Building a PC: Step 2
Step 2, hardware required, taken from Chris Worfolk's ICT Hardware coursework.

Hardware Required
This will guide you through the various bits of hardware that you will need or could have when building your pc.

Motherboard
The motherboard is the most important part of the PC after how cool the monitor and speakers look. In many cases, your motherboard will determine what components go best with your computer so make sure you make the right decision.

PC Case
The two most important things (other then style) are making sure that your motherboard fits inside the case and making sure that if the case comes with a PSU it is the right size for your motherboard. You will also want blank panels at the front and back for expansion.

Power Supply Unit (PSU)
If your case does not come with one you will need to buy one that is the correct type for your motherboard. The newer the CPU the more powerful power supply you are going to need.

Central Processing Unit (CPU)
The specification for this will be determined by your motherboard. Get the best / fastest CPU you can afford as not only does it offer substantial bragging power but it also has a large effect on the performance of the computer. Also make sure you get a powerful enough heat sink and fan or your CPU could overheat.

Random Access Memory (RAM)
New computers use DIMMs, older computers use SIMMs. Interesting hu? The type of memory will be determined by your motherboard. Having more slots will allow you to add more RAM. More memory will boost your system performance and having plenty of it will make sure you match up to the minimum hardware requirements of all the latest software.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
Most motherboards can support 4 IDE devices (connected via the IDE cables, each cable attaches a master and slave device). Generally the most important spec of a hard drive is the storage space; this can be from 100MB (really old ones) to a terabyte (really new ones) and are increasing in size all the time. The figure represents the total space in the hard drive although in practice once the device is formatted you will lose 10% of the space which is used for the file system.

IDE is the connection used to join the devices to the motherboard. There are many names for it: IDE / E-IDE / ATA / PATA which are basically all the same thing. S-ATA is basically a newer version.

Another important factor is the spindle speed of the hard drive. This refers to how fast it spins inside, the faster it is, the faster data can be transferred to and from the hard drive. The faster the better generally although the faster it is the nosier and hotter it becomes. For new hard drives you will want to be looking at 7200 RPM.

The hard drive may also have a local cache so that when certain data is requested it can read from the cache faster than going back to the main hard drive storage. The cache usually ranges from 2MB to 8MB following the age old principle of the bigger the better.

CD / DVD Devices
There are now many different versions of CD and DVD drives all of which are connected via IDE cables (although external devices connected by USB2 or Firewire are becoming increasingly common). The variations of the devices include:

CD-ROM: Standard device for reading CDs. Pretty basic now a days.

CD-R: For burning CD’s. This drive allows you to burn data to a blank CD although once it is burned it is stuck on there forever.

CD-RW: It is similar to the above except that if you no longer want the data on a blank re-writable disk you can format it like a hard drive or floppy drive and write new data onto it.

DVD-ROM: Like a CD-ROM except that as well as being able to read CD’s it can also read DVD’s.

DVD-R / DVD-RW: The same as CD-R and CD-RW respectively, except that it can do DVD disks as well which can store much more information.

Combo: Certain of these have been combined in such devices, especially for laptops, such as CD-RW / DVD-ROM drives.

Video Card
This will depend on your planned use of the computer. If you will be word processing you don’t really need a powerful card but if you are going to be playing the latest 3D games you will. Most video cards now slot into the AGP slot and often come with several connectors such as TV-in/out and s-video.

Sound Card
This will also depend on your intended use of the computer. As many motherboards come with a built in sound card you may not need to buy a separate one unless you know you will have extended use out of it.

You will also want to get speakers with it. These vary from simple stereo speakers or to 6.1 speakers, which come with 6 surround sound satellite speakers and a subwoofer to really give out some bass.

Monitor
There are two types of monitors, CRT which are the classic big monitors and LCD / TFT which are the new cool flat screens. Your best option will be to go for a 19” TFT screen but considering you may not wish to double the price of your computer on the monitor alone you may want to tailor the monitor choose to your budget.

Keyboard & Mouse
Although often overlooked it can be well worth spending some money on ergonomic designs if you use your computer for an extended period of time.

Operating System
Now all you need is an operating system (not technically hardware), which is the basic software, which will run your computer. The most popular for home computers is Windows XP and is likely to be the dominant operating system for a while as Microsoft are not due to release their next version, codenamed Windows Longhorn, until 2006.

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This article was posted by mworld.

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