What's inside your computer?
Power Supply (PSU). The single most important part of your computer. The first thing you should never, ever cheap out on. Remember, this part is the one powering the rest of your expensive components. A cheap or faulty power supply puts your entire computer at risk. There's two things you need to keep in mind when looking at power supplies: 1. Wattage and 2. Efficiency. Wattage is how much power the PSU is rated to supply to all of your parts. A typical low-end non gaming computer can get by in the 350 W range. A typical mid-range gaming computer wants about 500-600 W, and a high-end rig with multiple graphics cards can climb into the 750W ++ range. Efficiency is the other thing we want to look at here. I won't get all electrical engineer on you right now, but converting from AC power (what comes out of your wall outlet) to DC power always has some power loss. Say your supply is 80% efficient ("80 Plus" is a standard certification for power supplies, don't get one that doesn't have it). This means that your PSU will pull 100W from the wall to supply 80W to the computer. Cheap power supplies can dip into the 50s percentage-wise; a zone you don't want to be in. I could go on forever about power supplies alone, but long story short: never cheap out on a PSU, know your load demand, get an 80 Plus certified unit. I promise not to nerd out for the rest of the components, I swear!
Motherboard. This is the part that everything else goes in. It's the second-most important part of your computer, after the power supply. The motherboard is the foundation of your computer; you want the best foundation possible. Your motherboard dictates everything in your build: what kind of processor you can use, what kind of memory you can use, graphics card(s) capabilities, how many hard drives you can use, how much room you have for expansion, etc. After not cheaping out on a power supply, getting a solid motherboard is the next thing to not cheap out on. Spend good money here...if you lay a good foundation down, you can always upgrade the processor later, get a new graphics card later, add more memory later, etc. If you plan ahead, getting a future-proof motherboard can lengthen the longevity of your system by years.
The processor (CPU). This guy's the brains of your computer. I won't delve into how they work or everything they do, just know that this part is the guy who does all of the thinking. Dual core processors are pretty standard for your low-mid range PCs these days. They handle all of your standard computer uses with no issues (they're completely overkill for your Office/email/web browsing everyday user). A bit more money gets you into the quad cores, which can, as the name suggests, do twice as much thinking as the dual does. These are great for doing multiple intensive things at once (I've compressed a video for my tablet while playing a video game with no significant slowdowns in either). You can go past quads into the realm of stuff like Hyperthreading and whatever stuff AMD puts out there (I haven't been an AMD guy forever...), but I'll leave that to you and Google if you're really interested.
RAM (memory). This is the short-term memory of the computer. All of the temporary stuff that your computer needs fast access to sits here. The more you have, the more tasks your computer can hold on to at once. This storage, though, is not persistent; when the power goes off, the information inside goes away. It's cheap as heck nowadays, one can find 8 GB for < $40 no problem. There are different kinds and different speeds of memory, and lots of numbers that would take another post to explain, but unless you're doing some overclocking, as long as you match your memory to your motherboard's requirements, you're good to go.
Hard Drives. These guys are your long-term permanent storage. You've got two kinds: your regular old mechanical hard drives, and your solid-state drives (SSD). Your standard mechanical drive is cheap, high capacity, and slow (compared to SSDs). They basically have a super-dense CD/DVD/whatever you want to imagine inside, that spins around and has a mechanism that reads data off of it. If it's not fans that are making the noise you hear, it's going to be the hard drives. A few years ago, along came the SSDs. These guys are (ballpark-similarity) like RAM that doesn't clear when you turn the power off. They're much more expensive (dollars per gigabyte) compared to regular hard drives, but are significantly faster. Noting the properties of each of these kinds of storage devices, it's becoming more common to put your operating system and programs (that you want super-fast access to) on an SSD, and store the rest of your programs and files such as music, videos, and documents on a mechanical drive. This allows for super-fast loading into your operating system, nearly instant loading of programs, and faster load times on video games. SSDs are becoming much more cheaper as time goes on, but to give a comparison, a good quality 128 GB SSD goes for ~$100, and Emily's computer has a good quality 1 TB (~8 times larger) hard drive that was $80.
Graphics Card. This is the guy that processes and outputs everything you see on your screen. It's becoming extremely common for processors these days to have built-in graphics (integrated). Integrated graphics are great for everything that your average user does. They are (mostly) terrible for (modern) games. And you wouldn't try to run something like CAD on one, either. There are too many kinds to go into any detail (a common theme I keep repeating, eh?). The offerings go from super cheap cards for computers that don't have integrated graphics, to low-end (<$125) cards good for playing today's games at ok settings, mid-range ($150-$250) that play today's games at good settings and spank yesterday's games, to your high end ($300 per card) setups that max today's games without breaking a sweat. One can do crazy things like daisy-chaining multiple graphics cards together to get more performance, or have multiple-monitor setups that stretch your games across multiple screens.
So now you're thinking one of two things:
- Wow, this guy knows a ton! This stuff is really neat!
- Or: zzzzz this is so dumbed down I fell asleep.
Emily's New Computer
We can go on to what I made for Emily. The first thing I did when planning this build is found out what she wants. I can do a really good job on judging what she needs. It's very important to find out what the user plans to do with their computer. In this "field" of building computers, too many people confuse want and need. Users want, builders need (unless the person is the same). Emily's usage: your standard web browsing, emailing, video watching, office programs, some programming/web design, and a few games. All but the last function could be preformed on a $300 computer. But a $750 computer could be really shiny and neat! STOP. She doesn't need that. She's not going to have 6 hard drives, expansion cards for 14 USB ports, and a toaster. She plays one video game, with very middling graphical requirements. She wants a not "gigantor" computer. It's not supposed to look gaudy or flashy with tons of fluorescent lights and weird colors.
I started with a rock-solid power supply. Gave a little bit of wiggle room with the amount of power it can supply, one that will handle anything and everything she throws at it. Keeping the small theme, I decided on a mITX motherboard (it's about 7"x7", much smaller than your regular motherboards are). I went with a higher-end motherboard that had built in Bluetooth and WiFi. Due to the small form factor of this kind of board, there's only one slot for a graphics card, and no other expansion slots for stuff like adding a wireless card. Since she's not a super-big gamer, one graphics card is enough (it's enough for 95% of gamers, anyway...) Still, it's a very high quality board with the capacity to use much more high-end parts than she currently has. We went with a dual core processor for now, since that does everything she needs very well; an upgrade to a blazing-fast quad core processor is nothing more than a credit-card bill and 2 minutes of work away. She used the same case I used in my new build because she liked it a lot. I tried to reuse her old graphics card from her previous computer, but since it was a half-size card, it wouldn't fit without some creative bending. Since I'm the electronics pat-rack that I am, I just happened to have an old GIGANTIC graphics card in my stash of spare parts that I lent her (pictures to follow). It's old, it runs hot and noisy, but it'll kick the pants outta anything she does. Still, the system I chose allows her to go wild and throw a $400 graphics card in there if she so desires.
If all of these words made no sense to you, have some pretty pictures!
Front view of the computer. The case is ~ 10"x16"x14"
Inside. Power supply is on the bottom left, above it is the motherboard, and on the right: plenty of room for hard drives
Rear view. Power on the bottom, motherboard connections in the middle, and a nice big fan to keep it all cool
Oh snap, old graphics card was built for half-height ("desktop" as opposed to "tower") computers. Where's my pliers??
Never fear, some quick thinking (and prior experience with the case). Flip around that hard drive rack...
...and make room for my old GIGANTOR graphics card!
A rat's-nest of cables everywhere!
Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the finished computer in its natural habitat, but I can get some of those later!
