Your PC Inside and Out

Your PC, Inside and Out: Part 1
Your PC, Inside and

Out: Part 1
By: Lachlan Roy

http://lachlanroy.com
This manual is intellectual property of MakeUseOf. It must only be published in its original form.
Using parts or republishing altered parts of this guide is prohibited without permission.
http://lachlanroy.com | Lachlan Roy

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Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 1: The Case (Chassis).................................................................................................... 6
Layout ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Airflow ......................................................................................................................................... 7
Noise Insulation.......................................................................................................................... 8
Things to Look Out For When Buying a New Case ............................................................... 9
Size ........................................................................................................................................... 9
Expansion Bays .................................................................................................................... 11
Material ............................................................................................................................. 12
Brands................................................................................................................................ 12
Chapter 2: Power Supply (PSU) ................................................................................................ 14
An introduction to Power Supplies ....................................................................................... 14
Power Rating ........................................................................................................................... 15
Efficiency .................................................................................................................................. 16
Connectors .............................................................................................................................. 17
The Dangers of Cheap Unbranded Power Supplies .......................................................... 19
Power Supply Varieties ........................................................................................................... 20
Standard Power Supplies ................................................................................................... 20
Modular Power Supplies ..................................................................................................... 20
Brands to Look For................................................................................................................... 21
Chapter 3: Motherboard ........................................................................................................... 22
Motherboard Sizes .................................................................................................................. 22
ATX ......................................................................................................................................... 23
Micro-ATX ............................................................................................................................. 23
Mini-ITX .................................................................................................................................. 23
Chipsets .................................................................................................................................... 25
Manufacturers ..................................................................................................................... 26
Parts of the Chipset ............................................................................................................. 26
Northbridge ...................................................................................................................... 26
Southbridge ...................................................................................................................... 26

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Other Chips ...................................................................................................................... 26

Main Slots .............................................................................................................................. 27
CPU .................................................................................................................................... 27
RAM ................................................................................................................................... 27
Power ................................................................................................................................ 28
Expansion Slots ..................................................................................................................... 28
PCI...................................................................................................................................... 28
PCI Express (PCIE) ................................................................................................................ 28
Connectors .......................................................................................................................... 30
Front Panel ........................................................................................................................ 31
IDE (Parallel ATA) ............................................................................................................. 31
SATA (Serial ATA) .............................................................................................................. 31
USB ..................................................................................................................................... 32
FireWire (IEEE 1394 or FW) ............................................................................................... 32
Floppy................................................................................................................................ 32
Front Panel Audio ............................................................................................................ 32
The I/O Panel .................................................................................................................... 33
Brands to Look Out For ........................................................................................................... 36
Download Part II ......................................................................................................................... 37
Coming soon to MakeUseOf.com: ................................................................................... 37
Image Acknowledgement ................................................................................................ 38

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Introduction
Why would you want to read this guide? There might be a few different reasons.
You might be a budding computer buff, wanting to pad out your knowledge about all
things hardware so that you can be the go-to guide for all your friends and family. It‟s a
dark, busy and sometimes very frustrating path to take, but one that is ultimately very
satisfying.
You might be a hardware expert on your coffee break, taking a flick through to see if
you find something particularly interesting. If that‟s the case, I‟ve certainly got my work
cut out for me!
On the other hand, you might be a complete beginner when it comes to computers,
and you‟re the reader I welcome most of all. I‟ll try to explain everything in such a way
that you can get as much information as you wish, whether it‟s just the basics or if you
want to understand anything in a bit more detail.
This guide is written a little more towards the budding computer buff than the expert or
the complete beginner, but there should be something for everybody.
In this guide I‟ll be breaking the computer down into its different components. For each
component I‟ll describe its function, explain the different specifications to look out for
and provide a bit of history, too. I‟ll also provide the names of a few brands which I
personally find to be the best – be it quality, performance, value, or all three.
More for the absolute beginners than anybody else, I‟ll be using a sort of body part
metaphor to make things a little easier to understand.
So, without further ado, I‟ll get started. This first guide covers the chassis, power supply
and motherboard; stay tuned to learn about the rest of the computer in part two.
Enjoy!

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Chapter 1: The Case (Chassis)

The most obvious part of the computer is often overlooked. As the skeleton of the
computer, many people think of it as nothing more than something to bolt the
components to keep them protected. The case is also instrumental in providing airflow
and noise insulation.
Layout
The layout of the case is quite important, although largely standardised. Until relatively
recently, nearly all cases had identical layouts to that in the picture below:
Power Supply
5.25” Drives –
CD/DVD Drives
Air Exhaust
Motherboard
3.5” –
Hard
Drives Air Intake
Indeed, most budget cases still use this design, and for good reason – it‟s a
conventional, solid design which works well for a basic computer. However, in the mid-
range and high end market a few changes are becoming commonplace.
For example, you may begin to see the power supply being placed at the bottom of
the case, below the motherboard instead of above it. This is a sensible idea, as it lowers
the centre of gravity significantly. Another possible perk is removable hard drive cages,

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sometimes turned sideways (in larger cases) so that the hard drives are facing you as
you remove the side panel. This gives you easier access to your hard drives as well as
providing more space for longer graphics cards.
There are also some cases that throw convention out the window to great effect.
Examples include the Silverstone Fortress and the Thermaltake Level 10 cases. They
provide amazing layouts, although they do so at a great price premium.
Airflow
Airflow is possibly the most important job of a good case. Components can get very
hot, and good airflow is needed to get that heat away from the components. Without
sufficient cooling, they can become less reliable over time and degrade faster.
Many cases that you buy yourself may come with only one or two fans but have
mounting holes for more, allowing you to add extra ones. The most common fan size is
140mm, followed closely by 120mm. 80mm fans are also relatively common, but usually
on smaller computers. Finally, you can also get 92mm, 60mm and 40mm fans, but these
aren‟t used as often.
There are three main airflow models, each having its advantages and disadvantages:
1. Negative Pressure – when exhaust exceeds intake. The idea behind this is that a
negative pressure gradient is formed, sucking all the hot air out of the case.
2. Equalised Airflow – when you have equal air intake and exhaust. This is the most
common, and works by creating a wind tunnel.
3. Positive Pressure – when, you guessed it, intake exceeds exhaust. The idea
behind this is that new air is constantly fed in, pushing hot air out of the case and
replacing it with cool air.
The biggest problem with getting a good airflow is the amount of noise generated by
the fans, particularly by many small fans. There are usually two solutions to reducing
noise:
1. Isolate the fans from the case to prevent noise-creating vibrations to be passed
to the main chassis. This does not make the fan itself quieter, but can significantly
reduce overall noise. Many higher end cases provide rubber grommets for the
fans in their cases for this purpose.
2. Buy better fans – These tend to use ball bearings or fluid bearings rather than the
cheaper sleeve bearings. They have the extra bonus of lasting a lot longer, too.

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The other alternative is to buy a case with one or more larger fans. These are great
because they can generate the same CFM (cubic feet per minute of air, the standard
measurement for air throughput for fans) while spinning with fewer RPM (revolutions per
minute) and thus creating less noise.
When you go to buy fans, it‟s much better to get the fans from a well-known brand.
You‟ll pay a bit of a premium, but it‟s worth it for the lower noise and longer fan life.
Some good brands to look out for are Akasa, Antec, Noctua, Scythe, and Zalman.
There are some other good brands out there, but these are the ones to get.
If you want to keep your computer as cool as possible, there are a few companies who
will be happy to sell you cases designed for airflow. Examples include Cooler Master’s
HAF line (HAF stands for high air flow, funnily enough) or Antec’s Gaming Series
(including the 300, 902 and 1200 cases).
On the other end of the spectrum, for reviews and buying advice for keeping your
computer as quiet as possible while still maintaining enough airflow, there‟s lots of
information over at www.silentpcreview.com. They‟ve got plenty of reviews on pretty
much everything involved in keeping your computer as quiet as possible.
Noise Insulation
The computer case itself also helps to keep your computer quiet. Computer parts can
make a surprising amount of noise (the processor’s heatsink fan and hard drives are the
main culprits; discrete graphics cards can be very loud, too), and the case can be
instrumental in making sure most of it doesn‟t reach your ears.
Unfortunately, while fairly good at blocking direct noise, cases can sometimes be
susceptible to absorbing vibrations from other components, blocking the high pitched
noises but generating its own low hum.
The first (and most common) noise reduction technique involves

isolating the case from any vibrating parts using rubber or silicon.
This can be something as simple as putting a thin layer of
insulation between the component and the case or as elaborate
as suspending it in its own bracket, using insulation at multiple
points.

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Some cases sometimes use noise reduction

panels fixed to the chassis like the Cooler
Master Sileo 500, pictured here. This foam-
like material “absorbs” sound from inside the
case, making things a lot quieter. These
cases aren‟t without their downsides,
though. For noise insulation to work properly,
you need to have the case as sealed as
possible, which can seriously affect thermal
performance if there isn‟t sufficient airflow
from the fans. It‟s very difficult to keep a computer extremely cool and quiet. It‟s usually
one or the other without getting water cooling involved, which we won‟t be covering in
this guide.
Some cases take particularly novel approaches to noise reduction. Some examples
that come to mind are the Fractal Design Define R2, with its internals coated in bitumen
for noise reduction, and the Antec P180 series, which has side panels made with three
layers; a layer of plastic sandwiched between two layers of aluminium, acting a bit like
double glazed windows for sound. Again, www.silentpcreview.com has a lot of
information on this subject – after all, that‟s why it was originally started!
Things to Look Out For When Buying a New Case

So, you‟re looking to upgrade your case, or find the perfect one to build a new
computer into. Apart from all the things we‟ve discussed above, there are a few other
things you need to watch out for to make sure you get exactly what you‟re looking for:
Size
A Mini-ITX case A midi case, although A full tower case

slightly longer than usual

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There are many different sizes of cases, made to fit all sorts of uses. The right size all
depends on what you want to do with your computer, and therefore what you‟re likely
to be putting into your computer. For example, the case you‟ll need if you want to build
a top of the range gaming computer is going to be completely different to what you‟d
need for a cheap computer made for nothing more than browsing the web. Just make
sure your case is big enough to fit all of your components – your graphics card and
processor‟s cooler in particular.
The most common size is the midi case. They‟re good for squeezing a full sized ATX or
smaller Micro-ATX motherboard in, and (usually) have room for 2-3 optical drives and 3-
4 hard drives. If you‟re looking to build a computer as cheaply as possible, this is
probably the size to go for.
I wouldn‟t advise building a gaming rig into a standard MIDI case, as you‟ll usually run
into problems with space, particularly with the graphics card. Some tailor-made
gaming midi cases are made to be longer than usual to cater for this, though.
If you want to build a very powerful computer, it‟s usually advisable to go for a full tower
case. These are usually much larger than a standard midi case, giving plenty of room
for a full sized ATX motherboard and sometimes providing support for the even larger
(but much less common) Extended ATX (E-ATX) motherboard class. Full towers tend to
be more expensive (as they cater for “power users” more than casual users), but gain
much more flexibility because of it. You‟re much more likely to see flexible drive
management (allowing you to choose to have more 5.25” bays or 3.5” bays), and will
have plenty of space for even the longest graphics and expansion cards.
Swapping now to the other side of the scale, smaller than the midi case is the Micro ATX
case. As the name suggests, you‟ll only be able to fit a Micro ATX motherboard or
smaller in here. There‟s usually much less space than in a midi case, so you usually have
to be a bit more selective with the components you choose to put in here. You‟ll usually
only fit a single optical drive in one of these, and 2-3 hard drives depending on the
design.
Having said that, some people have made some quite powerful Micro ATX PCs, so they
aren‟t necessarily an option to be discarded lightly! Just bear in mind that the smaller
size comes at a fairly significant price premium.
Finally you have the smallest cases, the Mini ITX cases. These cases will only take… you
guessed it – a Mini ITX motherboard, and not much else. These are designed (with few
exceptions) specifically to take low power components. Most cases don‟t have enough
room for a standard optical drive (they‟re really that small!), instead letting you use a

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slim line drive like the ones you‟d find in a laptop, and will usually give you enough room
for one 3.5” drive or two 2.5” (laptop) hard drives.
Expansion Bays
When looking to buy a new case, you‟ll need to make sure that there are enough
expansion bays to hold all of your components. These are usually split into two
categories: 5.25” and 3.5” bays.
5.25” Bays
These bays are the largest ones, usually found at the top of the case (see the diagram
in the Layout section); although in some cases they may go all the way from the top to
the bottom. The most common use is optical drives (such as DVD or Blu-Ray drives), but
they may also hold specialised parts such as fan controllers, small LCD panels (for
system information), or even a smaller auxiliary power supply.
They can also be repurposed to hold 3.5” drives that can be easily removed (i.e. they
are hot-swappable). There are two main types of converters:
1. A 5.25” bay converter that holds just one hard drive. These usually completely
enclose the hard drive, keeping it cool and blocking most of the noise it makes.
2. Three 5.25” bays can be used to house five 3.5” drives turned on their sides. These
are often used in DIY home servers to hold lots of hard drives and greatly
increase storage capacity.
3.5” Bays
These bays usually sit underneath the 5.25” bays (again, refer to the diagram in the
Layout section for an example); however, in larger cases where the 5.25” bays go from
the top to the bottom (such as the Antec Twelve Hundred), the 3.5” bays are usually
stored in a removable bay which can then be placed in any two or three 5.25” bays,
making it much more flexible.
When looking at cases you‟ll often see reference to external and internal 3.5” bays. The
bays themselves are identical and can hold the same drives. However, external bays
have a hole cut for them at the front of the computer. These are used for devices such
as card readers and the now largely defunct floppy disk drives. Internal drive bays are
therefore designed almost exclusively for holding hard drives. Some of the more
expensive cases now provide a bracket for a 2.5” drive, usually made for a Solid State
Drive, although there‟s nothing stopping you from using it for any other 2.5” drive you
may have laying around (such as a laptop hard drive).

