how much money you want to spend. Most users will not even need them because the on board video graphic that comes your motherboard should be plenty for day to day use.

Just Google this if you don't know what to get.
Radeon vs. Nvidia

Power Supply, Computer Tower / Cooling

Powering your computer should come natural there are once again many resources and preferences depending on what you previously chose. Here is a great calculator to determine how much wattage your computer needs.


An example of a liquid cooled computer

In regards to what tower or cooling system to select. Every tower is different. Just keep in mind there are many ways to circulate air in your computer. Look up things along the line of "building positive pressure" and "controlled airflow." As for cooling there are three main ways a computer is cooled. Air cooling, liquid cooling and enclosed liquid cooling all with its own pros and cons. Once again this is all determined on preference and need. I absolutely swear by my Corsair H100. Then again running Battlefield 3 on max settings across three 23" monitors requires it. :)

Monday, November 5, 2012

Building your home computer