Building Your Own Computer – Video and Sound Cards, Optical and Hard Drives Part II
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.
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 favours the customer, it also allows you to research each part that you're thinking about. If a product is getting unfavourable 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.
When gathering parts for a computer, it important to have all the parts picked out beforehand and to try and buy them all at the same time. This reduces the chance that you'll end up making a critical change that will throw everything else off. Also, buy local when possible to reduce shipping charges.
This week I take a look at
Video and Sound Cards as well as
Disc Drives and
Hard Drives
Video Card
Important Stats – Memory size, GPU
Dependent Stats – Slot type
Video and Sound cards these days are often built onto the motherboard.
You'll see this in notebooks and netbooks a lot, and in the case of most mid to low-level motherboards you'll find that buying a graphics card is not a “necessity” for the system to run. If you have any interest in gaming or graphics, though, or if your motherboard is a higher end model and does not come with a GPU installed, you'll need a graphics card.
Modern graphical work boils down to a LOT of math, and a video card is a dedicated calculator for everything graphical. Past the slot type, which needs to be matched up to one of the available slots on your motherboard, memory size is an important detail. More important this this, though, is the GPU. This is the engine of your video card and is tied to the manufacturer's naming convention. Usually higher numbers are better, but benchmarking again allows us to take a look at how they are stacking up in terms of power:
Sound Card
Dependent Stats – Slot type
Like video cards, modern motherboards have competent sound cards built in already. The difference with sound is that with modern motherboards the sound module isn't a large drag on the overall processing power anymore, and most built-in ones are actually very good and can support 5.1 or 7.1 systems. To that end, a dedicated sound card, or perhaps a dedicate DAC module, is something only audiophiles will typically end up buying. The rest of us probably won't even be able to tell the difference.
Disc Drives
Important Stats – Read/Write Speeds
We've managed to officially ditch the use for floppy drives, but CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives are still useful to have around until operating systems and other programs start shipping on thumb drives. These days DVD writers can be as cheap as $25-$30, and it's about the same for DVD readers, so there's little excuse not to bother getting one. Their installation is simple and widely supported across all motherboards. Even Blu-Ray readers are coming down in price, while the writers are still fairly expensive. This section is more of a reminder; you'll feel silly sitting there trying to install an OS off a DVD without a disc drive, trust me.
Network Card
Again, just a reminder. Trust me that in the wee hours of the morning when you fire it up for the first time and you're ready to download drivers, programs and updates, that you WILL kick yourself for forgetting one.
Hard Drive (HDD)
Important Stats – Capacity, RPM
Dependent Stats – Form factor
The hard drive is the primary long-term storage data storage device for a computer. The capacity is an obvious detail to pay attention to, as it will determine how much stuff you can fit on it. A good way to tell how much space you'll need is to check how much space you're using on your current drive, and add a bit for expansion.
Hard drives don't have much else to worry about. The RPM determines how fast it spins; 7200 RPM is a fairly standard number these days. Form factors typically include 3.5” or 2.5”, which is the laptop standard. Given the reduction in size, laptop (or 2.5”) hard drives tend to be more expensive. For a desktop PC, choosing 3.5” will save you some money.
A rising alternative to HDDs is the SSD, or Solid State Hard Drive. These drives have no moving parts are quicker. However they are still relatively new, and typically only available with much lower capacity. Personally, I don't find the exorbitant costs and low capacity to be worth the small boost in red/write speed they provide. Perhaps in a few years?
Next Week: We'll finish off by looking at the motherboard, power supply, and case.
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