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Razer's Edge: Hardware, Building a PC
Simple
Steps to Building Your Own PC
Of course
there are many different kinds of computers today, but by far the most
popular is still the desktop PC. Between business, home and school use,
the desktop
PC is almost a standard appliance many of us use..
Most poeople will not consider building their own PC. In fact, we would
not suggest
it for the faint of heart. However, with a few facts and some simple tools,
the determined
hobbyist can readily build a reasonable desktop machine and at good cost
too!.
1. Decide
How Much Can You Spend.
Don't go
overboard with the budget. It is easy to get wrapped up in all the fancy
gadgets
and neat little toys ("boy, that WebCam is cool, but I never use
it..."). Let's set an
arbitrary budget of about $1000 and see if we can build a desktop PC for
the same price
as
other popular desktops sell for.
2. Build
Behind the Price Curve
Unless you
have some burning desire to be state-of-the-art, buy all your equipment
from last year.
You will find that it is FAR cheaper. Of course, if you MUST have that
top-notch gaming rig with
a screaming 1.2Ghz Processor, then go spend your money, but we are way
beyond an $800 budget
in that case. Computer hardware becomes obsolete at an alarming rate in
the marketplace. It
is very easy to get psyched into buying the top-line, state of the art
equipment in an effort
to stay ahead of the game. Most people don't realize that the software
we run today does not
need all that horsepower. By the time the software catches up to the hardware,
the price-performace
ratios will have changed several times.
If
you buy behind the curve on some parts, you will find that you have a
little extra to spend
on the equipment that matters most to you. Evaluate your decisions based
on what you plan
to use the computer for.
We are going to aim to build a rig that has at least a 650Mhz - 800Mhz
processor and 128MB of
memory. With this amount of RAM and that speed processor, you will be
in good shape to run the majority
of software for at least a couple of years (or at least a couple of days.....:-)
3. Plan Your Purchases
Don't just
run out and start buying things. Do some research first. We've laid out
a basic shopping list of
the items you will need to build your desktop:
Case and
PowerSupply
MotherBoard, CPU and RAM
HardDrive
Diskette Drive
CD-Rom and/or DVD Rom
Graphics Card
Sound Card and Speakers
Modem
Monitor
Printer
Keyboard, Mouse
Software
For most
software today, the configuration above will be required. At the end,
if we've got some money
left in the budget, we can splurge for some optional goodies like:
Scanner
WebCam
Memory Upgrade
HardDrive Upgrade
Printer Upgrade
CD-RW Drive
Network Card
4. Build
the Base: Case and PowerSupply
Case
Most Cases will come with a power supply, but be sure to double check
that the power supply is in fact
included with the case. You will be very supprised at the wide variety
of prices for cases. You will need to
select a particular case style. Case style will be decided by personal
taste and how much room you have
for the PC in your home. Popular case styles include: Full Tower, Mid-Tower
(also called a half-height) and
Desktop. A full tower case obviously takes up the most room, but also
gives you much more flexibility when
you need to add more hard-drives or a new CD-Rom drive. Full Towers will
typically come with several
expansion bays inside the case for adding new hardware. They are also
much easier to work on when
building a PC - lots more room! We would suggest getting a full tower
case if you have the room to put it,
if not, then try to get a mid-tower.
We've Selected an ATX
Full Tower Case with 13 Expansion Bays, BEIGE with a 300 Watt Power Supply.
DO NOT cut corners and get a cheaper case with a 220 Watt Power Supply.
You will pay for it in the
long run. Today's processors and peripherals have certain minimum power
requirements. You will be
much safer with a 300 Watt Supply.
Cost: About $100
Get the
Brain: MotherBoard, CPU and RAM
CPU
Since the kind of CPU you buy will determine in part what kind of
motherboard you will buy, we will
start with the CPU first and then move on to the motherboard. We know
that we are looking for a
processor that is probably a Pentium
III class, about 800Mhz. At the time of this writing, top speeds
are about 1.2Ghz in the retail market place. 800Mhz won't be top-line,
but will give us great speed at
competative prices.
Fundamentally, there are two choices up front: Intel or AMD.
Either manufacturer will give you a
quality product and will support the majority of retail software. Some
of the differences are in how
the different chips are optimized for different types of processsing.
If you are building a basic
desktop machine, you probably won't care too much about a few micro-seconds
here or there.
However, if you are building a gaming rig that will be used to display
lots of 3D graphics, then you
have a different set of choices.
We settled on a Pentium
III P3 800MHZ/256KB 133MHZ FSB SLOT1 800EB SECC2 chip, about $220.
This chip does only have a 256K L2 cache, while a 512K L2 cache would
be better, but it does
have the 133Mhz Front Side Bus speed which is good. We've traded a bit
of cache space for
the faster bus speed.
