System Builder's Guide 2006

[djbbenn]

Introduction

For a while I, and through the forums, have been getting a lot of questions/requests to help choose parts for people's new computers. A lot of people are building their systems now a days instead of buying prebuilt, or want to be able to choose parts and have it built at the store. It is so much better to do so for a number of reasons. But the two major ones are, to save money, and to get what you want for what you do.

Yeah sure there are companies like Alienware, Voodoo, and Overdrive PC to name a few that build high-end systems. And if you can afford them, all power to you. But some people or a lot should I say, want to be able to build their system, to get exactly what they want, in case, parts, etc...and to be able to say "Yes I built that".

But some don't know where to start or just have questions of what should I buy? What is the difference between this and that? Well hopefully this guide will help you answer some of your questions.

Just a little side note: I am not saying one brand is better than another; it is a general recommendation of mine for better choices in certain circumstances. Each component has its own advantages and disadvantages. But this will give you a general idea of what brands tend to do better in performance or performance to value in certain areas. So here we go...

What computer do I need?

Almost all people who build their own computers build them for gaming or overclocking. But not everyone does. So when someone asks me, "what should I buy?” I say what is it for? As I said before, most who build their computers game/overclock, but some use them for a workstation, and other just for emails and surfing the net/budget computer. But people, who overclock, probably have the list of parts ready and have no need for this kind of guide. There may be some who want to get into overclocking and need a guide like this to get them started though.

So say you want a computer for gaming, well now you got something to point your needs towards in parts wise. How much do you want to spend? Well, this plays a huge part in it. I will talk more of this though the topics of the parts.

AMD or Intel?

Probably one of the most confrontational/rhetorical topics in computers. Give you a tip, don't go to a forum and ask "What's better, AMD or Intel?" You won't get anywhere; you will just start a post war. You might get some people who are really helpful and give you the truth, but there will be people who are what we call "fan boys", who will fight and bicker and be assholes and... well you get the point.

So the question is, AMD or Intel? Well really, it comes down the personal preference. A lot of people like AMD. But others like to be in the nice warm feeling of the world's largest semi-conductor company, and plus they have been around for a long time. I have had both Intel and AMD, they both served me well. I have no personal preference, what ever has more performance and the better price wins me. So let's dig in and take a look...

AMD

For AMD, you have the Sempron, Opteron 64, Opteron 64 X2, Athlon 64, Athlons 64 X2, Athlon FX series and even the older Athlon XP. The FX series being the fastest single core CPUs to date. There are the Semprons, but they are more along the budget lines and should be avoided when you're planning on any good gaming.

The Athlon XPs are old and out of date now, and you will be hard pressed to find them in some stores now. The Opterons are expensive and are meant for servers/workstations. They can be a viable option though, and there will be an example of one in the systems later on in the article. There are new Opterons that come in the 939 socket. These are the Venus (single core) and Denmark (dual core) variants.

Then there comes the socket. The older sockets like 462, and even 754 should be avoided. 462 are completely obsolete, and 754 lacks the new features like Dual Channel memory and support for the newer cores, athought the new Turions use that socket. Now if you just surf the web and check emails, a socket 754 will be all you need, as you don't require the computing power. Socket 939 is the newest out, and has all the new features like support for Dual Core, the new cores and all that fun stuff.

The socket AM2 (The newer form of socket 940. Other 940 pin chips will not work on socket AM2) will be out some time in 2006, and will have DDR2 support. If you have an existing 939 board that is top of the line, don't freak out about having to switch to AM2. It's only DDR2, which has no huge gain over DDR. But if you are changing over completely, well go AM2.

So now that we have our socket, what are we going to put in it? Dual cores are slowly becoming an advantage in games. Game makers are starting to take advantage of the second core, and there are some video card drivers out that support the second core. If you like to do lots of Windows based things, and you multitask like crazy, a dual core is for you.

If you have a lot of money to spend nad are not into overclocking, get an FX. The newest being the FX-57. The FX-51, and FX-53 should be avoided as they are older and are socket 940, which is expensive. You can get an Athlon 64 that will be just as fast for half the price of these older FX series.

For games nowadays, you should probably have at least a 3200+ Athlon64. If you are overclocking, get a 3000+ (3000+ production has stopped, but are still around) or a 3700+ San Diego. But if you are not and you like to stay stock, get at least a 3200+. The reason for this is because, where parts like video cards are so powerful, you need to have a powerful CPU to keep up with graphics card(s). Otherwise you have just wasted money by buying a nice powerful video card which is limited by the CPU.

Also with CPUs, there are cores to consider too. The newest single cores out are the "Venice" and the "San Diego". The difference between these two is the Level 2 Cache size. The more the better, but not by much. But it does crank the price up a bit. So when you buy a CPU from AMD, go with these cores as they are newer and have some better features like improved Integrated Memory Controller (IMC) and SSE3 support. The dual cores, also have different cores called "Manchester" and "Toledo". Difference again is size of Level 2 Cache. Again, more cache means more performance. As mentioned above about the Opterons, they come in dual and single core, but they always have 1MB cache. There will be more on cache below.

Here's a link to show the prices of AMD CPUs.


An AMD Athlon Socket 939 core.