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Material
The materials used to make your case can also be important. What materials you
choose will depend on a few things; how often do you plan to move your case? Does it
need to be light enough for you to carry easily? How strong does it need to be?
Cheaper cases are invariably made using SECC (Steel that has been Electrogalvanised,
Cold-rolled and Coiled) with plastic fascia. SECC is very cheap to make and quite a
good thermal conductor, but it does have a few disadvantages. Firstly, it‟s not
particularly durable and can be accidentally bent quite easily. Secondly, it tends to be
quite heavy. The plastic fascia can be accidentally broken quite easily, too.
Aluminium cases answer most of these problems. They‟re stronger and lighter than
SECC cases. They‟re also pretty good at absorbing heat. However, because they‟re
much lighter they‟re more susceptible to low-level vibration (making them not so great
for noise reduction). They‟re usually significantly more expensive, too.
Brands
When you finally go to buy a case, buying from a good manufacturer is more important
than you‟d think. Unless you really want to spend as little as possible on a case, you‟ll
probably want to buy from a trusted brand of some description.
For ultra-budget cases, I‟d suggest Asus’ Vento series. For about the same price as a no
name “Extra Value” case you can get one of these. They‟re still cheap and cheerful,
but they get the job done. All budget cases tend to be quite hot and noisy, though.
If you‟re happy to spend a little bit more (around £25/$40), the Cooler Master Elite
range is great. The build quality is significantly higher; you get much better airflow and a
few other little perks like tool-less hard drive and optical drive brackets.
For computers intended for normal use, I‟d probably recommend an Antec or a Cooler
Master. They tend to have a great balance between cooling and noise reduction, and
a power supply bundled with one of their cases is usually one of theirs, meaning it can
be trusted.
There are a lot of gaming cases out there, both good and bad. If you‟re building a
gaming PC, don‟t skimp on the case. Layout and airflow are important, and it‟d be a
shame to have amazing components housed in a tacky case which just falls apart
straight away.

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If you‟re strapped for space, the Antec Three Hundred is a great case to get started. If
you have the room, the Antec Nine- or Twelve Hundred cases are brilliant. Other cases
to look out for are the Cooler Master Storm or Sniper cases, or if you‟ve got really hot
components, a Cooler Master HAF 932. Other good brands are Silverstone or NZXT.
If you want a particularly quiet case, you may want to consider the Fractal Design
Define R2, or the Cooler Master Sileo 500. Other good brands for quiet cases include
Akasa and Zalman, or Antec’s Performance One series.
If you‟ve got some cash burning a hole in your pocket or money‟s simply not an issue,
Lian-Li makes some really nice cases of all sizes. All of their cases are entirely made of
aluminium. Most of their cases tend to be quite minimalist (unlike most gamers cases,
which seem to be designed using pure testosterone), so they might be a bit bland for
some peoples‟ tastes. For something equally luxurious but a bit more exciting, Corsair,
Zalman and Silverstone make some ultra-high quality gaming cases.
For smaller cases, Silverstone is probably your best bet with their Sugo series. Both Antec
and Akasa make good Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX cases, too.
Basically, whatever your budget, if you stick to one of the brands I‟ve mentioned above
it‟s quite difficult to go wrong.
Here‟s the list again.
 Akasa
 Antec
 Asus
 Cooler Master
 Corsair
 Fractal Design
 Lian-Li
 NZXT
 Silverstone
 Zalman

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Chapter 2: Power Supply (PSU)

An introduction to Power Supplies
The power supply is probably best described
as being the heart of the computer. It
provides all of the other components in the
computer with… well, power. It‟s responsible
for converting AC electricity from the mains
into the more usable, lower power DC
before distributing it to the other
components.
The most common type of power supply is the ATX power supply, which uses
standardised connectors compatible with the vast majority of motherboards of any size.
PSUs come in two varieties: Modular and Non-Modular. I‟ll be talking about both later.
Inside the Enermax Modu87+ 900W – One of the best PSUs you can buy!

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Power Rating
The power rating of a power supply is most often referred to as its wattage. You can
usually tell the power rating of a PSU just by looking at its model number; for example,
the power supply above is a Corsair VX550W which has a power rating of – you guessed
it – 550W.
This 550W is broken up into a number of rails running at different voltages: +3.3V, +5V,
+12V (which is often split into multiple rails), -12V and +5VSB.
By far, in a modern system, the +12V power rating is the most important number,
followed by the +3.3V/+5V rating. +5VSB is 5V Stand By – used for powering the
motherboard to keep monitoring for events such as your computer being woken up by
your mouse or network card, for example.
Here‟s the continuous power rating breakdown for the Corsair VX550W shown above:
AC Input Rating 90 - 264VAC
DC Output +3.3V +5V +12V -12V +5VSB
Max Load 30A 28A 41A 0.8A 3A
Max Load 140W 492W 9.6W 15W
TOTAL POWER: 550W
These numbers aren‟t as complicated as you‟d think. To simplify things, let‟s have a
quick refresh to dust off the electronics topic of your physics lessons back at school:
Power (W) = Voltage (V) x Current (A)
In the case of +12V, the overall power is 12V x 41A = 492W. Simple, right? Well, not quite,
but I‟ll talk about that more in The Dangers of Cheap Unbranded Power Supplies.
When you turn a computer on, many of the components start up at once. On top of
this, many of these components use far more power to start up than they use once
they‟re running (hard drives in particular can use up to four times as much power while
they spin up).
Luckily, almost all PSUs have extra capacity built in to handle this extra power
requirement for short periods of time. This is referred to as the peak power rating. As the
+12V rail is the most important, most manufacturers will provide both peak and

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continuous ratings for this rail; it‟s less important on the +3.3V/+5V rails, so this information
is less common.
When you go to build a computer or upgrade your PSU and you want to know quite
how much power to use, there‟s a great power calculator you can use. You just put in
the components you want to use and it‟ll tell you the minimum and recommended
power rating for your PC.
Efficiency
Efficiency is another very important factor to think about when it comes to

power supplies. When AC is converted to DC, some energy is wasted and
released as heat. The more efficient the power supply, the less power is lost
as heat.
Here‟s a simple example. A PSU requires 100W of AC power to output 75W

of DC power. This means that 25W is being lost as heat. In this case, the PSU
would be said to be 75% efficient.
Why do you want an efficient power supply? Well, the main reason is
simple; the more efficient the power supply, the less heat it produces. The
less heat it produces, the less forced airflow it requires to stay cool. Less
airflow means less noise, and less noise is always a good thing.
Furthermore, the more efficient the power supply is the less AC power it
requires to provide sufficient DC power, meaning lower overall power
consumption from the mains and a smaller power bill. The earth will thank
you for it, too.
The 80 Plus program is a good specification to look out for when buying a
new PSU. The more efficient a power supply is, the higher the rating it can
obtain. Most power supplies from well-known manufacturers will have
reviews from multiple websites that measure and graph the efficiency of a
power supply.

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Here‟s the efficiency graph for the Corsair VX550W we were talking about earlier:
As you can see, a power supply is most efficient at around 50% load; that is to say, this
power supply is at its most efficient when providing 275W of power to components. The
vast majority of power supplies follow this efficiency pattern.
Higher quality PSUs tend to have higher efficiency across the board, but more
importantly the efficiency curve is flatter. This means that no matter what percentage
load the power supply is under it will still perform with similar efficiency.
Connectors
Every power supply you buy nowadays will use the same standardised connectors for
the various components you‟ll find in your computer. Here‟s a list of the different
connectors with a picture and a quick description of what it‟s used for.
Molex
This is largely considered to be the “standard” connector from your
power supply. Its most common use was originally for older hard drives.
However, it is now more commonly used as a “wildcard” connector;
pretty much anything can be connected using molex, such as chassis
fans.
PCIE connectors can also be powered using 2 molex connectors if one

isn‟t available from the PSU itself, and molex to SATA power connectors are also quite
common.

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SATA
This connector is used exclusively for the more recent SATA hard drives.
They‟re not particularly common on older power supplies, but as
mentioned above it is possible to get a converter cable.
Floppy
As the name suggests, this power connector was originally used to
power a floppy disk drive. However, even though the floppy disk drive is
now all but extinct, it is still often used to power internal card readers.
You may also see it used as a modular connector for “Pico PSUs” – very
small, very low power PSUs used in mini-ITX computers.
20+4 Pin (Motherboard)

This is the connector which provides power to the motherboard itself as
well as the expansion cards. Graphics cards draw power from this
connector too, but more often than not there isn‟t anywhere near
enough, requiring them to have their own power connectors as well.
It‟s called a 20+4 pin connector because the last four pins (shown here
on the left) aren‟t always required, with the motherboard only taking
20 pins. The extra 4 pins are often made to be detachable.
4+4 Pin (CPU)

You‟ll usually find the socket for this connector right next to the
processor, and there‟s a good reason for that – this connector
provides the processor with all the juice it needs. Up until recently the
CPU required the most power out of any component, although
recently the graphics card has taken first place. Most processors
require only one of the four pin connectors, but some motherboards
provide an 8-pin socket, so plug them both in and it‟ll take only what it needs.
PCIe (6+2 pin)

The last common connector, this provides power for your graphics card.
Recently graphics cards have needed more and more power – the GTX
480 (the highest power nVidia graphics card) can take up to 250W by
itself! The most common requirement is now two 6 pin connectors, but
some cards require a connector with 8 pins (hence the 6+2 for
compatibility). As mentioned earlier, 2 molex connectors can be converted to a single
6 pin connector.

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The Dangers of Cheap Unbranded Power Supplies

When you go shopping for power supplies you may notice that there are a lot of
unbranded power supplies which offer much higher capacities for much lower prices
than you‟ll find any reputed brand for. On paper and at a glance they look like an
amazing deal, so you‟re probably thinking “Why pay twice as much for a 500W Corsair
when I could get this 600W „Extra Value‟ PSU?”
The reason why is simple; chances are that the power supply isn’t actually going to
supply 600W.
To make a power supply unit seem more competitive, some manufacturers use dirty
tactics to make their processor appear to have much higher specifications than it
actually does. Here are a few examples:
 Outright lying about power ratings – they may say that it‟s rated at 500W, for
example, but if you added up the current on each voltage rail you‟d find that it
came up 20 or 30W short.
 Some manufacturers label the peak power rating as its continuous power rating.
That can be particularly dangerous for your components!
 Another common tactic is to state a theoretical power rating at room
temperature, rather than at a temperature more likely to be found inside a
computer case (say, 40-50°C). As the temperature increases, the PSU is unable to
provide as much power, so what is advertised as a 500W PSU may actually only
provide around 350W when it‟s in your computer. There‟s a slightly more in-depth
explanation you can look at over at Silent PC Review.
To cut down on costs, these manufacturers often use low-quality internal components in
their power supplies. This has two main downsides.
Firstly, they generate a lot more heat and therefore need far more cooling to remain
effective. That means multiple high-powered fans, which means far more noise.
Secondly, and much more importantly, these cheaper components are far more
susceptible to catastrophic failure. Depending on the kind of failure it‟s possible for a
failing power supply to permanently damage components connected to it;
motherboards (sometimes the most expensive component in the case and the most
time-consuming to replace) and hard drives (containing all your precious, often
irreplaceable data) are susceptible to damage. Thankfully in the case of hard drives
the data itself is almost always unaffected but when the hard drive‟s circuitry becomes
damaged the data becomes totally inaccessible without forensic recovery or a
replacement circuit board.