Cost:
About $220
MotherBoard
The motherboard
and RAM will be another big ticket item, so make sure to have at least
two or three
different selections to choose from. Look at some different vendors and
the different features offered.
Some motherboards still offer the older style ISA expansion slots. If
you do not have any older ISA
hardware peripherals, you probably don't need these. We suggest that you
have at least four expansion
slots and that the motherboard support USB and the AGP
graphics standard.
This is one
area where you don't need to buy name brand to get a good product. There
are several motherboard
vendords who put out good products. We like both ABit
and Asus as well as Intel.
The www.motherboards.com
website is a great place to look at different offerings.
Since our
CPU is a SLOT 1 processor, we need to make sure our motherboard is a SLOT
1 also. The motherboard
CPU socket and CPU style must match.
We found
a steal on the:
815E FCPGA/ICP, 512MB ATX 5PCI AGP4X SND LAN ATA100 133MHZ. This board
is from Intel
and has integrated Audio, Video and Networking hardware!
Cost:
About $135
RAM: Give
the Machine a Memory
Next we need
to add memory chips to make our base configuration complete. Our motherboard
will handle
either PC100 or PC133 RAM Chips. Since we've got a CPU that runs at 133Mhz
and a motherboard with a
bus speed of 133Mhz, we will also want to get memory that runs at 133Mhz.
Our RAM chip configuration will
be simple. A single 128MB, 168
Pin DIMM Chip of PC133 memory for about $50.
So, we've
gotten a case, power supply, a motherboard, a CPU and some RAM. We've
spent a total so far
of about $500. Ready to get some hard drives now? We've still got
another $500 we can spend!
5. Get
some Storage: Hard Drives, a Floppy and a CD-Rom
This
is actually the easy part. Big hard drives are cheap these days and there
are several good vendors.
Segate, Western Digital and Maxtor all provide decent drives. We like
the 10GB
EIDE drive from Western
Digital for about $90. A basic
3.5" Floppy will run no more than about $25. We will round out
our storage
features with a basic CD-Rom Drive. Again, there are many quality products
on the market at fairly low
costs. You can get a decent 48x
CD-Rom drive for about $50.
Total
Cost So Far: About $665.
6. Select
Your Graphics and Audio
Since
we've selected a motherboard that has built in Audio and Video support,
we get the flexibility of
either upgrading to more expensive add-on cards or to use our budget on
other items. We will wait
until all the basics are bought before deciding.
7. Add
A Modem
It's
really kind of hard to go wrong here. Modems may eventually become obsolete
and speeds
have not really increased much in the last 12-18 months. However, unless
you are ready to spend
the money on DSL or a Cable Modem, you really don't have too many other
choices for surfing the
web and faxing. We've picked a Creative
Blaster 56K Fax/Modem. About $35.
8. Select
a Monitor
Monitors
are a difficult item to select. Without actually seeing different monitors
side by side, it is
very difficult to tell which one actually looks better. We would suggest
going to a store display that
has a large number of monitors (CompUSA or a Computer Show) and get an
idea of the different
brands and what models look best. You will want to get at least a 17"
monitor that supports 1024x786
or higher resolution. Plan to spend about $200 - $250 on a decent monitor.
You can easily spend lots
more if your budget allows it. For our project, we've picked a Samsung
Synchmaster 17" monitor that
supports 1280x1024 at 65Hz. Approximately $190.
Almost
Done! Current Tally: About $880.
9. Keyboard,
Mouse and Accesories
You
can pick up a basic PS/2 keyboard almost anywhere for as cheap as $10
(sometimes less!). We like
the Logitec
Deluxe 104 for about $14. A good mouse should feel comfortable in
your hand, track easily and
will have the third 'wheel' as the middle key. Logitec also makes a nice
wheel
mouse for around $12.
Now
we really are almost done. We spent $26 on the mouse and keyboard which
pushes us just
over the $900 mark. Now for a bit of software.
10. Add
the Software
Rounding
out our system, we will need to purchase a base operating system and some
simple packages to
get us started. Don't forget, that with today's OpenSource movement, operating
systems like Linux are
available for free. You don't always have to buy decent software. Purchasing
a regular retail license for
Windows 2000 will be prohibative
at a little over $400 (besides which it blows our budget). You can
get a little creative here: check E-Bay.
People are always selling old versions of software like Windows 95.
Get an older version at auction, cheap and then buy an upgrade from the
vendor. If you luck out, you
may even find a newer version being sold cheap at auction. We checked
E-Bay at the time we wrote
this and found Windows 98 CD's being auctioned at about $80.
Final Total: $980.
Building
your own system can be fun and educational. Remember, do your research
and stay within your
budget and Happy Building!
Comments:tanderson@razertech.com
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