Intel

For Intel you have the Celeron, Pentium 4 series, which include the 500, 600 series. The older P4s, which are Socket478 should be avoided when building a new system. There is nothing wrong with them, but they are outdated and work with very few PCI-E boards. There are the P4 EEs (Extreme Edition) too; they are Intel's top CPUs. These are very expensive and not worth the money unless you like to waste it on little tiny bits of performance increase.

Also there is the mobile Pentium M to consider for desktops. You can get an adapter (ASUS CT-479) and run the Pentium M on the older S478 boards. So there is still some hope for the Socket 478, and there are some boards with PCI-E that will support these bad boys. These perform really well at gaming, when overclocked, but are not much good at other stuff compared to the Athlon 64. If you don't want to overclock/spend hours tweaking and fiddling with your system, you should stay away from these.

Celerons, stay away from them too unless you only check emails and surf the web, or maybe even do some extreme Solitaire playing. Pentium D's are Intel Dual Core solution and are excellent for multitasking. But there is no advantage in gaming yet. Celeron M is based on the Dothan core, however may provide a viable option for the Socket 479 on the budget people. It is a Dothan core with 1 MB cache instead of 2 MB and performs very nicely, while keeping power consumption down. The new Yohan mobile core will replace the Dothan slowly.

Xeons are usually server/workstation processors, and are not your every day choice, but they still can be used for a home PC. They can be quite the little powerhouses. When it comes to the Xeons there are two cores that are the main type: "Nocona", and "Irwindale". Again, the difference is cache. These are based on the P4 Prescott, and the main difference to a regular P4 is that the Xeon has Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP). SMP is basically a fancy way of saying multiple processors.

The Prestonia is a Northwood based processor, and is outdated, so you would go with the newer generation like the Nocona and Irwindale. The downside of Xeons at the moment is boards are pricey for PCI-E support and are not really offering many overclocking options. The only cheaper boards are for AGP, which is not worth getting when buying a new computer.

The P4 600 series are the newer versions of the 500 and have 2MB of Level 2 cache and support 64 Bit (EM64T). These all use the new socket LGA775, which has all the new features so you can't go wrong. The 6X1 are the new version of the 600 series, and use the new 65nm process, these are the Cedar Mill cores. Now for a minimum processor for gaming, at least 3.2 GHz. Other wise youe are going to bottleneck, and waste money on buying a really fast graphics card. These are your Intel options.

Intel's HT technology (Hyper Threading) is a multitasking solution, and is almost standard on all their CPUs. It doubles certain parts of the CPUs die so it can handle more threads at one time. It will show up in Windows as two CPUs, but it is not as effective as two. It does help with multitasking though compared to a non-HT enabled CPU.


An Intel Prescott Core.


Still don't know what to get? Well I basically say, it is up to you. But my opinion, and I have a lot that agree with me... Intel CPUs are better for Windows and other programs. They are still great at gaming but to get one that would beat a certain AMD, would cost a lot more money. AMD is better for gaming, simply because they perform better there and are cheaper. Dual cores are not worth the money at the moment unless you do heavy multitasking.

When it comes to clocks don't compare Intel to an AMD. A lot of people will see that amazing 3.4 GHz on an Intel, and then look at a 2.4 GHz AMD and think, well the Intel is faster. ITS NOT!! One way of looking at it is, Intel does 6 Instructions Per Clock (IPC), and AMD does 9 IPC. So if we get out the old calculator and do the math... Intel 3.4GHz, 3400 * 6 = 20400, AMD 2.4GHz, 2400 * 9 = 21600. That is a better way to compare them in raw speed.

Don't even bother getting hung up on 64 Bit. Its time will come along with dual core. With sockets, well get the newest one to date, 939 for AMD and 775 for Intel. Remember this is at the moment of this article being written, things with computers change very quickly.

Intel has a new CPU, code named "Conroe". This looks to be a very powerful CPU, and AMD doesn't seem to have anything to stand up against it. It uses a whole new architech, that looks to be working very well.

Here is a little more on CPU cache and what it can do...

Cache is a very high performance memory built into the CPU (on-die). There are usually two levels, Level 1 and Level 2, and sometimes Level 3. Level 2 is the one that comes in different sizes. Usually 512 KB to 1024 KB. Cache is used to store commands and data from the memory, which are used a lot. So the more cache, the more it can hold, and in return, the CPU does not have to depend on the RAM as much.

This is the major downfall of the performance of the Intel Celeron CPUs. The Celerons, only have 256 KB of cache, so they tend to run out and the CPU has to resort to the RAM to get instructions. When this happens the CPU must match the speed of the RAM. This causes a major performance loss. So cache can play an important part, and certain programs run better with more cache. This applies to both Intel and AMD.

There will be some cases, like in the Intel EE family, that they have 2 MB of cache. With everything, there is a point of diminishing returns. In other words, it you can get so far, and you won't see a difference. The amount of cache these have makes very little difference. Certain CPUs like the Pentium M seem to benefit from this extra cache. But in most cases, 1024 KB is fine.

When you choose a CPU, there is usually a choice of cache. A prime example of this would be a AMD Athlon 3800+ and a 4000+. The only difference between the two is the 4000+ has a 1024 KB Level 2 cache instead of 512 KB on the 3800+. The cores will be different, but if they are the newer cores like the Venice (3800+) and the San Diego (4000+), the only difference is the cache. The clocks are the same (2400 MHz) and they have all the same features. This applies to other CPUs too of course.

