Miskin IT News

This is a follow on from the other basic guides from earlier:

Memory
Motherboard
CPU

Included:
Tower (case)
Graphics Card
Hard disc drive
CD/DVD Player
Sound Card
Power Supply

Tower (case):
The casing or tower is mainly about looks but make sure it is big enough for your motherboard and amount of PCI Cards and disk drives you have. The standard is ATX but can come in Micro, Mini or many others. Also check if it has a built-in power supply as towers may seem cheaper but come without one.

Graphics Card:
There are many different versions of home graphics cards but only 2 main makes. Nvidia Geforce is the most popular followed by ATI Radeon. Generally as a rule you get what you pay for and unless you’re into 3d gaming then a budget model is sufficient however most motherboards come with a basic graphics card built-in. Expect to pay only £20-40 for budget models and £120+ for top end models. Currently the top end Geforce models are the 2 series with the 295 being the top model retailing around £350 while the 210 at around £25. The latest ATI models are the 5 series with prices from around £350 for the top 58** series.
When buying graphics cards it’s important to check compatibilty with your motherboard. Most cards these days use the PCI-Express slot while older ones use AGP or PCI. Check the Motherboard PCI section for more detail. One thing to note with top end graphics cards is their power usage as they may require you to upgrade you power supply.

Hard Disk Drive: The Internal 3.5inch HDD is what your computer stores most its files on including your Windows/OSX/Linux and usually called the C: Drive. If you have more than one partition or one HDD then it may be called E: or F: (D: is usually your DVD Player). At the moment most computers come with 180-500 gigabyte drives but Terrabyte size drives (1000GB) are becoming the norm. Older HDD will be IDE while newer will be SATA, SATA-II or SATA 6. Both require a compatible motherboard so you must check what type the drive is before purchasing.

The higher the number the more storage you’ll have and 250 GB is adequate for most people. As a reference most high quality digital photographs are no more than 0.01GB in size allowing for over 20,000 photographs while most DVD Quality movies are around 3 GB allowing for over 80 to be stored. If you find yourself running out of storage you can always add more internal HDD in the computer or buy a USB External HDD which does exactly the same job but may be less reliable.
The difference usually between a HDD and a Flash or Solid State Drive is the HDD uses mechanical parts while the modern Flash or Solid State Drives uses just memory with no moving parts.

CD/DVD Player: CD, DVD or Blu-Ray players are pretty straight forward although like HDD they come in two formats IDE and SATA so insure you check your motherboard before purchasing. Most computers can fit two or more but one is sufficent these days. Make sure when purchasing new computers they have a Blu-Ray DVD player rather then HD-DVD player as they are no longer making the latter.

Sound Card: Most motherboards have a sound card built-in but if you like gaming or into music production then you may want a decent sound card. Most sound cards use the PCI slots on your motherboard and can range from £5 to £300+. For laptops you can purchase external USB sound cards.

Power Supply: Power supplies range from 250 Watt to 1000+ Watt with the standard being around 450W. Unless you’re using an incredible amount of USB devices then anything over 400W is sufficient but if you have modern top range graphics cards then you will need at least 600W+ as they require an incredible amount of power. If you’re experiencing temperamental USB connections then your PC may be under-powered. One thing to check when purchasing a power supply is its compatibilty with your motherboard as there are ATX and ATX2 versions now. More information on power supplies can be found here