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So yes, you could save some money by buying a cheap power supply, but why take
the risk? Personally, I wouldn‟t touch them with a barge pole.
While it‟s obviously a bit hard to do this while shopping for power supplies online, a
rough rule of thumb for the quality of a power supply is how heavy it feels. Generally
speaking, the heavier the power supply, the higher quality its components. If you get a
400W PSU and it feels like it weighs half a ton, chances are you‟ve got yourself a good
one.
Power Supply Varieties

As I mentioned in the introduction, there are two main varieties of power supply:
Modular and Non-Modular (which is more common). They‟re very similar and have the
same connectors, but with one major difference. Read on to find out more!
Standard Power Supplies

The standard power supply is usually a good deal
cheaper than a modular supply. They‟re also a lot more
common. In a standard power supply, all of the cables
are hardwired into the main unit. While this is cheaper and
debatably gives slightly better performance than a
modular power supply (due to lower resistance), you‟re
inevitably stuck with the cables that you don‟t use. This
makes cable routing extra painful, looks messy and can
affect airflow within the case.
Modular Power Supplies

Modular power supplies, on the other hand, have
detachable power connectors. This has the added
benefit that you can have exactly the connectors you
need, and nothing else. This makes cable routing and
storage much easier and obviously looks much neater,
but you‟ll have to pay a significant premium for the privilege.

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Brands to Look For

As you can probably tell, I‟m a pretty big fan of Corsair power supplies – both their
standard and modular power supplies have always received rave reviews all over the
internet.
Decent case manufacturers also tend to produce good power supplies, too – Antec,
Silverstone, Fractal Design and Cooler Master all make very high quality power supplies.
Other good brands to look out for are Hiper and Nexus.
If money isn‟t an issue, the best power supplies money can buy are generally
considered to be made by Enermax and Seasonic. Most of their power supplies are
rated at 80 Plus Silver or Gold, and are about as quiet and reliable as a power supply
can get.
There are plenty of brands which are better off avoided, too. There are far, far too
many to list here, but there‟s a pretty comprehensive list over on the eggxpert.com
forums.

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Chapter 3: Motherboard
The motherboard is the most obvious component inside a computer. Although this one
is slightly harder to fit into our body metaphor, the closest thing I can think of is the torso
of the computer. That‟s because everything is connected to the motherboard, whether
it‟s by slotting into it directly or via cables; all the parts communicate through the
motherboard, too.
Motherboards are generally split into two different groups; those for AMD processors
and those for Intel processors. However, they are almost entirely the same – the only
difference is the CPU socket and therefore the processors which are compatible.
Motherboard Sizes
There are many different motherboard sizes, ranging from Mobile-ITX (measuring just 60
x 60mm) to WTX (which is a crazy 356 x 425mm). We‟ll be covering the three most
common ones in this guide – the vast majority of motherboards you‟ll come across will
be either ATX or Micro-ATX, but Mini-ITX is becoming increasingly more common.

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ATX
This is the larger of the two most common sizes, and
offers the most upgradability. They almost invariably
have six or seven expansion slots and often have
more SATA and IDE ports than on a Micro-ATX
motherboard.
With more room on the motherboard and more

slots, these are usually the choice for somebody
building a gaming PC as quite a few ATX
motherboards have multiple slots for graphics
cards, making it possible to use two or more
graphics cards at the same time for greater power.
Micro-ATX
This motherboard is much more common for less powerful
machines such as those you‟d find in an office or in a
budget PC from Dell or HP. They offer a great balance
between power and size, most often providing four
expansion slots rather than ATX‟s seven.
The only real difference between ATX and Micro-ATX

motherboards is the number of expansion slots and the
amount of space on the boards. Some people prefer to
use ATX simply because things aren‟t quite so cramped,
even though they don‟t use more than what a Micro-ATX
motherboard can provide.
Mini-ITX
These motherboards have really only become particularly common
within the last year or two with the introduction of net tops; the
desktop equivalent of netbooks, although they have been used for
industrial and commercial use for a bit longer than that.
The raison d'être for Mini-ITX computers is simple – a very small, low
power computer used for the basic tasks which we use a computer
for 90% of the time: browsing the internet, reading/writing emails,
watching the occasional video and maybe doing a bit of word
processing.

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The Mini-ITX motherboard is different from the other two in that it usually has the
processor integrated into the motherboard itself. Furthermore, Mini-ITX motherboards
usually have very few SATA ports, rarely have an IDE port, and typically only one
expansion slot. As such they‟re the least flexible and upgradable of all the common
motherboard types, but more than make up for it with their diminutive size, relatively low
cost and power consumption.
On the other hand, there are a few Mini-ITX motherboards designed with gamers in
mind. These have a socket for a full-size processor and provide a slot to add a powerful
graphics card. A good example is the DFI LanParty MI P55-T36.

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Chipsets
Components which are connected to the motherboard are controlled and connected
by the chipset. This usually comprises of a northbridge chip and a southbridge chip. I‟ll
be talking about them in a little more detail later.
Here‟s a picture showing the location of the northbridge and southbridge chips with a
corresponding chipset map from Intel‟s website which shows what each chip controls:
Southbridge
Northbridge
Processor (CPU)
Northbridge
Graphics Memory
Card(s) (RAM)
Expansion
Cards Hard
Drives
Networkin
Memory
(RAM)
g
Southbridge

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Manufacturers
Although there are many different companies that manufacture motherboards, the
chipsets themselves are almost always manufactured by the CPU manufacturer; that is,
an AMD motherboard will almost always have a chipset made by AMD themselves,
and Intel makes the chipsets for Intel motherboards.
There are a few exceptions, though – nVidia makes chipsets for both groups of
motherboards which tend to be more aimed at gamers and multimedia users.
Companies like VIA and SiS also used to make motherboard chipsets for both processor
types, but haven‟t been in the mainstream desktop market for a very long time.
Parts of the Chipset
Northbridge
The northbridge chip allows the CPU, RAM and Graphics Card(s) (via PCIExpress lanes
or, before that, AGP lanes) to communicate between each other as well as
connecting with the southbridge. You might also see it referred to as an MCH (Memory
Controller Hub) in Intel systems.
On newer systems (such as those based on Intel‟s i3/i5 processors), the northbridge no
longer exists as a chip on the motherboard; instead the PCIExpress and RAM controllers
have been incorporated into the processor itself. This has the benefit of reducing
latency between the CPU and the memory (which basically means that it doesn‟t take
as long for the processor and memory to talk to each other), but unfortunately makes
big gaming rigs with multiple graphics cards unviable due to the amount of PCIE lanes
that are able to be controlled.
In motherboards with integrated graphics (which don‟t require an external graphics

card) the graphics chip is usually incorporated within the northbridge, too. In cheaper
motherboards this is done by taking up PCIE lanes (which means that even a single
external graphics card added later won‟t perform anywhere near as well as it would
usually perform), but usually it‟s possible to disable the IGP (integrated graphics
processor) to regain access to these lanes.
Southbridge
The southbridge is responsible for the communication between the other components,
external devices, audio and the network with the northbridge.
Other Chips
Motherboard manufacturers may sometimes include extra chips to add extra
functionality. For example, a motherboard may have an extra SATA controller chip to
add more SATA ports to the motherboard, or more recently an extra chip to handle the

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new USB 3.0 standard. They act very similarly to expansion cards that you might add to
gain extra functionality yourself, except they are integrated into the motherboard itself.
Cheaper motherboards which add extra chips usually do this by using PCIE lanes (the
same way that integrated graphics may).
Main Slots
CPU
This is where the processor is installed. All modern CPU sockets use some form of lever to
lock the processor down against the motherboard to ensure that there is a good
connection between the pins and contacts of the motherboard and processor. There
are quite a few common socket designs but they all look relatively similar, as you can
see below.
Intel Socket 775 Intel Socket 1366 AMD Socket AM3
RAM
This is where the computer‟s memory is installed. Most modern motherboards have two
channels and either two or four slots (one or two for each channel). An exception is
Intel‟s Socket 1366 chipset, which has three channels and six slots.

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As you can see in the picture above, it mentions DIMM_A1, DIMM_A2, DIMM_B1 and
DIMM_B2. This shows the order in which RAM should be inserted. The letter shows which
channel the slot belongs to, while the number shows which slot is recognised first within
the channel.
In this example, A1 must always be filled first – no RAM is recognised if this isn‟t
occupied. After that, it‟s a little more flexible; you could choose to either fill the first
channel by placing a second stick in A2, or use the second channel by placing it in B1.
It doesn‟t really matter either way, although if you have identical sticks you can get a
small performance boost by placing them in different channels (i.e. A1 and B1) as each
stick is able to hold completely different memory and allows for greater multitasking.
Power
Remember the 20+4 Pin and 4+4 Pin connectors on the power supply? Well, this is
where they go. The 4+4 pin socket is always right near the CPU socket (see below).
There are a few places where you may find the 20+4 Pin socket, but more often than
not it‟s right on the edge furthest from the back of the case, near the RAM slots.
4+4 Pin Socket 20+4 Pin Socket
Expansion Slots
PCI
This is the most common slot for expansion cards. It has been superseded to an extent
by the PCIExpress 1x slot, but many manufacturers still use the PCI slot for compatibility
with older motherboards which don‟t have any PCI Express slots.
PCI Express (PCIE)

This is a new standardised connector which has begun to slowly replace the PCI slot. As
you can see from the diagram above, it‟s available in a few different forms. The most

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common one (and the one you may already be familiar with) is the PCIE 16x slot, which
replaced the AGP slot a few years ago.
The other common form is the PCIE 1x slot. This is currently mainly used for network and
sound cards, although the other standard expansion cards are beginning to become
available on the PCIE interface.
PCIE 1x
PCIE 16x
PCIE 4x
PC
I
The expansion slots – PCI, PCI Express 1x, 4x and 16x
The interesting thing about the PCI Express slot is that any PCIE device can work in any
PCIE slot as long as it fits. For example, a graphics card with a PCIE 16x connecter can
work in a 1x slot if you were to cut out the plastic back of the slot. Likewise, a PCI Express
1x device will work perfectly in a 16x slot. The only real difference between the slots is
the number of lanes which the slot has, and therefore the amount of bandwidth
between the device and the motherboard (that is, the amount of data which can be
sent between the two at the same time). So while yes, you could use a graphics card in
a 1x slot, it probably wouldn‟t be a very enjoyable experience.

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Connectors
Front Panel
Audio
Floppy
Firewire
USB
Connector
s SATA
IDE
Front Panel

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Front Panel
This is a series of pins which you use to connect the various parts of the front panel: The
power and reset buttons, the power and HDD LEDs and the chassis speaker (for those
beeps that you may hear when you turn your computer on, for example). It‟s not,
however, for connecting the USB ports or similar ports to the motherboard – they have
their own connectors.
IDE (Parallel ATA)

This was the connector of choice for connecting hard drives
and optical drives until the introduction of SATA connectors
(which I‟ll come to in a minute). In the example picture the
connector has been placed at a 90° angle to make cables
easier to manage.
More often than not the connector will point straight up.
Each IDE connector (or channel) was able to support “daisy-chaining”, which is
basically jargon for being able to connect two devices using a single IDE cable and
connector. For this to work, one device needed to be assigned as master, the other as
a slave device, which basically decides which device appears to the computer first.
As IDE devices become less common (and less relevant) the connector will also
eventually become less common on motherboards, similar to the floppy connector
(more on that later). There are already some motherboards which don‟t have any IDE
connectors.
SATA (Serial ATA)

This was introduced in 2003 and eventually replaced the IDE port
as the standard connector for first hard drives and then optical
drives. Unlike IDE connectors each SATA port can only
accommodate one device, but it has other advantages; it is
much faster, for one (most SATA connectors today are able to
transfer 3 gigabits/second, or 3000 megabits/second, while the
latest IDE connector could only handle 133 megabits/second),
and the cables are much thinner and more manageable.
SATA also has the benefit of being hot-swappable; that is, it is possible to disconnect a
SATA device and connect a different SATA device using the same cable while the
computer is still switched on (although it‟s often the case that you would have to
manually rescan for it in the operating system). IDE devices on the other hand need to
be plugged in before the computer switched on.