This should have given you some basics to help make your decision on what CPU to get. Compare what you need the CPU for to what you can afford. Once you picked a couple of CPUs that are in your price range, go on the net and look up some comparisons of them.

3. Motherboard

Motherboards are one of the most important parts. When buying a motherboard, you must consider the following:

1. Socket - For AMD or an Intel?
2. Form factor - ATX, BTX, mATX, etc.
3. Chipset - nForce4, nForce3, i955, i945, i925, etc.
4. Graphics Interface - PCI-E, AGP, SLI, Crossfire?
5. Money - How much are you willing to spend?

Don't get scared by any of these. Once, you have your CPU selected, you choose your board. If you got an AMD Socket939, you get a 939 board. Same goes for Intel based systems. The form factor: ATX is the standard and is probably your best choice. BTX is the newer one and has not quite caught on yet. And mATX is micro, that's for small form factor cases, which is great if you like to go to LAN parties a lot and hate carrying a big tower around. But these can also be a little bit of a pain when it comes to heat. So basically you will want to go ATX. Almost every board you see will be ATX.

There are three main types chipset brands. VIA, NVIDIA nForce and Intel.
When you have an Intel based system, you will probably have an Intel chipset, but you could have an nForce 4 Intel Edition from NVIDIA. VIA and NVIDIA mainly do AMD. The nForce chipsets are really great and a lot of people like them, the VIAs aren't bad, but they are not as popular as they are not that good of overclockers. The nForce4 is probably one of the best, if not the best AMD chipset to date. ATI has an Express 200 chipset out, and its not available on many boards yet, but will be on the Crossfire boards. If you want to get a Pentium D, you must get a supporting chipset. Either the Intel i945, or i955.

When it comes to the graphics interface, get PCI-E. If you are building on a budget, and you don't play many games, sure go with AGP if its cheaper. But if you are gaming get PCI-E. Eventually, you will have to make the move, so you might as well do it now, plus a lot of the newer cards only come in PCI-E.

SLI? Well if you have money, and want SLI (Scalable Link Interface), make sure you get a SLI board. A lot of people will get an SLI motherboard just for the board and never use the other slot, but it will give them a chance to have an easy performance upgrade down the road.

Crossfire? Well it's just out now. There should be more selection of Crossfire boards out soon. Again, just like the SLI, it's a good idea to get a board that supports it, even if you don't want it, but you will not limit yourself down the road.

Some good makes of boards are:

• ASUS
• DFI
• MSI
• ABIT
• Gigabyte

That's just to name a few... probably some of the best boards out now are the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR Expert and the Abit AA8XE Fatality. There are tons of other good boards out there, and it's a good idea to read lots of reviews when choosing a motherboard.



[wizz's note: article fine up to here]

4. RAM

When you choose RAM (Random Access Memory) there are two types to consider. DDR, and DDR2. Most people who don't know much about this sort of thing will automatically think that DDR2 is better. Well, in fact it isn't. With the newest DDR2 running at a crazy 1 GHz, yeah it is the fastest, but it is also extremely expensive. All of the new Intel based systems will use DDR2.

DDR

DDR stands for Double Data Rate. In other words, memory like PC3200, has a true frequency of 200 MHz. But it is doubled to 400 MHz do to DDR. The standard is PC3200. Which means it has a peak rate of 3200 MB/s and runs at 200 MHz. So if you decide on slower/cheaper memory to save money like PC2700, it will hit 2700 MB/s at 333 MHz, resulting in slower performance. Stuff like PC4000 is used for overclocking mainly. When you see Dual Channel, you must have two of the same types of RAM modules. This doubles the bandwidth of the memory, and results in a nice performance increase. Every new system you build should run Dual Channel.

The numbers "2.5-3-3-8" are the memory's timings. The lower the better. The lowest I've seen to date that you can buy is 1.5-2-2-5. But some boards can't even run at 1.5. So the best to get is 2-2-2-5. With Intel based systems, timings are not as important. Intel CPU’s feed off of bandwidth more, so if you don't mind losing points in benchmarks, save yourself a few dollars. AMD systems generally love the lower timings. There is more on memory timings here.

DDR2

DDR2, also seen as PC2 sometimes will be run on the Intel systems and the newer AMD system that have socket M2. It is just a newer version of DDR and uses a lot of the same features. This a 240-pin memory module, DDR is 184-pin so remember that they will not work in boards that are designed for the other! Where DDR2 has high clock rates, you'd think it would be faster, but because it has slower timings, it really balances it out with the performance of DDR. So when choosing a system, don't worry about not having DDR2. It does not have that much of an advantage yet. This also can be run in Dual Channel mode.

Good makes of RAM are:

• OCZ
• Corsair
• Crucial
• Mushkin
• Kingston

When buying memory, there will be certain types called "value select". This just means that it has low timings and uses a cheaper memory chips. As I said before, 2-2-2-5 is about the best in DDR, and 2.5-3-3-8 is usually value select. With DDR2, PC4200 is usually the value series, and has timings like 4-4-4. If you are building a budget system for emails and such, you won't need really fast memory, or a lot.

