Buying a powerful Power Supply

Since the PSU's or the Power Supply Units supply power to all of the components of the computer. It is extremely essential that one buys a PSU that provides enough power so as to provide enough power to the components that they do not slow down because of lack of power.
But buying a huge power supply does not mean buying a 2000 Watt SMPS. Doing that will take your electricity bill up to twice the normal. You need to buy a power supply that has a good amount of power while not having an excess of it.
Well, for starters you can be safe with a power supply of 300 Watts to the motherboard, a 20 Watt supply per drive, and a 20 Watt supply per 1 GB of RAM. That all works if you have a really low-end graphics card that doesn't require any more than 150 Watts to run and does not require any special connector to be powered.

• But in case your system has a high-end GPU, you'll have to add the required power of the GPU to  the above wattage and then buy the PSU. Also don't forget to check if the GPU requires an extra cable for power. If yes, add it to the required specifications for the PSU.
• Next, look for a power supply unit having a good amount of connectors of all types i.e. SATA, molex and PCI-E. Its always beneficial to buy one that has one or two connectors of SATA and molex for future expansions.
• And obviously, the PSU you are buying should have a large 60 mm fan, if not 120 mm one for excellent cooling performance for your system. My recommendation: Buy one with 120 mm fan even if it costs an additional $10.

Compatibility of RAM with the system

The second most important thing everyone needs to keep in mind is whether the RAM he/she is going to buy will actually work with the system or will it get burned as soon as it is installed. You can be sure of the compatibility of RAM with the system by a very simple test. Just locate your motherboard manual (printed or online) and see what type and speed of RAM's are safe to use with the motherboard.
The motherboard documentation will usually include the following types of specifications:

• Memory Type: DDR3 1600/1333 MHz
• This means you can ONLY use a RAM of the type DDR3.
• This also implies that you will be safe to use RAM's with the speed of either 1600 or 1333 MHz. The rest of them might not work or might get burned in due course.

• Max Memory Size: 32 GB
• This specification specifies the maximum amount of memory you can install in your system without causing any harm to it.
• You are safe to use lesser amount of RAM than specified if you want or if you are on a tight budget, but make sure you do not exceed this limit.

You should also calculate the maximum RAM supported per slot by the motherboard by dividing the Max Memory Size by the number of sockets present on the motherboard.
For example, in a system with four RAM slots, you can install an 8 GB chip in each slot for a 32 GB motherboard.
However, in a system with eight slots, you can install 4 GB chips in each slot for a 32 GB motherboard. Using a chip with a higher memory size like 8 GB ones in this case will not be beneficial for your system.

Non-Compatibility of Processor and Motherboard

Processor and Motherboard compatibility is the most important thing to know before you go about assembling a computer. The reason being if you buy a processor that does not support your motherboard or vice-versa, you'll end up losing a huge amount of money because the processor and the motherboard combo are the most expensive components apart from the graphic card.
In case your processor and motherboard are not compatible with each other, either of the following scenarios may take place.

• First, your new processor might not fit into the socket of the motherboard. This option is the better of the two, because it will not damage any component of your system. The only solution is to buy either a new processor or a new motherboard.
• Second, and you better hope this does not happen. The second case, which rarely happens is the time when your incompatible processor gets seated firmly in the motherboard but, does not get recognized by the motherboard and/or perform normally. This may damage either/or both of the components.

So it is extremely necessary that you know if the processor and the motherboard are compatible with each other or not before you go shopping.

Specifications of an Optical Drive

Various types of optical drives are available in the market. These include CD readers, CD writers, DVD readers, DVD writers, DVD combos, BD readers, BD writers and BD combos.

The specifications of an Optical Drive drives to be considered are:

Supported Media Types: The optical drive must support a major part of available types of discs in the market. Examples are CD-ROM ,

DVD-R ,DVD-ROM ,CD-RW ,CD-R ,DVD-RAM ,DVD-RW ,DVD+R and DVD+RW. Note that CD drives do not support DVD's or BD's and DVD drives do not support BD's. Also, the supported media types are different for a drive's read and write capabilities.

Interface: The interface that an optical drive uses and the port that it will use to connect to the system. The interfaces have transfer speeds of their own. For example, a max. of 167 MBps for IDE, 600 MBps for SATA. But, the current technologies available for optical drives can only provide speeds that are lower than modern systems. So in case, both the ports are available in your system, the interface is not much of a specification.