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USB
These connectors are used to add extra external USB ports (such as USB ports on the
front panel of the PC), or to connect internal USB devices (such as internal card
readers).
Each connector supports either two USB ports or a single device. Most new
motherboards have at least two internal USB headers (connectors), with some having
as many as four.
FireWire (IEEE 1394 or FW)

Even though a motherboard may not have a FireWire port on its I/O (Input/Output)
panel, it doesn‟t mean that it doesn‟t have FireWire. Many recent motherboards have
at least one FireWire 400 header (FireWire 400 being the most common FW connector).
Unlike USB headers, each FireWire header can only support one FireWire port.
Floppy
The floppy connector is for… well… connecting a floppy disk drive. While the floppy
power connector has been repurposed for card readers, the motherboard connector
hasn‟t been so lucky – it simply doesn‟t provide enough bandwidth for modern usage.
As very few people still use floppy disks most modern motherboards no longer have a
floppy connector at all.
Front Panel Audio

This is the header to connect the microphone and headphone jacks on the front panel
of your PC to the motherboard. Most cases have two audio connectors inline on the
same cable, one labelled AC97 and the other as HD AUDIO. Both will fit on the same
header on the motherboard, but only one will work. Generally speaking, older
motherboards will only support AC97 while newer motherboards will support both. It will
usually say on the motherboard next to the header.

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The I/O Panel
FireWire Ethernet
t
PS/2 Coaxi TRS
Mouse al Audio
PS/2 (Analogu
eSAT
Keyboard e)
A
TOSLIN
VGA
K
HDMI DVI USB
What you may find
PS/2 Connectors
Before the introduction and widespread use of USB ports, PS/2 was the standard
connector for mice and keyboards. Their major advantage is guaranteed compatibility
with older (and most new) hardware, particularly where there is only partial USB support.
This is because PS/2 devices are reported to the computer as soon as the computer
starts up, which is not always the case with USB devices. However, this comes with a
major caveat – the devices must be plugged into the computer before it is turned on
otherwise they are not recognised and won‟t work.
As PS/2 devices become less common in the face of new USB ones, it becomes rarer to
see two PS/2 ports on the I/O panel. However, most manufacturers leave one either just
for the keyboard or a hybrid port which can take either a keyboard or a mouse. This
aids in situations where a USB device may not be recognised for various reasons, or if all
other USB ports are used by non-PS/2 devices.
USB Ports
These ports are used for pretty much everything now – they don‟t call it the Universal
Serial Bus for nothing! Whether it‟s for keyboards and mice to memory sticks, card
readers to mobile phones, external hard drives to wireless dongles to novelty fuzzy
hamburger mousepad/ hand warmer combinations (such a thing exists!), you‟ll find
most things have some form of USB connectivity.

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In general, USB devices are hot-swappable, which means that they can be unplugged
and plugged into any USB slot at any time and will usually be recognised by the
computer quickly. The other major advantage is that USB slots are so common – most
computers now will have at least six USB ports, with new ones often having support for
twelve or fourteen ports.
Ethernet Port
This is the standard networking port which you use to connect the computer to the
internet using an ethernet cable. There isn‟t a whole lot more to it than that (at least,
not when it comes to motherboards).
eSATA
eSATA is a relatively new connector which allows a hard drive in an external enclosure
to perform and act like an internal drive; in fact, an eSATA connector usually requires
sacrificing one of the SATA ports provided by the motherboard‟s southbridge.
As far as the computer is concerned, the external hard drive is an internal drive, which
makes it perfect for backups and things which take a lot of bandwidth like video
editing.
FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a)

FireWire is similar to eSATA in that it‟s great for hard drives and video-related file
operations. It‟s been around for significantly longer than eSATA, though, and doesn‟t
have the same level of performance that eSATA has. On the upside it is still significantly
more common than eSATA. It also has the advantage of being able to daisy chain;
similar to the way that daisy-chaining works with IDE devices. In fact, a single FireWire
bus (i.e. a single FireWire port on your computer) can support up to sixty-three FireWire
devices with negligible performance loss (provided that multiple devices aren‟t used at
the same time).
Video Connectors
These are the connectors you would use to connect your monitor (screen) to your
computer. You would connect the monitor to your motherboard‟s I/O Panel only if you
don‟t have a separate graphics card.
The three most common video connectors are VGA, DVI and HDMI. I‟ll cover these in
more depth under the Graphics Cards section.

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Audio Connectors
These are what you use to connect or speakers or sound system to your computer.
There are three main types of audio connectors: TRS, TOSLINK and Coaxial.
TRS (Analogue)
You will have almost certainly seen these ports before – they‟re the same sockets that
you‟ll find on an MP3 player like an iPod, or an older player like a Sony Discman. In fact,
you can easily plug headphones into the green port. TRS stands for Tip, Ring, Sleeve,
which is the design of a standard jack connector:
Tip Ring Sleev

e
Most TRS sockets on a motherboard I/O panel will support 8 output channels:
 The green socket supports stereo output for two front speakers (or headphones)
 The black socket supports stereo output for two rear speakers
 The grey socket supports stereo output for two side speakers
 The yellow socket supports dual output for a centre speaker and a subwoofer
As well as having 8 output channels, they also support 2 input channels:

 The blue socket supports stereo input for line in
 The pink socket supports mono or stereo microphone input
Some older or cheaper motherboards only have the green, blue and pink sockets.
TOSLINK (Digital - Optical)

This connector is mainly for connecting a home theatre sound
system to your computer. It uses optical fibre to send large
amounts of data through a single cable.
Coaxial (Digital)
This is very similar to the TOSLINK connector, but it relies on alternating
electrical current to transfer data as opposed to the rapid blinking of
light. They‟re both used for the same application, so it just depends
on what connector your speaker system has.

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Some Legacy Ports

There are some other ports which you may find on the I/O panel which you don‟t
recognise and that haven‟t been covered in this guide so far. These connectors are
very rarely used with the introduction of USB ports.
Serial Port
This handled many of the connections which the USB port now
performs, such as the connection of modems, printers and consoles.
Parallel Port
This was used almost exclusively for printers. Parallel to
USB adapters are fairly common for connecting older
printers which only have a parallel connector to a
USB-only system.
Brands to Look Out For

There are many different motherboard manufacturers, and favourites seem to come
down to personal preference. However, there are a few brands which seem to be
recommended more than others. The two brands which are arguably the highest
quality are Asus and Gigabyte. Other brands which have mixed recommendations are
MSI, DFI and ASRock.
Some brands which are generally recommended to stay away from are ECS and
BioStar.
For gaming purposes, DFI LanParty and XFX motherboards tend to get good reviews.
eVGA always used to get very high praises but recently seem to be having some
quality issues. However, any of the standard motherboards can be just as good for
gaming – gaming motherboards are generally made to be able to handle
overclocking.
Of course, every manufacturer makes a couple of different boards which get

particularly bad reviews or high failure rates. You‟ll also come across people talking
about how bad a certain manufacturer is because of a particularly bad experience
that they‟ve had. Take these with a grain of salt – people are much more likely to speak
up about a bad experience than to take the time to praise a product – but at the same
time, don‟t completely ignore them.
The only thing you can really do is do the research online – read professional reviews
from review websites as well as customer reviews on websites such as NewEgg. That‟ll

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give you a better idea of whether it‟s just a few people making a lot of noise or whether
the product in question does really have a problem.
Download Part II
That's it for this half of "Your PC: Inside and Out." I hope you learned something, and
perhaps even feel confident enough to start working on your PC! Please check
MakeUseOf.com for the second half of this manual, which will highlight the CPU, RAM,
storage, video cards and other expansions.
Coming soon to MakeUseOf.com:

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Image Acknowledgement
 Cooler Master Elite 334 Side View – http://coolermaster.com
 Lian-Li HD-01A Bracket w/ HDD – http://lian-li.com
 Cooler Master Sileo 500 Panel View – http://coolermaster.com
 Lian-Li PC-Q07 Side View – http://lian-li.com
 Lian-Li PC-8N Side View – http://lian-li.com
 Lian-Li PC-A71F Side View – http://lian-li.com
 Corsair VX550W PSU – http://corsair.com
 Enermax MODU87+ 900W Internals – http://pcper.com
 Corsair VX550W Efficiency Graph – http://corsair.com
 Corsair VX450W With Cables – http://prohardver.hu
 Corsair HX550W Without Cables – http://hexus.net
 Asus Rampage III EXTREME – http://odoc.dk
 Asus P6T – http://asus.com
 Asus P7H55D-M EVO – http://asus.com
 Asus AT3N7A-I – http://asus.com
 Asus P5Q – http://asus.com
 Asus P7P55D Deluxe RAM Slots – http://clunk.org.uk
 Asus P7H57D-V EVO 4+4 Pin Socket – http://ixbtlabs.com
 Asus P7H57D-V EVO 20+4 Pin Socket – http://ixbtlabs.com
 Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Expansion Slots – http://indiaprwire.com
 Asus P5Q Motherboard Connectors – http://raovat.xalo.vn
 IDE Cable – http://wpclipart.com
 SATA Connectors – http://7shop.co.uk
 Asus P5Q-E I/O panel – http://asus.com
 Asus P7H55-M PRO I/O panel – http://asus.com
 Standard 3.5” TRS connector – http://maplin.com
 Standard TOSLINK connectors – http://ruby-electronics.com
 Standard Coaxial connectors – http://tvcables.co.uk

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Your PC, Inside and

Out: Part 2
By: Lachlan Roy

http://lachlanroy.com
This manual is intellectual property of MakeUseOf. It must only be published in its original form.
Using parts or republishing altered parts of this guide is prohibited without permission.

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Table of Contents
Download Part I ............................................................................................................................ 6
Available now at MakeUseOf.com: ................................................................................... 6
Chapter 1: CPU (Processor) ........................................................................................................ 7
Clock Speed .............................................................................................................................. 8
Multiple Cores............................................................................................................................ 8
Cache ..................................................................................................................................... 9
AMD vs. Intel .......................................................................................................................... 9
CPU Heatsinks .......................................................................................................................... 10
Chapter 2: RAM (Memory) ........................................................................................................ 12
How much do you need? ..................................................................................................... 12
RAM Sizes.................................................................................................................................. 13
Things to Look For When Buying RAM ............................................................................... 13
Socket ............................................................................................................................... 13
Speed ................................................................................................................................ 14
Voltage ............................................................................................................................. 14
Brands ................................................................................................................................... 14
Chapter 3: Storage Devices ..................................................................................................... 15
Hard Drives ............................................................................................................................... 15
Magnetic (Conventional) .................................................................................................. 15
Brands................................................................................................................................ 16
Solid State Drives (SSDs) ......................................................................................................... 16
Should you get one? .......................................................................................................... 17
Brands ................................................................................................................................... 17
Capacity .................................................................................................................................. 18
Cache ...................................................................................................................................... 18
RPM (Drive Speed) .................................................................................................................. 18
Optical Drives .......................................................................................................................... 19
Brands ................................................................................................................................... 20
Chapter 4: Graphics Cards ....................................................................................................... 21
Internal Connectors ................................................................................................................ 21