For gaming you should have at least 1 GB. Some games now need about 2 GB to run full out. Prime examples of this are Battlefield 2 and Quake 4. 2GB is slowly becomming the normal, and with the release of Windows Vista with a minium requirerment of 1GB, 2GB is not looking to be overkill.

Dual Channel kits are the best way to buy memory, because the modules are tested togeather and will run in dual channel.

A quick talk on memory for overclocking too... if you plan on doing any form of overclocking, try to stay away from generic memory. If you are building on a budget or a just a net surfing computer, you can use some generic memory to save some bucks. If you want high performance, even without overclocking get good memory.

There are two main types of chips which are highly favoured among overclockers. These are the famous Winbond UTT (UnTesTed) and the Samsung TCCD. Winbond's best memory was BH-5, but it is out of production. A lot of people still swear by this ram. Its known best for its low timings (Generally 2-2-2-5) at a mid-high FSB (220-250 MHz). The disadvantage of this is that it requires a lot of voltage, about 3.3V before the results really start to show. TCCD is high FSB with relatively low timings (Generally 2.5-3-3-7). It is known for hitting 300+ FSB with a voltage of around 2.8-2.9V.

Experienced overclockers usually use the Winbond BH-5 where it uses so much voltage. These overclockers will volt mod their board to get a high Vdimm. You can get a product called the OCZ DDR booster that will enable you to get a higher Vdimm (Be sure to check motherboard compatibility before considering this). BH-5 use to be the best overclocking RAM, but has since lost popularity when TCCD came into the picture. It is still widely used though.

TCCD is a lot better for general overclocking, and beginners. Beginners are better suited where it does not require much voltage, but also pretty extreme overclocking where it can hit a 300+ FSB. It will take most things you throw at it. It will usually support 2-2-2 timings at 220 FSB with 2.7-2.8V. This type of RAM does not respond to voltage like the BH-5.

When building a high performance system, don't skimp on memory. And if you overclock, get the very good stuff. It is crucial to the system.

5. Video card...

First things first, AGP or PCI-E. Well what board did you get? If you're building a new computer you should have gone PCI-E unless you're building a budget computer for general use. Next question...ATI or NVidia? Up to you. Most of the time it makes hardly any difference between them, for example an ATI Radeon X850XT PE and an Nvidia 6800Ultra, because when you get cards that are that powerful, the bottleneck turns to the CPU. So the cards will be waiting for the CPU, and in return you see no difference. Either way, you will be happy with whatever card you get. You best off going on the net and reading a few reviews and see what one compares to what. Then decide on what one is better for the price.

SLI, Crossfire...Crossfire is new out, and SLI has been around for a bit now. With Crossfire and SLI, they are similar in some ways, but both need a different chipset and in return a different board. Other ways SLI and Crossfire are quite different, SLI you must have two identical cards, while with Crossfire, you get one card, and then you buy a master card that works with a bunch of different cards.

Another way the two are different is that SLI uses a bridge to link the two cards together inside the computer, while Crossfire uses a special cable that link the two card directly to one monitor. In a way it seems a bit of a weird way of doing it, but it makes perfect sense when you see how it is done.

If you decide on SLI or crossfire, remember, that having two video cards will not double your performance. In certain games it comes fairly close to doubling but in most it does not increase that much. Also remember, with the new video cards now a days, they are so powerful they can cause your CPU to bottleneck. A prime example of this is the new Nvidia 7800 GTX 512MB, in SLI mode, unless you have a very powerful CPU, you will bottleneck. When you bottleneck, your basically wasting money on these expensive cards, where you're not getting their full power.

For games now, you should have at least a X800 or a 6800. But when buying a new card for gaming your best off getting one of the newest series out. The games now are so demanding on requirements that you have to get good hardware to run the game good. The new series from Nvidia, the 7800 series is a very powerful solution and tends to be cheaper than their existing 6800 series. ATI's main high-end cards are the X1800XT, and the X1800XL. There are cards below these to fit different price categories.If your building a system for internet and emails, there is absolutly no need for a powerful gaming card, it's just a waste of money.

6. Power Supply!!

I consider this one of the most important parts of you're decision in parts. DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT skimp on the Power Supply Unit!!

If you run any high performance part, you must have a powerful enough PSU to keep your system stable. With budget systems it's not to bad, but if you run a high-end video card(s), get a high end PSU. There is nothing worse than waking up to the smell of a fried PSU, or having random freezes in a game.

If you run a SLI/Crossfire system, you should have at least a 500watt. And make sure that the 12V rail is at least 22Amps. You can go lower, but its better to have that amount. You might see a PSU with a reading for two 12v rails. These are really good, because you can have an independent 12v for your graphics. The requirerments for X1900's in CrossFire is some ridiculus 550Watts with a minium of a 38A 12v rail!

To help you decide, you're best off to go on the net and read a lots of review on PSUs.

Some great ones are:

• OCZ Powerstream ADJ series.
• PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cools
• Antec
• Enermax
• Xclio
• Fortron

They are a few, the Turbo Cool is a very good PSU, but pricey. The OCZ Powerstream is one of my favorites. Also, just because it's a high watt rated PSU, don't get tricked by that. It's like the clocks of an Intel vs. an AMD. A well made 400watt will be much better than a cheap 500.

