Sarasota PC Monitor
Building your own PC (07/02)
Hey Dude, you're gettin' a homebrew!
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@comcast.net
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Why would you want to build your own PC? You most likely won't save any money so in most cases, building your own PC makes no more sense economically than building your own automobile. However, it seems that experienced people are building custom systems today because it's the only way they can get exactly what they want. You also avoid proprietary designs that some companies use to keep you coming to them for replacement parts or upgrades. Best of all, having built the system yourself, you become very familiar not only with what you own, but with computers in general.
Cheap, off-the-shelf systems are notorious for low quality parts. Manufacturers that do offer decent systems make them to work, but they aren't concerned if the system doesn't work efficiently. Guess what! That's your job, and the only way you can be sure that your system is working with peak performance is to tune it with high quality components that you select.
Get your act together
Let's get the most difficult and time consuming part of the process out of the way first. What parts do you buy? Which ones are best for you?
There are many good places to buy computer parts. Visit a retail store in your area. They often provide good warranties, but the trade off may be that you will pay a little more than you would from a mail order house. Experience shows that you should avoid buying anything tied to a rebate. Rebates that fail to materialize or become difficult to collect make your "bargain" more hassle than it's worth.
Any place where people live that claims to be civilized will have at least one "mom-and-pop" store that sells and repairs computer equipment. You will probably find it in a strip mall. Regardless of location, such stores offer good prices and can provide individual attention. They may sell hardware directly from the manufacturer that comes wrapped in a static bag with very little documentation. If you feel you need the documentation, you should not buy OEM merchandise. The bottom line here is to do your homework to get the hardware you want at a fair market price. Now, let's go through each type of hardware:
Case
You probably don't think about your computer case any more often than you think about the chassis of your automobile. Yet it's vitally important that you make a good choice. A good case makes a difference in the way your system will perform in ways you may not even suspect.
If you plan to do a lot of upgrading, or experimenting, you should get a case with a removable motherboard. A case with a removable motherboard also makes troubleshooting much easier. Do you want your system on your desk, or on the floor? Do you want a desktop or a tower case allowing room for expansion? You may want spare drive bays and room to work inside.
Pay close attention to the form factor. Almost all newer motherboards are using the ATX form factor, so choose a case with this in mind. Turbo switches and key locks are ancient history. Avoid them. Reset and power buttons should be recessed to avoid accidental activation. Check the sturdiness of the case, and pay attention to how the case comes apart. Well-designed cases shouldn't require tools to access the interior. It's easier to work with a case that does not come apart in many pieces.
If you plan on installing a high-end processor in the motherboard, the cooling aspects of the box are very important. The design of the case should allow for cooling fans. An unobstructed air hole in the front of the case for a front-mounted case fan, with some method of air flow from the rear of the case, should be present. A decent case filling these requirements will sell for between $40 and $100.
Power supply
The PC case market is very competitive and many manufacturers include poorly designed and cheaply made power supplies to save money. That's only one reason why you should never buy a case with a pre-installed power supply. Most computer publications focus on the capacity of the power supply for very good reasons. You need one that can handle the energy requirements of your system with a comfortable margin for future expansion. Don't buy a power supply that only meets the exact needs of your components. Leave some room for expansion and get a good 400 watt unit. Look for one that has a four-pin, +12v connector in addition to the standard ATX connections. The label should say "Pentium 4 compatible".
Many power supplies also aid in cooling by having fans that suck air from the inside of the case and blow it out the back through the power unit. Fan monitoring capability is an excellent feature that will automatically shut down your PC if the fan fails. This prevents overheating problems.
When was the last time you read a review about a personal computer that even mentioned the ambient noise level of the machine? Yes, I thought so. Wouldn't you like one that doesn't sound like a jet engine going into afterburner? There is no good reason why a power supply can't handle your equipment and be quiet while doing it. Excellent power supplies with low noise levels are readily available and cost very little extra. It's a worthwhile investment you'll be glad you made. While you're at it, get two additional silent running cooling fans to install in your case. They are well worth the small additional expense.
Motherboards, chipsets & memory
Decisions! Decisions! Decisions! Intel P4 or AMD XP?
Intel P4: We're going to address both, but let's start with Intel. You want a motherboard that will house your Pentium 4 because you want faster clock speed. You can be guaranteed third party software compatibility, and you feel confident that Intel will still be around five years from now for future vendor support if you need it. Look for a motherboard that supports the newest "Northwood" version of the Pentium 4 and fits only into socket 478. Don't be pressured into the obsolete 423 socket motherboard. Why should you help somebody clear out his inventory at your expense?
Any P4 chip supports any one of three different memory types. PC 133 is the cheapest memory available. It's also the slowest and will ultimately disappoint you. Stay clear of it.
DDR RAM is very fast memory and a good choice, but be aware it will ultimately be a bottleneck if you go with the highest rated Intel chips. If you don't plan on using a 2.2 Ghz chip or higher, then DDR memory is your best choice.