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PCI ......................................................................................................................................... 21
AGP ....................................................................................................................................... 21
PCIe ....................................................................................................................................... 22
IGP vs. Discrete Graphics ....................................................................................................... 22
Video Connectors .................................................................................................................. 23
VGA (Video Graphical Array) ........................................................................................... 23
DVI (Digital Visual Interface) .............................................................................................. 23
S-Video.................................................................................................................................. 23
HDMI ...................................................................................................................................... 23
DisplayPort/Mini DisplayPort .............................................................................................. 24
AMD/ATI vs. nVidia.................................................................................................................. 24
Multiple Graphics Cards ........................................................................................................ 25
Performance Scaling .......................................................................................................... 25
Is it worth it? .......................................................................................................................... 25
What numbers are important? ............................................................................................. 26
Video Memory (VRAM) ...................................................................................................... 26
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) ........................................................................................ 26
Power Consumption and Connectors ................................................................................. 27
Which card do you buy? ....................................................................................................... 27
Chapter 5: Expansion Cards ..................................................................................................... 28
Networking ............................................................................................................................... 28
Ethernet ................................................................................................................................ 28
Wireless (Wi-Fi) ...................................................................................................................... 28
Sound Card.............................................................................................................................. 28
Extra I/O (USB, FireWire etc.) .................................................................................................. 29
Storage Controllers ................................................................................................................. 29
TV Tuners ................................................................................................................................... 29
Chapter 6: Upgrading Your Computer ................................................................................... 30
Upgrade or Replace? ............................................................................................................ 30
Choosing what to upgrade................................................................................................... 31
The problems with upgrading ............................................................................................... 31

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Building your own .................................................................................................................... 32

Postscript............................................................................................................................... 33
A Quick Test ................................................................................................................................. 34
A Budget PC ..................................................................................................................... 34
A Gaming PC ................................................................................................................... 35
Answers ............................................................................................................................. 35
Image Acknowledgement ................................................................................................ 37

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Download Part I
Welcome to Part II of this MakeUseOf guide! Here you'll find information about CPUs,
RAM, storage, video cards and other expansions for your PC. For information on a
computer's chassis, power supply and motherboard, please download Part I at
MakeUseOf.com.
Available now at MakeUseOf.com:

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Chapter 1: CPU (Processor)

The CPU (Central Processing Unit) or processor is the brain of the computer – it’s where
all the calculations are carried out. Short of gaming, pretty much all the work a
computer does is carried out by the CPU; while RAM and hard drives are important,
they simply act as storage while data manipulation is carried out by the processor.
The die or internals of Intel’s i7 980x – the most powerful consumer CPU currently
available
… and the same processor held in the hand for a size reference

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Clock Speed
One of the most common things you’ll see when looking at CPU specifications is the
processor’s clock speed, measured in gigahertz (GHz), with 1GHz being equal to 1
billion hertz or cycles per second. This means that a 1GHz processor is able to carry out 1
billion calculations every second. As a general rule of thumb a processor with a higher
clock speed is more powerful than one with a lower clock speed.
However this isn’t the whole story, as different CPUs can do different amounts of work
per cycle. One way to understand this is to imagine two people trying to fill identical
swimming pools from a well with nothing but buckets. If both buckets were the same
size, the faster person would be the one who can make more trips between the well
and their swimming pool in the same time frame. However, the slower person could fill
their pool just as fast if they carry more water per trip with a bigger bucket.
Multiple Cores
When looking to buy a new computer, you’ll be constantly
barraged with mentions of cores – dual cores! Quad cores!
Hexa-core processors! What does it actually mean?
Up until 2004, all processors had just one core, or processing Core 1 Core 2
unit. A processor was made faster by increasing that core’s
clock speed. The disadvantage to this was that higher clock
speeds generated much more heat, leading to massive,
noisy heatsinks. It eventually reached the stage where it
was simply infeasible to keep increasing the clock speed.
The solution was to create a processor with two cores – that

is, a single processor with two smaller, lower speed
processing units which can carry out different instructions.
The benefit in this is obvious – why force a single unit harder
and harder to do lots of things at once when you can split the work between two
slightly less capable units? Many hands make light work, as they say.
The first generations of dual core processors – the Intel Celeron D and AMD Athlon 64 X2
families, for example – weren’t much more efficient than their single-cored
predecessors. In fact, before the technology was perfected they generated more heat
than ever. However, over time they’ve become better and better; most new
computers have at least two cores, with single core CPUs used only for the absolutely
cheapest computers (as well as for applications where lots of processing power simply
isn’t needed, ie netbooks).

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Most of the performance gains do come down purely to clock speeds again. As an
example, let’s compare a 3.0GHz dual core processor with a 2.6GHz quad core
processor. This means that the dual core processor has 2 cores each running at 3.0GHz,
giving the “equivalent” of a single core processor running at 6.0GHz. Although each
core on the quad core processor is running 400MHz slower, there are four cores – 4
cores each running at 2.6GHz gives the “equivalent” of 10.4GHz.
So by that logic, surely all quad core processors must be better than dual core
processors, and all hexa-core processors must be better than quads, right? Well, it’s not
quite as simple as that, because it depends on what you want to do with the
computer. Most of the time computers are now used to doing lots of different things at
once; opening a lot of tabs in a web browser, word processing, listening to music and
instant messaging all at the same time. This is where multi-core processors excel, as they
are able to split up the tasks and distribute them between the cores; the more cores
you have, the more your CPU can handle at once.
However, there are some single tasks which require lots of processing power – editing
video, working with large images in Photoshop or playing games, for example. Up until
very recently most computer applications haven’t been designed to make proper use
of multiple cores. In this case, a processor with fewer cores at higher clock speeds will
perform better.
Cache
When doing some deeper research on different CPUs, you may come across cache,
measured in kilobytes (KB) or megabytes (MB). This is a place where the most frequently
used data is stored so that it is quickly accessible by the processor. Most recent CPUs
have at least 2 levels of cache (L1 and L2), with newer and more powerful ones having
a third level (L3). L1 is the fastest but smallest level of cache, whereas the higher levels
tend to have much higher quantities but are slower (although still faster than accessing
the data from the RAM). Most processors split the cache up amongst the cores,
although some do have a single cache for all cores to access. In almost all
circumstances more cache is better.
AMD vs. Intel

Although there used to be many companies that used to mass market CPUs, the vast
majority of the desktop and laptop CPU market share is split between two companies;
AMD and Intel. While other companies such as ARM and VIA are still around and
producing processors for other sectors (mobile devices and low power commercial
uses, respectively), they do not produce processors for desktops and laptops.

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So, what’s the main difference between AMD and Intel processors? It used to be
efficiency – AMD processors would be just as powerful as Intel’s while performing at
lower clock speeds. Intel focused on increasing clock speeds whereas AMD focused on
increasing the amount of work done per cycle.
Right now the main difference is value and backwards compatibility vs. performance.
At most performance levels AMD tends to produce processors at a more competitive
rate to Intel. Furthermore, AMDs new CPUs (using the AM3 socket) are still compatible
with older AMD-based motherboards with the AM2+ socket, making it relatively painless
to upgrade to the latest processor technology.
Intel’s instead decided to make a clean break with its new processors, introducing two
new sockets (Socket 1156 and Socket 1366) and making backwards compatibility
impossible. However, Intel’s most powerful processor is 25-50% faster than AMD’s - the
only downside is that it costs over three times as much!
To put it another way, for those looking to upgrade from an older AMD-based system,
those looking for a good balance between price and performance and those who
don’t mind going without cutting edge technology, an AMD-based computer makes
the most sense.
On the other hand, for those where money is no object or performance is particularly
important, an Intel-based system is probably a better bet.
Of course, this is all assuming you’re looking into building your own computer. If you just
go to a store your mind will be made up for you; 80% of the time the computer will be
built around an Intel CPU. That’s by no means a bad thing; you don’t need to go
hunting for an AMD computer necessarily. Just bear this in mind if you look into building
your own computer.
CPU Heatsinks
With all the work that the CPU does in such a small space it’s not
surprising that they tend to generate a lot of heat. Of course,
this heat has to go somewhere – if the CPU gets too hot it’ll be
damaged and won’t work anymore. There are a lot of delicate
electronics in there!
That’s where the CPU heatsink comes in. Just look for a big hunk
of metal with a big fan on it. That’ll be the heatsink! The CPU is

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under that, and it’s the only thing keeping your CPU from melting itself to your
motherboard. Just kidding! If for some reason the CPU doesn’t get cooled properly it’ll
shut itself off before any real damage can be caused.
So how does a heatsink work? Well, the heatsink uses levers or screws to keep the
heatsink pressed tightly against the CPU. A tiny amount of thermal paste between the
two removes absolutely all the gaps. Heat is then transferred from the surface of the
CPU’s heat spreader to the heatsink via conduction. The heat spreads throughout the
heatsink out to the edges of the heatsink, which are split into lots of thin fins. This greatly
increases the surface area of the heatsink so when the fan on top blows down it pushes
cooler air over the hot fins, taking heat away from the heatsink.
The only problem is that the stock cooler doesn’t do the best job in the world. Yes, it
keeps the processor cool enough that it doesn’t overheat, but it usually doesn’t do it
efficiently or quietly. As a result the CPU heatsink is often the noisiest part of the
computer.
There are many manufacturers who

realise this is the case, so you’ll find lots
of companies which sell after-market
CPU coolers. These tend to be much
bigger, providing many more fins and
a much, much larger surface area for
the heat to be transferred away from
the heatsink. A bigger heatsink also
means that it can carry a larger fan
which can spin slower to move the
same amount of air, thus creating next
noise.
To move the heat faster after-market

And you haven’t seen the fan that goes
coolers tend to use more heat pipes, which
with it!
use liquids to transfer heat faster to the far ends of the heatsink. You can see that the
heatsink before, the Scythe Mugen 2, has 5 heat pipes which go from the top of the
heatsink, all the way down and through the main block before moving back up the
other side. Compare that to the size of the stock AMD heatsink, and you can see why it
can keep a processor at room temperature while staying pretty much silent!

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Chapter 2: RAM (Memory)

RAM (short for Random Access Memory, sometimes referred to by retailers as just
memory), is similar to the short term memory of the computer. Things the computer
accesses regularly (like frequently used program files) or needs to store temporarily (like
something you cut or copy to the clipboard in the operating system to paste
somewhere else) are stored in RAM.
The RAM used by the vast majority of computers today is SDRAM, or Synchronous
Dynamic Random Access Memory. All this means is that the RAM carries out instructions
in sync with the CPU, and isn’t something which you’ll need to recall often (if ever).
RAM is referred to as random access because anything stored in RAM can be
accessed in the same amount of time, regardless of where it’s stored on the module.
This is different to the way a hard drive works, which uses physical parts that need to
move to the correct place to access data.
Since it doesn’t have to wait for physical parts to find the data, RAM is much faster than
magnetic media (hard drives) and optical media (CD/DVD drives); however, there is a
massive trade-off: RAM is an example of volatile memory. This means that all the data
stored in RAM is lost when the computer is turned off while data kept on a hard drive
(which is a non-volatile form of storage) is kept safe and sound.
The other big difference between RAM and hard drives is the price to capacity ratio.
The average price for 4 gigabytes of “value” RAM is the roughly the same price as a 1.5
terabyte (or roughly 1500 gigabytes) hard drive.
How much do you need?

While more RAM is better, there isn’t much point in getting much more RAM than you
need. Most desktop motherboards have 4 memory slots, and for both DDR2 and DDR3
2GB sticks are currently the most economical size to buy. This means that it’s not difficult
to get 8GB of RAM in a desktop these days. Notebooks generally have 2 slots, so the
economical max is 4GB (which many laptops ship with by default). But how much do
you actually need?
It really depends on the rest of your system; the specs of the other hardware in your
computer, the operating system you’re running and what you intend to use the
computer for. Hardware-wise, it makes no sense to have 4GB of RAM if you’re running
an old Pentium 4 on Windows XP – sure, you’ll have a lot of RAM, but performance is
being held back by other components.

