Building Your Own Computer - Processors and Memory
For many, it's easy to buy a pre-made computer from a respected vendor such as Dell or Compaq and avoid the hassles of building one yourself. For others, computers are a devotion and a hobby. Speccing out a computer and choosing parts that are expanding day by day isn't unlike gearing out an RPG character before excitedly rushing it out into battle to see what it can do. Building a computer by yourself has become more mainstream in past years, making cases more builder-friendly and parts easier to connect and more fool-proof. Each part has a socket orientation, notch or groove that pigeon-holes all the parts into the correct spots, and for everything else the motherboard documentation is your best friend.
Some decisions are based purely on preference. The superiority of competing brands rise and fall compared to each other over time, making it a dynamic market. Keep an open mind, despite the tendency of veteran builders to choose sides of the fence and stick there.
I will be listing important and dependent stats relevant to each part. Dependent stats only mean that they need to be matched up to something else later on. If you pick popular choices, you might not need to change any part later on due to conflicts. This allows you to focus on the other important stats.
There's no shortage of computer part websites these days, and most, if not all, will have reviews for the individual products. In addition to creating a competitive market that favors the customer, it also allows you to research each part that you're thinking about. If a product is getting unfavorable reviews, or doesn't have any, or the brand name seems foreign, you might not want to risk it. Overall, building your own PC gives you a sense of control over what you're building. You might not get it just right the first time, but in the end you'll have learned a lot and may have saved yourself some money.
This week I look over some of the smaller internal components,
Processors and
Memory, and what you should keep in mind when picking them out.
Processor (CPU)
Important Stats Operating Frequency
Dependent Stats Socket Type, Manufacturer
The CPU is the clock and the engine of your computer. The faster it is, the faster the computer will interpret instructions. For this reason the operating frequency is an important thing to note. Ideally you would want this to be as high as you feel comfy spending.
CPUs are only generally produced by either Intel or AMD. The motherboard you will end up buying will coordinate to one of these two types, so if you get one or the other, remember which it is for later. Another detail to remember is what the socket type is. Some popular/often used socket types right now, for reference, are LGA 1366 for Intel chips, or Socket AM3 for AMD chips. You will, again, be matching this to your motherboard later on.
A useful website to consult if you're wondering if a CPU is worth your money or how it stacks up with others is
CPUBenchmark.net. In using this site, note that many parts are so new and high end that they price over $1000. The key is to find the point where the price drops down to the relative norm, and choose something around that area.
Memory (RAM)
Important Stats Capacity, Speed, Timing
Dependent Stats Type
The best analogy I can give for computer memory is that it is like your work space. If it's small, you can't work on nearly as much at a time, without spending time swapping things on/off it. Capacity is related to how much you'll be working on at a time. Right now 2-4 gigs of RAM should be more than enough to get by for most users. There are few instances why someone would want to add more than this. The more processes and services you have running in the background, the more system memory that is consumed.
RAM timing is a little more complex. You might notice something to the effect of
9-9-9-24 in the details; this is the collective timing of the individual operations RAM performs. This is complicated, so I will only suggest that you would like these numbers to be as low as you can find, without sacrificing quality or other factors. With the changes in RAM types, these numbers have risen to accommodate the increase in capacity.
Speed and type are the most dependent stats for RAM. You might notice something like DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800). DDR3 is the type in this example; previous types were DDR and DDR2. Later, you will make sure that the motherboard you're buying supports this type. The 1600(PC3 12800) number (the number in brackets is typically 8 times the number outside the brackets; you only have to note one of the numbers) represents the speed of the RAM. You want this number to be high. The motherboard also has a number similar to this. It's ideal have them similar or close to each other, otherwise the slower one will bottleneck the other. In terms of hardware installation, it's very easy to install and upgrade later, but you should always choose reliable memory.
Next Week: I look at video and sound cards, as well as disc drives and hard drives.
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