If you decide you want the very best and nothing but Rambus DRAM will do, you will need a motherboard with the 850 chipset and dual channel configuration. This means you have to install the Rambus memory chips in pairs. If you want 512MB RDRAM, you need to install two 256MB RIMM memory modules, or one 512MB module with a dummy module called a CRIMM, or "continuity" module.
The motherboard should have the newest AGP 4 slot so you can take advantage of all those great games and multimedia applications coming on the scene.
Finally, check your power supply for P4 compatibility. (See the Power Supply section, above).
AMD Athlon: If you go with AMD it's because you want a CPU with superior core architecture. Who cares about clock speed anyway? A 1.5 GH Athlon XP offers a similar level of performance of a 2.0 Ghz P4.
So what if Rambus memory modules aren't supported? DDR333 memory is plenty fast enough. The only real concern is choosing the correct heatsink for your Athlon. There are gazillions of them available, but for safety go to AMD's Website and get their recommendation for heatsinks. Ditto for power supplies. Don't guess on these items. Follow AMD's recommendations.
After installing your operating system, do not fail to download the latest BIOS version and flash it to your motherboard. Do the same for your chipset drivers. Failure to do this upon installation is the biggest single contributing factor in poor motherboard performance. Your motherboard connects to everything on your system. Unless it's working in top form, the rest of your system's components will also suffer.
Video card
There is an enormous variety of video cards to choose from, each one claiming to be the best. Let's look at some general considerations. Any decent memory card will come with at least 64MB of onboard memory. If you work with graphic intensive applications or are a gamer, get a board with 128MM of DDR RAM. It does cost more, but your video performance will get a big boost. A well designed video card acts as a "secondary processor" to your main CPU. The chip on your motherboard will make all the calculations determining how and where graphic images end up on the screen, and your video card will do the rest.
Whatever card you get, make sure it's an AGP card. That will give you the best integration of your system components. Now think about what you'll be doing with your machine. If business applications and Internet searches form the bulk of your PC activities, you don't need a high end video card. Most video cards on the market today have more than adequate 3D and 2D capabilities for general use.
Perhaps you want a card with Video capture, TV-in, and TV-out capabilities. Cards that do everything tend to have performance deficiencies. A top notch gaming card that really pumps pixels is worth having if you're a gamer. Never mind the TV. You can buy a decent TV set cheaper than some of the do-everything cards on the market. Get a separate video capture card if you need or want that capability. Whatever you do, match it to your monitor. It makes no sense to buy a fantastic video card if your monitor can't handle the graphics.
Sound card
The sound card portion of the computer industry is also filled with many vendors. Your choice will depend on what you do with your computer. For general purpose use, integrated sound capability on the motherboard may be all you need. For more demanding souls, Creative Labs is a one stop shopping center for any conceivable audio need or function. Their newest concept, named Extigy, is an external box connected via USB 2.0. You get Dolby Digital 5.1 multi channel surround sound, EAX sound enhancements, and other desirable capabilities. It's biggest advantage is portability.
Creative also offers traditional PCI cards with features designed for gamers, musicians, and audiophiles. Check out the product line and make your best choice.
Hard drive
You shouldn't need to agonize over anything in this area and, at the risk of sounding dogmatic, stick with 7200 RPM IDE drives. Drives that operate at 5400 RPM are just too slow. Faster drives tend to generate heat, and unless you're willing to handle drive cooler issues, forget about them. Most of us will do just fine with 7200 RPM drives. For the best performance with an IDE drive today, a Western Digital 100MB drive with an 8MB cache will outperform almost anything else. Drives are cheap today, so get the largest you can afford.
Some high-end computers use a special disk configuration called RAID 0 for an increase in disk write speed. Those who require strong performance for photo and video editing are good candidates for this kind of disk array. Gamers, don't bother. A Western Digital 100GB 7,200 RPM drive with an 8MB cache will outperform any RAID 0 array for gaming by a wide margin at a better price. (The explanation is a bit lengthy for this article, but if you really want to know why, email me at vlabash@comcast.net and I promise to send it to you). You may also need a PCI RAID CARD (some motherboards have it built-in).
If you must have high speed drives, go for the SCSI interface. You will have to purchase additional hardware to support the SCSI bus and this will significantly increase your expenses.
Removable storage
You will probably have a 3.5" (1.44 MB) floppy on your system for no good reason except that some of us have a hard time letting go of the past. LS-120 drives were obsolete before they arrived on the scene, and ZIP drives are fast becoming irrelevant. CD-RW drives (650 - 700 MB) are great for backups, making music disks and archiving data without any serious capacity issues. Speeds are more than adequate, and prices are good. Get a fast one that will read at 40X or better, with write and rewrite capability. Standards have settled down, and proprietary incompatible interfaces are no longer an issue.
DVD recorders are still relatively expensive and suffer from five completely different competing standards. Get a DVD player if you want to watch movies or use software that would need multiple disks otherwise.