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As a general guide OS wise (I’ll be referring to Windows here; if you’re using Ubuntu
chances are you already know enough about computers and Macs tend to work well
with most amounts of RAM). A guaranteed minimum for XP (particularly the latest
versions) is 1GB; Windows Vista and 7 really should have a minimum of 2GB. You can
get away with less. XP can run alright with 512MB (0.5GB), and Vista and 7 can get
away with 1GB, but in all cases you’ll have subpar performance. On the other hand, for
general use 2GB is a great amount for XP and anywhere between 3-4GB for Vista and
7.
Of course, if you’re planning on doing intensive work with your computer – video
editing, Photoshop work, playing games and the like – you might want to consider
adding more. Right now, 4GB is the sweet spot, and few people will benefit from using
more.
RAM Sizes
There are two main RAM sizes – DIMM (used in desktops) and SO-DIMM (used in
notebooks and some Mini-ITX based computers). DIMM stands for Dual In-line Memory
Module, and the SO in SO-DIMM simply stands for Small Outline. Most people just refer
to them as Desktop and Laptop memory, which is definitely easier to remember.
It goes without saying that a SO-DIMM will cost significantly more than a DIMM with the
same capacity, as it has to fit the same amount of memory into a footprint about half
the size.
Things to Look For When Buying RAM

There are a few things you need to keep an eye on when going out to buy RAM, either
as an upgrade or for a new computer. The big thing is choosing the right socket/speed
– these are related as I’ll explain below.
Socket
Besides the different sizes of RAM (DIMM and SO-
DIMM), each has different generations – the most
common now are DDR(1), DDR2 and DDR3.
DDR stands for Double Data Rate, with the number
following simply being the generation; that is to say,
DDR2 replaced DDR as the standard type of
memory around 2004. DDR3 in turn became the
most common type of memory for new computers
in late 2009.

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Each generation of DDR runs at different voltages and significantly different speeds; as
such, newer kinds of RAM are not backwards compatible (nor can you use older
generations of DDR in newer motherboards). To prevent this from happening the
different generations have notches in different locations along the bottom, making it
impossible to plug them into the wrong sockets, as you can see in the illustration.
Speed
Each generation of DDR is in general much faster than the last. However, each
generation has multiple speeds. That is to say, each has multiple clock speeds (and
therefore multiple theoretical maximum bandwidths or data transfer speeds).
These are referred to in set ways – the format DDRx-yyy refers to the data rate
(measured in MT/s, or MegaTransfer per second, where a megatransfer is 1 million
transfers of data) of the RAM (for example, DDR2-800 means DDR2 memory with a data
rate of 800MT/s, which usually has a bandwidth of 6400MB/s), whereas the format PCx-
yyyy refers to the module’s theoretical bandwidth (for example, PC3-10600 means
DDR3 memory with a bandwidth of 10666MB/s, which usually has a data rate of
1333MT/s).
Either way, you need to make sure that you get a speed which your motherboard can
support.
Voltage
Although this is a minor thing to look for, you also need to make sure that the voltage
which the RAM runs at is compatible with your motherboard, too. This was more of a
problem when both DDR3 and Intel’s socket 1156 were introduced. Most memory
manufacturers were producing DDR3 memory running at around 1.8V (similar to DDR2s
standard voltage), whereas motherboards based on socket 1156 generally only support
RAM running at 1.5V. Now most DDR3 RAM runs at 1.5V so you’re unlikely to run into any
problems, but it’s worth double checking just to make sure.
Brands
This is another one of those things where different people swear by different brands. The
two manufacturers who tend to be recommended the most are Kingston and Corsair.
Other brands like Crucial, Hynix and OCZ seem to produce fairly reliable RAM too, but
Kingston and Corsair are the two kings of memory.

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Chapter 3: Storage Devices

Just as RAM is like the computer’s short-term memory, storage devices act like the
computer’s long-term memory; unlike RAM, storage devices don’t lose data when they
lose power.
The most common type of storage device is the magnetic hard drive. Also common are
the various kinds of optical disks such as CDs and DVDs, which I’ll cover in terms of the
drives used to read from them and write to them.
Hard Drives
Magnetic (Conventional)
This is by far the most common storage device for
computers. It offers great capacities for relatively low
prices, and is generally very reliable and durable. Hard
drives like the one you’ll find in your desktop today
have been around since 1983; the smaller 2.5” drive
Spindl
you’ll find in a laptop has been around since 1988.
e
Platte
The technology and scale used to make a magnetic r
hard drive work is truly astonishing. Put simply, data is Head
stored on platters, which are coated in a thin layer of
magnetic material. The platters are spun very fast on Actuator Arm
the spindle by a motor (most recent desktop hard
drives rotate the platters 120 times every second!). Actuator
Axis
Another motor uses an actuator arm to move a device Actuat
called the head back and forth over the platters. Data or
is written to the platter by changing the magnetisation of very small regions of the
magnetic material. Data is read by detecting the magnetisation of the material in
these regions which is then interpreted as binary data (either a 1 or a 0).
To give a sense of scale, the head would be like a Boeing 747 flying just 45 feet above
the ground at over 300,000 mph and counting every single blade of grass. Impressive
stuff, right?
As remarkable as this technology is, the magnetic hard drive is still based on moving
parts. These parts will inevitably wear out over time, eventually making it very, very

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difficult to retrieve the data. The average desktop hard drive lasts for around 4 years;
the average laptop drive, for 3.
Older drives typically connect to the motherboard with an IDE cable and receive
power from the PSU through a molex connector. Newer drives instead use a SATA cable
and are powered through a SATA power connector.
Brands
Like most kinds of components, hard drive manufacturers all have fierce loyalty and
criticisms – the “best brand” and the brands to avoid constantly change depending on
who you ask. I myself prefer drives from Seagate and Samsung, as I’ve had a few bad
experiences with Western Digital. Other people will tell you the exact opposite.
No matter which brand you choose you’ll almost certainly have no problems. If the
data on the hard drive is invaluable, you really should be making backups anyway,
which will protect you if your hard drive fails.
Having said that, most people agree that drives from Maxtor and Hitachi are better off
avoided. Both of these companies are notorious for having big problems with their
drives in past years. While there’s every chance that their reliability has significantly
improved, many people will still refuse to buy a drive from them.
Solid State Drives (SSDs)

Solid state drives are a relatively new arrival to mainstream
computing but are already making big waves. Instead of
relying on platters and moving parts, SSDs rely on flash chips –
similar to the ones you’ll find in USB memory sticks and in flash-
based iPods like the Nano or Touch.
They perform much, much better than magnetic hard drives in a

number of ways; there are no moving parts so they’re silent, cool and much more
durable than a traditional hard drive. They also use much less power and take very little
A comparison between the parts of a conventional hard drive and an SSD;

No moving parts makes mechanical failure almost impossible.
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time to start up. Finally, because they work in largely the same manner as RAM, it is
possible to access files from multiple areas of the drive unlike magnetic drives which
require the movement of the head to the area that needs to be read.
To give an idea of the performance of an SSD, look up “SSD boot test” on YouTube –
you’ll find a few different videos showing just how fast they are. Multiple tests show the
exact same computer booting in half the time with a SSD.
Of course, this new technology doesn’t come cheap, and it isn’t without its problems.
As of writing, a typical hard drive will give you around 30GB/£ (or 20GB/$). On the other
hand, even the most price-efficient SSD will cost you £1.15/GB (or $1.85/GB), or to put it
another way, 0.85GB/£ (or 0.5GB/$). You’ll easily spend much more on a higher
performance SSD. This essentially means that you either need lots of money for a big
drive, or you need to have another conventional drive for the storage of most of your
media.
Also, despite not having any moving parts, current SSDs have limited lifespans which are
shorter than that of a conventional drive. Having said this, newer SSDs are said to have
lifetimes an order of magnitude longer, placing them in line with conventional drives.
Should you get one?

Whether you should buy a SSD or not depends on a number of factors – your disposable
income and how important performance and reliability all need to be taken into
account. It’s difficult to recommend a SSD to a casual computer user just yet; the
added performance just isn’t worth the extra cost unless you use your computer all the
time. The key word there is yet – budget drives are becoming more commonplace, and
the overall price to capacity ratio is falling rapidly.
On the other hand, if you use your computer all the time, performance is important to
you and/or your drive’s reliability is tantamount, you may want to consider getting a
SSD. Yes, you’ll pay a heavy premium over a fast hard drive, but the advantages are
truly worth it.
Brands
For budget SSDs, look no further than Kingston’s SSD-Now! series. They’ve been in the
memory business for a long time, and their SSDs get very good reviews. The cheaper
Onyxdrives by OCZ are also worth looking at.
For midrange SSDs, Onyx 2 and Vertex series drives by OCZ and Samsung drives are the
way to go. If you have a lot of money to burn, OCZ’s Vertex 2 and Agility 2 drives, Intel’s

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X25-M and X25-V drives and OWC’s Mercury Extreme SSDs provide by far the best
performance.
What numbers are important?
Capacity
As you might suspect, it’s important to get a hard drive with the right capacity. In the
vast majority of cases, a larger hard drive is better – just because you only have a
certain amount of data at the moment doesn’t mean that over time you won’t need
more.
On the other hand, if you’ve only got about 20GB of data at the moment it makes little
sense to buy a hard drive with 1TB (or 1000GB) of storage. Smaller capacity drives tend
to be faster, make less noise and use less power because they usually have fewer
platters.
For a laptop, 160GB or 250GB is perfect. For a desktop, a 320GB drive is the biggest
drive that is likely to be single-platter. My suggestion would be to get a computer with a
single-platter primary drive, and to add your own high-capacity drive yourself if you
need more storage. If you need lots more storage and you have a laptop, you’re better
off getting a high capacity drive external drive.
Cache
Remember the CPU’s cache? Hard drives have something very similar. It only has one
level, and it isn’t as fast as the CPU’s cache, but hard drives have a relatively small
amount of storage for data that is likely to be accessed regularly, too. In this case more
cache is better.
As of writing, most hard drives have 32MB of cache. It’s not imperative, but try to get
one of these if at all possible. While it’s not the end of the world if you get a drive with 8
or 16MB of cache, you’ll probably find performance isn’t quite as smooth.
RPM (Drive Speed)

The speed of the hard drive is very important, too. Magnetic hard drives have two main
speeds – 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm (although you can also buy 10,000rpm drives). It’s fairly
obvious that a 7,200rpm hard drive will perform significantly better than a 5,400rpm
drive. However, there is a downside – the trade-off for speed is higher power
consumption, higher temperatures and more noise.

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As a general rule of thumb, laptops tend to use 5,400rpm drives while desktops tend to
have 7200rpm drives. Having said that, it’s not uncommon to find a 7,200rpm drive in a
laptop when high performance is required, nor is it uncommon for high-capacity drives
used as extra storage to be running at 5,400rpm to save power and noise.
Optical Drives
Anything which can read optical discs (that is, CDs, DVDs or the more recent HD-DVDs
and Blu-Ray discs) is referred to as an optical
drive.
Optical drives share data with the computer

in the same way as hard drives; that is, they
are connected to the motherboard either
with an IDE cable or a SATA cable. They also
use the same power connectors to receive
power from the power supply; older drives
using an IDE connector typically use the molex power connector, whereas newer drives
with the SATA connector use the newer SATA power connector as well.
So, how does an optical drive actually work? No matter what kind of disc the drive is
reading or writing to, the process is practically identical.
When a disc is inserted into the drive it is rotated by a motor in a way which is
somewhat similar to the spinning of a hard drive’s platters. However, while a hard drive
is designed to spin at a constant speed (measured in revolutions per minute or RPM), an
optical drive is designed to spin a disc to achieve a constant data rate. As the
circumference of the disc is higher towards the outside of the disc and the data must
be read at a constant rate, a disc will spin slower when accessing data closer to the
outside of the disc and faster when accessing data closer to the centre.
Data is stored on a disc by pressing pits into a very thin reflective surface along a data
path often referred to as the disc’s groove. The disc drive uses a laser and photodiodes
(which detect light) which travel along this groove (similar to the way a needle passes
along a vinyl record). When the laser travels over a pit the light is refracted differently to
when the laser travels over the flat surface of the disc. This is detected by the
photodiodes, which then output electrical signals that can be interpreted by the
computer as data.
Writing to a disc is a little different. Write once discs like CD-Rs have a layer of organic
dye as well as the reflective layer. Data is written to the disc with a much more powerful

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laser which is used to heat tiny sections of the dye, changing the reflectivity of the dye.
The heated areas cause differences in light refraction in the same way the pits of
pressed CDs do.
Rewritable discs like DVD-RWs work slightly differently again. Instead of using a layer of
organic dye these use a phase-change layer. These start off in a crystalline state which
can then be changed to an amorphous state by heating with a more powerful laser.
Again, the amorphous sections of the disc act like the pits of a pressed disc. However,
unlike the organic layer this change is reversible by reheating the amorphous sections,
which causes them to revert to a crystalline state.
Brands
It’s quite difficult to go wrong with any manufacturer, but I personally prefer optical
drives by Samsung or LG. You may come across a brand called Lite-On – these drives
are manufactured by Sony, and also seem to be fairly reliable.
Floppy Drives
Once the storage device of choice, floppy disks were wildly popular from the mid-1970s
until the late-1990s. Even after being replaced by hard drives for the operating system,
programs and data in the 80s, they continued to be used as portable storage.
Eventually they were superseded by USB drives and CDs and DVDs.
It’s very unlikely that you’ll find a floppy disk drive in any new computer – the reasoning
is that if you really need access to one you can always purchase an external floppy disk
drive that plugs into your computer via USB.