And one other thing when it comes to its power rating, on most PSU's, the power rating you see is its MAX POWER. So if a PSU is rated for 500watts, you can almost guarantee that is only puts out 400 consistently. There are a couple that I can think of, off hand, that give their true constant power output, and these are the Turbo Cools, and all the OCZ made PSU's.

Once again, if you decide to overclock, have a very good PSU. When you overclock, you use more voltage and more power, so make sure you have a power supply that can keep up.

7. Hard Drive/CD/DVD

Hard drives, well what are you going to be doing on your computer? If you game you'll want a fairly large drive, unless you install and uninstall games all the time. You may have important information on your drive and you want it backed up, so you might want to consider two of the same drives and run them in a RAID array.

There is more a decision to choosing a hard drive than you think. Drives now can be set up in a way called RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). A what? RAID was developed for server use mainly, but has maid out to the PC. There are different types of RAIDs, but the most popular or most used is RAID 0 (stripping) and RAID 1 (mirroring). There are others, but I wont talk about these.

RAID 0 is a stripping array, which means it has two identical drives combined as one. So if you had to 80GB drives in RAID 0, it would show as a single 160GB drive. The point of this is, when you send data to the drives it gets broken up in to clusters of two. One is sent to one drive while the other to the other drive. In theory, it would double the speed of the drives performance, but it does not. RAID 0 zero mainly shows through when it's in a server where there are a lot of big seeks and transfers. The disadvantage of RAID 0 is, if one drive fails, the other drives information is useless as well.

RAID 1 is a mirroring array. It is used to back data up. Simply put, copies the first drive and puts it to the second drive. If you have two 80GB drives, you will only have 80GB of storage where the second drive is just a mirror of the first. The advantage of this is, if one drive fails, you can just plug the other in and your good to go again.

RAID 5 is used on three or more drives and stripes across the drives with a error correction information. It has a parity disk that is used to rebuild a RAID if one of the drives failes. It is and improvment over RAID 4.

There is more on RAID levels here.

For the interface of the drives, the new ones are SATA and SATA2. SATA has a max transfer rate of a 150Mb/s and the SATA2 has a max of 300MB/s. The IDE based drives have up to 133MB/s transfer rates. Don't get caught up in these ratings, as the drives never hit them. I've seen people with SATA have a max burst rate of 120Mb/s and people running IDE based drive hit 120Mb/s also. IDE is also used on CD/DVD and floppy.

The fastest hard drives out there (besides SCSI) are the Western Digital Raptors. Now these are extremely expensive for such small capacities. But if you're into having the fastest system, want a few seconds faster load times and high benchmarks, these bad boys are for you. The new WD1500 Raptor with it's 150GB is a very tempting drive, but with a high price, they're not the best band for your buck.

But for most people a 160GB or 200GB hard drive is good. Seagate's are really well made long lasting drives as well as Western Digital. Maxtor make a good drive for the money too. IDE, will be great if you're on a tight budget and want to save every bit you can. But the SATA versions are usually about $10 more. When you see a hard drive with a 2MB, 8MB, or even 16MB buffer, that's just a little storage to help speed up small operations and helps the drives efficiency. A bigger buffer will help in performance, but will also increase the price.

For a CD/DVD, your best of just getting a combo drive. When it comes to speed ratings, the higher the number in front of the X translates to a faster drive. The fastest out is a 56X, but they are not very common. Most top out around 52X. The original drive, which was 1x, which stood for 150KB/s, so the higher the X factor, the faster the transfer rate. Most CD/DVD drives are IDE still but a company like Plextor has made SATA drives now. Some good makes are:

• Plextor
• NEC
• Sony
• Pioneer

The NEC 3540A's are a sweet drive for the price. They burn dual layer DVD's as well and are pretty fast on their CD reads which is about 48x.

8. Cooling

Ahh cooling, well any person who builds there own system knows they need to keep it cool. For some, stock cooling is fine...for others the stock cooling is still good, but they want to have some better cooling or to make there system a little more special. For others they need it, either for overclocking or just to keep all though high-end parts cool.

There are two categories to cooling- passive and active cooling. Passive cooling is just having an either a heatsink on a chip and no fans moving or circulating airflow around and away from the heatsink. This was good for Pentium 1's, but now most things require fans or active cooling. Some motherboards still use passive cooling on their chipsets and most RAM is just passive. But some of the newer high performance overclocking RAM needs active cooling.

Then there's active cooling, basically in forced cooling, like fans for example. It uses power to do, and is required for all these hot new parts. Well let's take a look at what kind of options there are, from simple to exotic...

• Heatsink - your basic cooling, used on some chipsets and ram. Not very good for today's systems.
  
• Fan and heatsink - Your next step up, uses a standard heatsink with a fan mounted on top. Can be one of the most effective types of cooling if the heatsink is properly installed and well made. There is a lot of technology when it comes to heatsinks. Some heatsinks have pipes called "heat pipes". This is where there is a pipe filled with a liquid that turns to a vapour and goes through the fins, and once cooled, condenses back to a liquid. Its has a similar concept to phase change. It is a very effective way of heat transfer.
  