Membership application
Mice, keyboards, and other devices can take up as much time researching as any other component of your system. Do you want a normal mouse with a regular PS/2 connection or a USB 2.0 port? How about a cordless, radio-controlled rodent? Perhaps a cordless infra-red model suits you. Cordless mice sometimes have a jerky response, which doesn't bode well for gamers. For smooth, fast response, nothing works better than an optical mouse with a USB 2.0 connection. The best mice come from Logitek and Microsoft. Both companies manufacture products in several different sizes, recognizing that some of us have smaller hands than others.
You're faced with similar choices when shopping for a keyboard. The major consideration for our keyboard was that it have a tactile feedback that resembled an IBM Selectric typewriter. If you have ever worked on one of these, nothing else will ever be good enough again. Look for an ergonomically designed keyboard with a Selectric feel, and you won't be disappointed. Typing on a well-designed keyboard offering good tactile feedback, not only reduces the probability of developing repetitive strain injuries, but also reduces typographical errors. Price should be a very minor concern for this item. It makes far more sense to pay a few extra dollars for a well designed typing tool than it does to pay tens of thousands of dollars for orthopedic surgery which could have been easily prevented.
What we ended up with
Here's a list of all the parts we used for the PC. Instead of going for top-of-the-line components across the board, we selected reliable parts that would work well together for a good gaming system. Feel free to use different components in your own creation, but make sure they're all compatible with each other. You might also want to verify that all your parts come with up-to-date drivers for your operating system.
Case: PC Power and Cooling Mid-Tower. This is a relatively nondescript mid-tower case, except for one defining feature: its removable motherboard tray, which makes swapping the motherboard in and out of the case a relatively simple affair. http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com. $42
Power Supply: Turbo-Cool Silencer 400 ATX 400W
When you're building a machine from scratch, don't skimp by buying a generic, underpowered power supply. Wimpy power supplies can degrade performance, instigate crashes, and even lead to hardware failure. http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com. $169.15
Two Additional Silencer Cooling Fans. You can't have too much air circulation. http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com. $18
Motherboard: AsusP4T-E. This motherboard is loaded with appealing features such as Socket 478 for Pentium 4 (Willamette/Northwood), Intel 850 Chip Set, and 4 RIMM memory sockets supporting up to 2GB of PC800 Rambus Memory with dual channel support. Its Jumper Free technology lets you set or change system configuration within the BIOS instead of changing jumpers. It has 5 CPI slots, 1 AGP Pro slot, and one CNR (Comm. & Networking Riser). $179
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz Northwood Chip. We chose the Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz Northwood for great performance at a reasonable price. Other considerations were the 850 chip set supporting Rambus RAM, and the newest AGP 4 slot. $229
Memory: Two 256 MB Rambus Memory Modules. Rambus Memory is as fast as memory gets for the Pentium 4 right now. A faster Rambus is in the works, but if we waited for every thing that was coming down the pike we couldn't get started. $184
Hard Drive: Two 60 GB Western Digital Hard Drives . This model packs a 2MB cache with 60GB of storage. That's more than enough space for all our MP3s, videos and games. http://www.westerndigital.com. $260
Videocard: Visiontek Xtacy GeForce4 4600. It's not quite faster than light, but it's as close as you can get today. There are many features included simply not found in other cards. $389
Soundcard: Creative Labs Audigy X-Gamer. The 24-bit audio of the Audigy is much more than marketing hype. We prefer the Audigy's sound output of music, games, and just about everything else. http://www.creativelabs.com. $85
CD-RW: Plextor PlexWriter 24/10/40. Plextor makes excellent CD burners. It's as plain and simple as that. The 24x PlexWriter will burn a full 72-minute CD in just under four minutes at 40X, and features BurnProof technology at no extra cost. http://www.plextor.com. $190
DVD-ROM: LGX 16x DVD. Why do you need a DVD-ROM drive? To watch DVD movies and install really large DVD games, of course! http://www.pioneer.com. $75
Floppy Drive: Mitsumi
OK, floppy drives are obsolete and little more than relics from the past, but they cost very little, and at least once or twice a year you'll be glad you have one. http://www.mitsumi.com. $14
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP represents the convergence of Microsoft's workstation and consumer operating systems. There's absolutely no reason to run any other operating system. $99
If you need added security and some additional features, go ahead and spring for XP Professional edition, www.microsoft.com/windows. $199
Speakers: Creative Labs Inspire 5.1 5300 Series. True Dolby 5.1 sound system designed specifically for integration with Audigy series of sound cards also from Creative Labs. $100
Mouse: Logitec USB optical mouse with USB connection. We chose this mouse mainly because of Logitec's flawless ergonomic design. Reliability and ease of use were factors too. $28
Keyboard: Focus Electronic FK 2001. The closest we were able to get to the "feel" of IBM's legendary Selectric typewriters. $20
Network Card: Realtek RTL 8139 Family PCI Fast Internet NIC. $16
Total: $2,097.15
That's the overview of the hardware. We hope it serves as a helpful guide for selecting components to build or upgrade your PC. Next month, we will move into the actual assembly steps. :
Return to Vinny La Bash's Index
Copyright 2002. This article is from the July 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,300+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.