Buffer Size: The optical drive buffer works in exactly the same manner as the cache of a hard drive It stores a fraction of frequently accessed data that can be accessed extremely fast. It helps the system to access data from the drive even if the processor is being utilized 100% by other processes for a fraction of a second. Usually 1 or 2 or 4 MB.

Read & Write Speeds: All optical drives have different read and write speeds and different read or write speeds for different types of media. For example, DVD drives have a speed of 16x, 20x, 24x (where x is 1.35 MBps) and CD drives have a speed of 32x, 48x, 52x (where x is 150 KBps). An optical drive will always write different types of media at different speeds (For example, a CD at 48x, a DVD at 16x and a re-writable DVD at 4x). 

Specifications of a CPU: part 2

Rest of the specifications of a CPU to be considered are:

• Instruction Set Size: Size of the instructions the processor can address simultaneously. It also defines the maximum amount of memory that the CPU can address. Currently, 32-bit and 64-bit.
• Memory Type: The standard and speed of RAM that the CPU is designed to address efficiently. If the RAM used in the system is other than the one specified by the CPU manufacturer, it may cause the system to lag.
• Max Memory Size: The maximum amount of physical memory that the CPU can support. If more RAM is installed than this, it may result in an unstable system.
• Number of Memory Channels: It specifies the number of RAM slots the CPU can work with efficiently. If the CPU is installed on a motherboard with more slots than this, it will cause the system to lag.
• PCI-E Support: Number of PCI Express slots supported and the PCI-E standard supported.
• Integrated Graphics: If the CPU has integrated graphics unit, then the graphics frequency is also to be considered.
• Socket Size: If you need to replace your processor, you need to be sure that the processor's socket size matches with the socket size of your existing motherboard.

Just keep in mind all of the above mentioned specifications while choosing a processor and you will have a super performance system.

Specifications of a CPU: part 1

The processors also have performance specifications that a buyer must know accurately before purchasing the product. As in the case of Hard Disks, better specs of the CPU will make the system perform faster. This topic has been divided into two posts to make them short and readable. The specification categories are:

• Number of Cores: Cores are the physical sub-units of a processor that can process individually. Each core has its own computing units, CPU caches and lookaside buffer. More the number of cores, more instructions can be executed independently at the same time.
• Number of Threads: Number of Threads are the hardware ability of a processor to execute that many logical processes within a single core or processor. More the number of threads, more instructions can be executes on the same processing unit.
• Clock Speed: It is the frequency at which the CPU executes the instructions. It is measured in billions of cycles per second (GHz). This determines the actual processing speed of the processor. But, having a processor clocked at 3.4 GHz isn't the sole factor to guarantee a fast computer.
• CPU cache: Integrated on the CPU die itself, the CPU cache is the fastest memory unit of the system. It is responsible to make the processing of data faster in processes where data has to be transferred between the processor and the RAM.
• DMI/FSB: Direct Media Interface or DMI is the technology that is used in Intel's i3, i5, i7 processors that has separate channel of buses for transfers to and fro. One channel each is provided for RAM, PCI-E and other devices. Front Side Bus or FSB was the technology that was used in processors prior to i3. FSB has a single channel of buses for transfers to all the components and devices of the system.

Rest of the specifications to be continued in the next post.

Motherboard: ports and sockets

This image shows only those interfaces (ports and sockets) that are important to our interest and point of view.

The rest of the small semiconductor parts of the motherboard are not of our interest, but for their designer.

In this post, only the names of all the interfaces have been mentioned.

Other than these interfaces, there are numerous chips and IC's for various functions as well.

They along with the functions of these interfaces would be described sometime later.

The components are so named:

A,B : PCI connector

C : CMOS battery

D : PCI-E (x1) connector

E : PCI-E (x16) connector

F : S/PDIF connector

G : Back-panel for I/O devices

H : 12V processor power (4-pin)

I : Rear chassis fan header (3-pin)

J : Processor socket

K : Processor fan header (4-pin)

L,M : RAM (channel A,B) sockets

N : Chassis intrusion header

O : Serial port header

P : Floppy Drive connector

Q : Main power connector (24-pin)

R : Parallel ATA (IDE) connector

S : Serial ATA (SATA) connectors

T : Front panel header

U : Alternate front panel power LED header

V : BIOS configuration jumper

W : Front USB headers

X : Speaker

Y : Front chassis fan header (3-pin)

Z : Front panel audio header