• Water cooling - Water in your system?...yes, doesn't sound like much of a good idea, but it's a very good cooling method. It can be very expensive for a full system that cools the works...a good water block (heatsink) can be as much as one heatsink. Then you need a pump, piping, reservoir, and a radiator. So as you can see it can get quite pricey. So this option is not for everyone. There are some value systems that will do a good job, but they are normally limited and not worth the hassle.
  
• Peltier - A form of extreme cooling, uses thermo electric technology. Again not for everyone, mostly overclockers. Uses a thermal electric pad that gets really hot on one side and very cold on the other. You still need a good heatsink or water system to cool the hot side. And of course, the cold side goes on the CPU/GPU.
  
• Phase Change - A very expensive and extreme cooling solution. Not for the faint hearted. Uses a similar method to heat pipes. It has liquid that is pumped over the object being cooled. The liquid then turns to a gas from being heated. And goes back to a condenser, which turns it, back into a liquid. This a cooling solution used for extreme overclocking and causes sub-zero temps. This is not your everyday cooling solution. There are some Phase Change coolers that are a little more built for everyday use, but are still only an advantage to overclockers.
  
• LN2 (liquid Nitrogen) & Dry Ice - Oh Yeah baby!...nothing fancy here, just a copper cup filled with liquid Nitrogen and is put on top of the CPU. Cause temperatures as low -200C! Dry Ice is another extreme way of cooling, again not very practical unless you want to set records. Is about -100C, not as potent quite as LN2. These don't even bother with them. Because chances are, if you're reading this guide to help you with your part selection, you are not going to be overclocking high enough to remotely need these.

So as you can see there are many types of cooling, some aren't very practical though. But the most popular being the good old heatsink and fan. When you buy heatsinks there are two materials they can be made from. These are Copper and Aluminum. Some heats sinks consist of either materials, or just one.

Copper has about twice the thermal conductivity of Aluminium. Therefore Aluminium has a lower thermal conductivity, it transfers heat less efficiently. But Aluminium will radiate heat off better than Copper. It has a higher heat capacity, so it takes more to heat it. Another advantage of Aluminium is that it's a lot more easily shaped and costs less, but has less general performance. You can get Aluminium and Copper based heatsinks, but a pure Copper one will usually perform better where it has a better thermal conductivity, but will cost more.


Thermal paste, its a paste that has a high thermal conductivity. It is used to fill in all those little imperfections of heatsinks/IHS. Thermal paste is very crucial to a good cooling system, but also can be kill cooling if it is not properly installed. The only time you will need to apply thermal paste is when you are installing your own heatsink or water block.

A well-made heatsink needs very little thermal paste. If you put too much paste on a heatsink, you will hinder it from working properly. Also when applying paste, you must be very careful not to get it one exposed circuits. Thermal paste is very electrically conductive as well. People have blown hundreds of dollars of components from thermal paste.

When applying thermal paste, you need a very thin layer of it, quite a but less than a millimetre thick, usally a drop the size of a pea. Remember it is used to fill in the imperfections of the heatsink. These imperfections are extremely small. When spreading it, people generally use a credit card, or something with a very straight edge.

The most commonly used is Artic Silver 5 (AS5). This is the best thermal paste you can get. There are other makes, but this is the best to get and it will help your temperatures a lot.

9. Sound

Most motherboards come with onboard sound now, and its pretty good most of the time. In the case of the Nforce 4 based motherboards, the onboard sound isn't that great. Most users will want to upgrade to a higher quality sound card or a high definition. Boards that come with AC97 onboard audio, tend to have very nice sound for onboard. Onboard sound is usually good for everyday use, but for gaming and if you're the least bit serious about your games, you probably will want to upgrade your sound.

Sound cards are dominated by the SoundBlaster audio by Creative. They make great sound cards that sound very good. They use a separate sound processor called a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The point of the DSP is that the sound card does all the work for the sounds and not the CPU. This will help increase performance of the system. This is really helpful in games that need the CPU a lot, so it's good when the CPU has a one less thing to execute/do.

One thing about the SoundBlaster cards is not the card itself, but the drivers. They seem to have a lot of problems with the drivers for these cards. Certain programs used to run the drivers can mess up; other people have had problems with getting the card working. But their drivers are getting better, slowly.

10. Case

Up to you. Just make sure you get one that will fit your form factor. So don't go out and buy a small form factor case and get an ATX board. Get one that's a good make too, there's nothing worst that striping mother baord mounting holes due toa cheaply made case.

Some good makes are:

• Chemning/Chieftec
• Asphire/Antec
• Cooler Master
• ThermalTake
• Lian-Li

A lot of people like to get their own cases and "mod" them to look better. This is a great hobby and is getting more and more popular. Its just another way to make your system that much different.

Conclusion to Part Selection

This concludes the guide to choosing parts for your system, hope it helped you. There are many things to decide when building a new computer, but what I mentioned will be the basics and most of the advanced sides of the decisions. Just try not to go big on one thing and skimp on the other, a well-balanced system is important for stability. On the next page I have put together some systems and each will be a example of what kind of parts are used for certain classes of systems...