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Chapter 4: Graphics Cards

The graphics card or video card generates everything that you see on the
screen. Without one there is no way to see what your computer is
doing (meaning that you would have to connect to it with a
different computer to control it effectively).
It’s for this reason that the graphics card is easily one of
the most important parts of the computer for a
gamer – without a powerful graphics card the
game can’t run at full settings or at full speed,
giving a sub-par playing experience.
Internal Connectors
PCI
The first mainstream 3D graphics cards acted just like any other expansion card,
plugging into one of the computer’s ubiquitous PCI slots. The PCI slot could only provide
at most 25W, so the more powerful cards received additional power directly from the
PSU via a molex connector.
AGP
As demand for graphics cards increased and they became more powerful it soon
became apparent that the PCI interface couldn’t provide enough bandwidth. Intel
then designed the Accelerated Graphics Port, or AGP, the first slot dedicated to a
graphics card. The advantages of this were two-fold; the first generation AGP slot could
provide double the bandwidth of a PCI slot, and it didn’t have to share bandwidth with
other expansion cards (as a PCI graphics card did).
As they continued to become more powerful new generations of AGP slots were
created, each bringing double the bandwidth of the last. The last version of AGP
provided 8x the bandwidth of the first, and 16x the bandwidth of a PCI slot.
With greater performance came greater power usage, and eventually a molex
connector just wasn’t enough anymore. The molex connector was replaced by a new
connector – the 6-pin connector which has now come to be known as the PCIE power
connector. After the introduction of this new high-power connector newer generations
of AGP slots no longer provided any significant power to the graphics card.

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Approaching the end of the AGP era the most powerful graphics cards required not
one, but two 6-pin connectors.
PCIe
By 2004 graphics cards were starting to reach the bandwidth limits that AGP could
provide. Intel, Dell, IBM and HP worked together to produce a newer slot – PCI Express,
or PCIe. The first full length PCIe slot (a 16x slot) could provide double the bandwidth of
an AGP slot. Newer generations have been introduced over the years; the newest,
PCIe v2.1, provides 4x the bandwidth of the fastest AGP slot, or 64x the bandwidth of a
PCI slot. PCIe 3.0, which is due to become mainstream in 2011, will double that
bandwidth again.
Power consumption for the most powerful graphics cards continues to increase. Two six
pin connectors are no longer enough for the most power-hungry cards. An 8-pin
connector was introduced which could provide twice the power of a 6-pin. The most
powerful graphics cards currently use an 8-pin plus a 6-pin.
Discrete graphics cards are now by far the most power-hungry components found in
computers today.
IGP vs. Discrete Graphics

The thing is, not everybody needs a massive, power-sucking graphics card. For basic
computer usage like browsing the web, watching a video or two, word processing or
checking your email, a big graphics card is complete and utter overkill.
That’s where an Integrated Graphics Processor (or IGP) comes in. Around 90% of
prebuilt computers ship with integrated graphics. They’re much cheaper than a
discrete graphics card; they also use a lot less power and therefore make much less
heat (and a lot less noise from cooling).
For most people this is perfect – it’ll take anything they throw at it without any problems.
However, there is a downside (for those keeping count). The Graphics Processing Unit
(or GPU) in an IGP is much less powerful than one you’ll find in even a low-midrange
graphics card, so you’ll be stuck when you do want to do something a bit more
intensive. Furthermore, the IGP uses PCIe lanes, meaning that even if you do add a
powerful graphics card later it won’t perform as well.
On top of that, the IGP has very little of its own memory if it has any, instead having to
use part of the system’s RAM. This is an inefficient and slow way of providing the GPU
with memory as well as depriving the rest of the system of some of its RAM.

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So, should you go for a computer with an IGP, or should you go down the discrete
graphics route? It really does depend on what you plan to do with the computer. If you
plan to play any 3D games on it you’re almost certainly better off to get a computer
with even a moderately powerful discrete graphics card. If, on the other hand, you
don’t ever plan to do anything more intensive than watch high definition video, you’ll
save money and have a quieter computer if you get a computer with integrated
graphics.
Video Connectors
VGA (Video Graphical Array)

This is probably the most common video connector for
computers, despite the introduction of newer and more
capable connectors such as DVI and DisplayPort. It
carries an analogue video signal. You’ll find it on most
laptops as well as quite a few discrete graphics cards
(although most tend to neglect them for another DVI port).
DVI (Digital Visual Interface)

This connector was released in 1999 to replace the VGA
interface. While it hasn’t replaced it for most users it is the
connector of choice for gamers. It carries a digital video
signal, and can handle much higher resolutions than VGA.
S-Video
Before HDMI came along, S-Video was the way to connect video
devices to your TV, including your computer, since it provided
much better quality than component. While you won’t get the
resolution you would through a VGA or digital connector (most
people can’t get much more than a crisp 1024x768 resolution), it’s still
fine for watching video or doing some light browsing.
HDMI
This is the new connector for connecting pretty much anything to
new, high definition TVs. HDMI is very similar to DVI, but with one
crucial difference; HDMI is also able to carry an audio signal, so both
sound and video are transferred with just one cable.

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DisplayPort/Mini DisplayPort
This is the newest type of display connector, first introduced in
2007. It was meant to fully replace DVI and VGA, but is yet to
have any major impact. An interesting feature is its ability to
carry data other than video and audio data. This means, for
example, that a monitor could provide multiple USB expansion ports and still only
connect to the computer via DisplayPort. The latest version is also capable of
transferring ethernet data using the same, single cable.
A smaller version of the connector called Mini DisplayPort was

introduced by Apple shortly after the introduction of its big brother. It has
been incorporated into all of Apple’s computers, from the lowly Mac
Mini to the MacBook Pro, to the Mac Pro powerhouse. It is just as
capable as the full sized port, just smaller. As such it has enjoyed deeper
market penetration than the original port; so much so that it has started to appear on
gaming graphics cards instead of the full sized DisplayPort.
AMD/ATI vs. nVidia

Similar to the way in which motherboards are made by multiple manufacturers but
largely based on chipsets designed by AMD and Intel, graphics cards are made by
multiple manufacturers but largely based on designs by two major companies – ATI
(which is now owned by AMD and uses the same name) and nVidia.
Also just like motherboards, neither is better than the other. As with many things, what
you’re planning to do with the computer will affect which is the better one to go for.
For example, video quality has always been one of

AMD/ATI’s strengths – watching movies is generally
accepted to look “better” through an AMD/ATI card
due to more accurate temperatures, contrast and
detail levels. The performance to price ratio tends to be
better for ATI cards, too (although this is not always the
case).
Finally, AMD/ATI cards tend to focus more on efficiency

more than raw power – while they may not always outperform nVidia’s offerings at the
same price point, they’ll usually use significantly less power (and be quieter as a result).

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On the other side of the fence, nVidia’s cards go for all out raw power,
making them attractive to “hardcore” gamers. While they may not be
quiet, cheap or have the same image quality, nVidia packs a lot of
features which AMD/ATI cards simply don’t have – a dedicated physics
chipset called PhysX and support for 3D gaming (think 3D glasses), to
name a couple.
Multiple Graphics Cards

Regardless of which type of graphics card you go for, you might want to consider
adding a second one. Although they use different names, both companies provide the
technology to use multiple graphics cards – ATI’s technology is called CrossFire (or X-
Fire), whereas nVidia uses the term SLI.
However, there are some caveats. First of all, CrossFire and SLI are company-specific;
that is, you can only use ATI cards or you can only use nVidia cards – no mixing. The
limitation goes further than that, though. In almost all cases you can only use the same
model card, and in many cases the cards need to be identical. This means, for
example, that if you have an ATI 5850 made by XFX you would have to buy another ATI
5850 made by XFX for CrossFire to work.
Performance Scaling
You would assume that by joining two graphics cards together that because you have
access to twice as much memory and two GPUs that you would get double the
performance. However, this isn’t the case. Particularly with early implementations of SLI
and CrossFire multiple GPUs would have very small performance gains – in some cases
they actually decreased performance!
Newer implementations are much more effective though, in no small part due to
software companies embracing the technology. Both AMD/ATI and nVidia’s latest
offerings are able to provide up to a 90% performance increase by adding a second
card.
Is it worth it?
In most cases it’s not, at least to begin with – you’re much better off to start off with a
single, more powerful graphics card. This will provide better performance off the bat
and gives you the option of adding another card of the same type later to give it a
second performance boost.

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What numbers are important?
Video Memory (VRAM)

This is by far the most advertised number when it comes to graphics cards. Video
Memory (or VRAM) is similar to regular system RAM, but it is integrated into the graphics
card itself and cannot be upgraded. It is mainly used for storing textures, which are the
images on the surfaces of 3D models which give them their appearance. Higher quality
textures look much better (and more realistic) but use up a lot more space as a result.
VRAM is also used to store Z-buffer data, which manages the depth coordinates in 3D
graphics.
As well as capacity, it is also important to look for the speed of the VRAM. Similar to the
different generations of DDR RAM, there are different generations of VRAM with the
naming scheme GDDRx, where x is the generation of memory. As of writing, the latest
generation is GDDR5. Also like RAM, this memory can run at different clock speeds to
provide better performance.
Put simply, the higher each number is, the better. However, this is not the most
important aspect to a graphics card.
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

The most important specification of a graphics card is Graphics Processing Unit, or GPU.
This is the part which does all the thinking of the graphics card, much like a specialised
CPU. This is usually what the model number of a graphics card refers to.
Right now the naming convention for each graphics card is as follows:
 nVidia cards currently use the naming scheme GTS/GTX xyy – simply put, GTX is
more powerful than GTS, x is the generation of card and yy denotes the level of
performance. For example, the GTS 450 is one the latest mid-range nVidia
graphics card but it is not as powerful as the GTX 295, which is two generations
old but the most powerful graphics card in its generation, with power
comparable to a GTX 480.
 AMD/ATI cards currently use the xyz0 naming scheme – x is the generation
number, y is a rough performance level and z is a performance sublevel. For
example, the 5750 belongs to the 5th generation of cards under the current
naming scheme, is the lowest of the high mid-range of single-gpu cards (it is not
as powerful as a 5770 or any of the 58z0 cards). The AMD 4870 was from the
previous generation but was the most powerful card in its generation, with
performance similar to a 5770.

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Just in case you’re still a bit confused, this link has a chart which shows the hierarchy of
the different graphics cards and will give you a bit of an insight to the naming scheme.
Higher numbered models have more universal shaders, texture units, raster operators
(ROPs) and have GPUs which run at faster clock speeds. In all cases, the higher the
number, the better the card.
Power Consumption and Connectors

This isn’t really complicated – your PSU can only output a certain amount of power, and
it only has a certain number of PCIe connectors. On top of making sure that your
graphics card will fit into the slot on your motherboard you will also need to make sure
that your power supply is able to accommodate the extra strain of the potential
graphics card.
Which card do you buy?

As always, the card that is perfect for you will change depending on what you want to
do. The higher the resolution of the screen you want to use, the more powerful the card
you’ll need. General usage requires very little power, watching high definition video
requires more, but new video games will require a much more powerful card if you
want to play them on full settings.
To give you an idea of what you need (or what your budget will get you), I couldn’t
recommend Tom’s Hardware more. Clicking that link will take you to their graphics card
section. All you need to do is click on the latest article named “Best Graphics Cards for
the Money” and choose your budget.
As far as brands are concerned, differences in performance vary very little as they are
all largely based on the reference designs which AMD and nVidia release. Instead
different brands are judged on their customer service and warranty.
The best manufacturers are almost unanimously XFX, Sapphire and Gainward. Once
you choose which model of graphics card you want, look for those names first. More
often than not they’ll carry a small price premium over other brands but their customer
service and warranty makes it well worth it.
If you can’t get a hold of a card by one of these manufacturers, Palit (which owns
Gainward) also makes very good cards, as does Asus.