System Examples

Here are some parts that will act as an example of some systems. This should give a general idea of what kind of parts you would need to build a certain class of system. It will be mostly based on "gaming" type systems, but will have examples of other types. The AMD's come before the Intel because I did it in alphabetical order, its not to say that the top AMD system is not faster than the top Intel based system.


First off, I will show you a couple of examples of "budget" computers. These are aimed towards people who just want a system for checking emails, surfing the net, school projects, extreme Solitaire, etc...

System 1: Budget System Intel
CPU:	Intel Celeron 330J
Motherboard:	ASUS P5P800 865PE
Memory:	Corsair Value 512MB PC3200
Video Card:	Sapphire Radeon 9600PRO 128MB
PSU:	OKIA 450W
Harddisk:	Western Digital 160GB WD1600JB
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Onboard
Cooling:	stock will be fine
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $450-500US

System 2: Budget System AMD
CPU:	AMD Sempron S754 2800+
Motherboard:	ASUS K8N
Memory:	Corsair Value 512MB PC3200
Video Card:	Sapphire Radeon 9600PRO 128MB
PSU:	OKIA 450W
Harddisk:	Western Digital 160GB WD1600JB
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Onboard
Cooling:	stock will be fine
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $450-500US

These are very baseline computers and will limit you a fair bit. You could do some light and I mean light gaming with older games with these, but it would not be very enjoyable. These are more towards emails and the net. There is no point to having high-end parts in systems like these, as they do not require them for their use. These systems are meant to save money and are not meant for high performance. The rough price for a system like this would probably run you about $450-500US.

Now to show you some gaming systems. From the high-end to the low-end. There will be AMD and Intel versions, and will be in order of highest to lowest performance. The AMD based system came before the Intel; because that's just the way I did it. It is not saying that the AMD above a certain Intel is better.

System 1: Performance System AMD
CPU:	AMD Athlon FX-57
Motherboard:	Asus A8N-Duluxe SLI
Memory:	OCZ Gold PC3200 2-2-2-5 2 X 512Mb
Video Card:	2 X Nvidia 7800GTX
PSU:	Turbo Cool 510
Harddisk:	2 X Western Digital Raptors 74GB Raid 0
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Creative SB Agility ZS
Cooling:	Swiftech H2O-120 Water system
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $3000-3500US

System 2: Performance System Intel
CPU:	Intel P4 3.73GHz EE
Motherboard:	Asus P5GD1 SLI
Memory:	Corsair PC2-5400 2 X 512Mb
Video Card:	2 X Nvidia 7800GTX
PSU:	Turbo Cool 510
Harddisk:	2 X Western Digital Raptors 74GB Raid 0
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Creative SB Agility ZS
Cooling:	Swiftech H2O-120 Water system
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $3000-3500US

System 3: Performance System AMD
CPU:	AMD Athlon 4000+
Motherboard:	DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra-D
Memory:	OCZ Gold PC3200 2-2-2-5 2 X 512Mb
Video Card:	ATI Radeon X850XT PE
PSU:	OCZ Powerstream 520ADJ
Harddisk:	2 X Western Digital Raptors 74GB Raid 0
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Creative SB Agility ZS
Cooling:	Thermalright XP-90/Vantec Tornado
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $2200-2500US

System 4: Performance System Intel
CPU:	Intel P4 650 3.4GHz
Motherboard:	Asus P5GD1
Memory:	Corsair PC2-5400 2 X 512Mb
Video Card:	Nvidia 6800Ultra
PSU:	OCZ Powerstream 520ADJ
Harddisk:	2 X Western Digital Raptors 74GB Raid 0
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Creative SB Agility ZS
Cooling:	Zalman VF7700
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $2200-2500US

System 5: Performance System AMD
CPU:	AMD Athlon 3200+
Motherboard:	Asus A8V-E Deluxe
Memory:	OCZ Premier P3200 2.5 3 3 7 2x 512Mb
Video Card:	Nvidia 6800GT
PSU:	OCZ Powerstream 520ADJ
Harddisk:	Seagate 7200.7 160GB
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Onboard
Cooling:	Stock cooler
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $1500-1900US

System 6: Performance System Intel
CPU:	Intel P4 540J 3.2GHz
Motherboard:	Abit AAx8 Fatal1ty 775
Memory:	OCZ Value Pro DDR-2 PC4200
Video Card:	ATI Radeon X800XT
PSU:	OCZ Powerstream 520ADJ
Harddisk:	Western Digital 160GB WD1600JB
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Onboard
Cooling:	Stock cooler
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $1500-1900US

Here are just two server based components/workstation computers to please the odd person out there that likes this kind of home setup. They are quite a powerful little home PC.

System 1: Workstation System Intel
CPU:	Intel Xeon Nocona 3.0GHz X 2
Motherboard:	TYAN S2676ANRF SSI EEB
Memory:	OCZ 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 X 2
Video Card:	SAPPHIRE Radeon X850PRO PCI-E
PSU:	OCZ Powerstream 520ADJ
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 10 160GB SATA X 2 Raid 0
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Onboard
Cooling:	Stock cooler
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $1500-1800US

System 2: Workstation System AMD
CPU:	AMD Opteron 246 SledgeHammer S940
Motherboard:	ASUS K8N-DL
Memory:	CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR ECC
Video Card:	SAPPHIRE Radeon X850PRO PCI-E
PSU:	OCZ Powerstream 520ADJ
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 10 160GB SATA X 2 Raid 0
Optical:	NEC ND-3520A
Sound:	Onboard
Cooling:	Stock cooler
Case:	Personal choice
Price:	estimated $1500-1800US

There are some systems that should give you a rough idea of High to low-end PC's. Prices are just a general idea to what they can be. Each part will vary in price from place to place and will get cheaper as time roles on. There are hundreds of more combinations. These a just a few examples of what can be built.