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Chapter 5: Expansion Cards

Expansion cards do what they say on the tin – they provide extra functionality to the
computer which isn’t provided by any of the other components. They typically connect
via the PCI interface, but more recently they have become more readily available on
the PCIe interface.
I’ll quickly run through each of the more common expansion cards and briefly explain
what each one does.
Networking
As the name suggests, these cards allow the computer to join to a computer network,
allowing it to “talk” to other computers.
Ethernet
Although most modern motherboards have
built in gigabit ethernet, an older computer
may require an ethernet port to connect to the
internet (or an internal network). Ethernet
network cards are one of the types of cards
which have switched to
PCIe, although PCI versions are also readily available.
Wireless (Wi-Fi)
Ethernet ports may be widely found on desktops, but many lack
wireless connectivity. A Wi-Fi expansion card will fix this problem
quickly and easily. However, USB wireless dongles are widespread
and cheap, so you might possibly be better off with one of these
instead.
Sound Card
Yes, most motherboards now come with built in
support for 7.1 channel surround sound, but
sometimes there’ll never be a substitute for high
quality electrical components for a dedicated

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device. A dedicated sound card will often provide much higher quality sound providing
you have the sound system to back it up.
Extra I/O (USB, FireWire etc.)

Sure, new motherboards support 12 USB ports and
2 FireWire ports, but you can never have too
many! Besides, you may want to breathe some life
back into an older computer that was around
before USB 2 (or USB 1, for that matter). These PCI
cards will give you all the ports you need.
Storage Controllers
Perhaps it’s time to give your old faithful computer an
upgrade – maybe it’s time to get one of those new-fangled
SATA hard drives. Hold on, it doesn’t have any SATA ports!
Not to worry, a storage controller has got you covered. It’ll
get you the ports you need; IDE, SATA or eSATA, it doesn’t
matter. You can be safe in the knowledge that you’ll be able
to connect that new hard drive or optical drive.
TV Tuners
One thing which a lot of people overlook is that
their PC can make a great Digital Video
Recorder (or DVR). Just get one of these TV tuner
cards into your PC and you’ll be recording video
from the TV in no time. Dual tuners even let you
watch something while recording something else
at the same time. Pretty cool, eh?

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Chapter 6: Upgrading Your

Computer
Upgrade or Replace?
So, you’ve got a computer that’s a few years old and it seems to be getting slower and
slower, and it just doesn’t seem capable of doing what you want it to do any more. It
gradually gets worse and worse until suddenly you can’t take it anymore. Something
needs to be done, but then you’re suddenly struck with a dilemma. What should you
do? There’s a brand new computer out there somewhere with your name on it, but
what about this one? It’s been your faithful companion for years. Surely you can’t just
give up on it, can you?
It’s always tough trying to decide what to do in a situation like that, particularly since
computers are now a commodity – it doesn’t cost much to replace what you bought a
few years ago with something significantly more powerful.
I would say that if the computer is three years old or less, then it’s worth repairing and
upgrading rather than replacing the whole computer. You’ll be amazed at what an
extra stick of RAM, the addition of a discrete graphics card or a replacement hard drive
will do for your computer!
Having said that, perhaps it’s better to check on the software before you start making
any changes to the hardware; make sure you haven’t got any viruses slowing down
your computer, take all the rubbish that’s choking your computer as it starts up and just
generally give it a good de-gunking.
Oh, and if it’s running Windows Vista, upgrade it to Windows 7. Now.
On the other hand, if your computer is older than that (particularly 5 years or older),
maybe it’s time to start looking at a new computer. The technology in your computer
has been superseded and it’ll likely be costly to find compatible components to
upgrade your computer. It takes very little time and money to add an expansion card
to bring SATA hard drives to your computer, true, but chances are your motherboard
won’t support a new processor or new RAM. Sometimes it’s just better to cut your losses
and go for something new.

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But whatever you do, don’t throw that old computer away! Get yourself a new
computer, move all your data over, then buy a new hard drive for your old one and
repurpose it. It could be a second computer for internet banking and accessing and
managing sensitive data once in a blue moon; you could add a few high capacity
hard drives and put it in the attic to run all the time as a file server or for backing up the
new computer to. It could even be an extra computer for another family member. The
point: that computer is far from useless! Even if it seems too slow to run Windows, you
can always put Ubuntu on there. Try something new!
To sum up, computers are useful for longer than you might think. If your computer is
starting to get painfully slow, there are some relatively cheap and quick things you can
do to speed them up again. If it gets to a point where you’re ready for something new,
you can replace and upgrade. Look at the upside – you have two computers now!
Choosing what to upgrade

So, you’ve decided to upgrade your computer to get a few more years out of it before
you bite the bullet and buy a new one. Great choice! But where do you start?
If your computer is getting painfully slow or making strange crunchy noises and it’s a
few years old, the first thing you’ll want to do is to change out the hard drive. As you’ve
read, a hard drive usually lasts 3 to 4 years before it starts to fail. Swap that out and it’ll
be like you’ve got a brand new machine for a fraction of the cost! Best of all, it’s not
difficult to get all the data moved over to the new hard drive.
If you don’t think it’s the hard drive, you might want to check how much RAM your
computer has. Do you have enough installed? It might be worth getting an extra stick
or two. Just make sure that you get the right type of RAM for your computer.
Maybe your computer works just fine, but it’s so noisy! Check to see if your computer’s
CPU heatsink is clogged up with dust and clean that out first. If it’s still a major problem,
looks like it’s time to get yourself an after-market cooler. Just make sure that you
measure how much room you have first – heatsinks tend to be a lot larger than you’d
think!
If your computer is new enough to have a PCIe slot, you might also want to add or
replace a discrete graphics card for some extra grunt.
The problems with upgrading

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s just not practical to upgrade your computer. The
motherboard often becomes the limiting factor after a while – and that’s simply not
economical to replace. By the time you buy a new motherboard, you’ll probably need

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a new CPU to go with it, new RAM, possibly a new PSU… you see where I’m going with
this. Buying new big parts for an old computer just isn’t worth it, because even if you
can find compatible parts for your PC, you’ll be paying big bucks for a marginal
performance increase. You could probably spend the same amount of money on a
prebuilt budget machine (or even a net-top) which would have the same (if not better)
performance while being next to silent and using a fraction of the power. Or,
conversely, the money could be put towards a slightly more expensive machine which
would eat your old machine for breakfast.
Building your own

So, after reading this guide you suddenly feel empowered to make an informed
decision about getting a new computer. That’s great! But why not take it one step
further and build a computer for yourself? Wait, hear me out. It’s not as crazy as you
think.
Yes, you could buy a cheap prebuilt computer from a big company like Dell or HP, and
it’d be fine. It’d work for a while, but those computers are built to break after a few
years so that you go out to buy a new one straight away.
On the other hand, you can build your own computer. You won’t be able to build a
budget computer for the same price as you could buy one from a big company, but
once you start spending enough money for a mid-range or high-end computer, you’ll
start seeing big savings.
But that’s not all. Not only will you save money, but you’ll have the satisfaction of
knowing that it’s something you built. Furthermore, because you built it, you know
exactly what’s going into it. The computer is made just for you, by you.
On top of that, you’ll end up with a computer running software that you choose. No
preinstalled trials or bloat ware to slow your computer down. No frustration of coming
across something and not having a clue what it does. Everything on the computer is
there because you put it there.
Maybe I’m starting to win you over. Maybe you were sold already. Perhaps you’re still
hesitant though – just because you know what everything in the computer does doesn’t
mean that you can just go out and build a computer, right? Well, perhaps, but you
have a good idea of what you need to build one, and what you’re looking for in a
computer. That’s all you need to get started. There are plenty of places you can go to
get help building your first computer – MakeUseOf has a guide to help you get started,

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and there’s a big guide over at Tom’s Hardware which will go into plenty of depth for
when you’re ready to take the plunge.
Postscript
Well, that’s the end of my guide. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read it, and I
hope you’ve found it informative and interesting. With this guide as a base you can go
on to learn so much more – a lot of it has been just glanced over in the interest of time
and space. The internet is full of information, from specialised websites like Tom’s
Hardware to sites like Wikipedia to internet forums ran by people just like you.
I hope I’ve been able to teach you something, and with any luck I’ve managed to
spark an interest in computers and how they work while showing that they aren’t quite
as scary and alien as so many people seem to think. Computers and how they work
fascinate me and have become a passion of mine, and I can’t wait to see where they
go from here.

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A Quick Test
As a purely optional extra, here’s a quick test. I’ll show you pictures of a budget
computer and a top of the range gaming PC – see how many components you can
recognise! Red numbers are main components, and yellow numbers are bonus points.
A Budget PC
4
7 5
6
8
5 2
3 2
4
1
3

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A Gaming PC 1
6
8
5
4
4
3
2 7
2
1
3
Answers
A Budget PC
1:CPU/Heatsink
2:Hard Drive
3:Graphics Card
4:Case/Chassis
5:Optical Drive
6:Motherboard
7:Power Supply
8:RAM
1:Floppy Connector
2:Northbridge
3:Molex Connector
4:PCI Slot
5:IDE Cable
A Gaming PC
1:Case/Chassis
2:Graphics Card
3:Power Supply
4:RAM

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5:CPU/Heatsink
6:Optical Drive
7:Hard Drive
8:Motherboard
1:PCIe Power Connector
2:CrossFire Bridge
3:SATA Connector
4:20+4 Pin Power Connector

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Image Acknowledgement
 Intel i7 980x die – http://maximumpc.com
 Intel i7 980x size reference – http://thecoolgadgets.com
 CPU Heatsink – http://computershopper.com
 Mugen 2 vs Stock Heatsink – http://s23.photobucket.com/home/malveaux
 Hard drive parts – http://seagate.com
 Blu-Ray Drive – http://cpusainc.com
 Radeon 5970 – http://mant.es
 PCI and AGP slots – http://howtofixcomputers.com
 DVI Port – http://gocwi.com
 S-Video Port - http://tell.fll.purdue.edu
 HDMI Port – http://techpin.com
 DisplayPort – http://review-tests.com
 AMD/ATI Logos – http://tuxsys.ch
 nVidia Logo – http://zdnet.com
 Ethernet PCIe Card – http://shopricom.com
 WiFi PCI Card – http://techreaders.com
 Sound PCIe Card – http://creative.com
 USB/FireWire PCI Card – http://topmedia.nl
 Storage Controller PCIe Card – http://computertarget.com.au
 TV Tuner PCIe Card – http://advanced2000.com
 Budget PC – http://jamesthebard.net
 Gaming PC – http://s149.photobucket.com/home/williamh1978

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Your PC Inside and Out

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Your PC, Inside and Out: Part 1

Your PC, Inside and

By: Lachlan Roy

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Other Chips ...................................................................................................................... 26

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Chapter 1: The Case (Chassis)

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The first (and most common) noise reduction technique involves

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Some cases sometimes use noise reduction

Things to Look Out For When Buying a New Case

A Mini-ITX case A midi case, although A full tower case

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Here‟s the list again.

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Chapter 2: Power Supply (PSU)

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AC Input Rating 90 - 264VAC

DC Output +3.3V +5V +12V -12V +5VSB

Max Load 30A 28A 41A 0.8A 3A

Max Load 140W 492W 9.6W 15W

TOTAL POWER: 550W

Power (W) = Voltage (V) x Current (A)

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Efficiency is another very important factor to think about when it comes to

Here‟s a simple example. A PSU requires 100W of AC power to output 75W

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PCIE connectors can also be powered using 2 molex connectors if one

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20+4 Pin (Motherboard)

4+4 Pin (CPU)

PCIe (6+2 pin)

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The Dangers of Cheap Unbranded Power Supplies

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Power Supply Varieties

Standard Power Supplies

Modular Power Supplies

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Brands to Look For

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With more room on the motherboard and more

The only real difference between ATX and Micro-ATX

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Parts of the Chipset

In motherboards with integrated graphics (which don‟t require an external graphics

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Intel Socket 775 Intel Socket 1366 AMD Socket AM3

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4+4 Pin Socket 20+4 Pin Socket

PCI Express (PCIE)

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