When you buy components, you will start to notice that you will get to a certain class, then all of sudden, the next part up will be almost doubles in price! This is usually because it's a newer component and not many people buy them. A lot of the time, getting the next one up is not worth the extra cash. You have to decide that though.

When saving to build a system; don't buy the parts a few at a time. Save up all your money and get them all at once. There are a couple of reasons for this... For one, you will save money on shipping generally. Second, parts this month will be much cheaper the next. When you build your PC part buy part, there is no need to get parts one by one. For starters you won’t be using them straight away, and computer prices change on a daily bases. Unless there is a sale, just wait until you can get them all.

Here's a link to reviews of every piece of hardware you can think of.

[Steven B]

Sorry to comment but remove the x-connect. THey used to be good, but now if you look they all overvolt and they have very weakrails

Also you might want to add something about cooling

[wazzledoozle]

Xclio makes an EXCELLENT PSU. One of their PSU have been EOCF's power supply of the month for months now

[Steven B]

You goto EOCF? I know David there, you shoudl add zippy and emacs too

[wazzledoozle]

Originally Posted by Steven B

You goto EOCF? I know David there, you shoudl add zippy and emacs too

??
My name on EOCF is wazzledoozle of course

This is the PSU I was talking about-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817189003

Its the best deal on a PSU anywhere

Also Raidmax makes a good budget case.

[djbbenn]

Ok, thanks guys, will do. Good idea about the cooling Steven. I kind of did this all in one go the other day so I am slowly making it better.

-Dan

[Steven B]

awsome it looks great. If you need help on Extreme coolign let me know

[djbbenn]

You got a phase change cooler don't you? I will mention it...

-Dan

[Steven B]

yep i do, -41 right now

[djbbenn]

Sweet, ever have any cold bug problems?

-Dan

[djbbenn]

Added cooling, tell me if I missed anything.

-Dan

[Steven B]

not with intel no, lol done it on a 561, 540j, 1.8 go the 1.8 to 2.8 then it died, well it was dieing, got hte 540j to 4.6, and got the 561 to 5.3

[Steven B]

teh phase change unit im reivewing is for everyday use, and is about 4/7 of the price of a vapochill.

[djbbenn]

Nice, I didn't what components you were running. How does the cooling section I added look?

-Dan

[Steven B]

good, you might want to add DICE (Dry Ice)

[djbbenn]

Done. No point in having to much detail on that sort of thing. lol

-Dan

[Steven B]

yeah i guess. Is this just a forum sticky or like a guide?

[djbbenn]

Its going to guide in the article section.

-Dan

[djbbenn]

If you guys have suggestions to make the sample systems better or if you think the price should be differerent. I just thought of the part off the top of my head. Plus I know all the prices in Cnd dollars too, so I took a guess at them in USD.

-Dan

[DanTheBanjoman]

As Xeonslut I'd like to say that Xeons aren't exclusive server processors. The Xeon DP's are aimed at low/mid end servers and workstations. In fact various Xeon DP boards work with cheap RAM (nonECC/reg) and have AGP/PCIe slots. Some of these boards are even pretty cheap (under $200) which makes the Xeon a very viable option for a system unlike the Opteron which lacks any cheap board and needs ECC RAM. ($$$)

Instead of building an P4EE or FX-57 system dual Noconas are cheaper and faster, 2.8Ghz models overclock to nearly 4Ghz, have HTT, 64bit support and cost around 200$ a piece.
Seeing the budget you're taking for several PC's a Xeon system could easily beat the price/performance of some of those systems.

[djbbenn]

"Xeonslut" lmao...thats good. So some more on Xeon's then. You may have to give me a few pointers on these bad boys, as I have never really looked into a Xeon system build. I'll take a wack and see what you think.

-Dan

[Steven B]

also the 3.6 xeon is the last single core xeon in production.

[Dippyskoodlez]

Originally Posted by djbbenn

If you guys have suggestions to make the sample systems better or if you think the price should be differerent. I just thought of the part off the top of my head. Plus I know all the prices in Cnd dollars too, so I took a guess at them in USD.

-Dan

You can use some of the infor from my overclocking, the basics article on the cooling section if you want.. its fairly extensive

I found a few typos and fixed them for you too.

Also might wanna mention selection for overclocking parts, such as specific IC's or brands.

[djbbenn]

Thanks... typo's there are plenty of them lol. I don't think I will put overclocking it, as its a building computer guide. Thanks though, but I think I might list some parts that tend to tailor to overclocking.

-Dan

[Dippyskoodlez]

Originally Posted by djbbenn

Thanks though, but I think I might list some parts that tend to tailor to overclocking.

-Dan

Thats what I meant to look more at.. like how tccd and bh overclock Vs generic crap.. and why not to buy generic crap if you wanna oc