In the last post we looked at a simple rule that you can use when buying a hard drive for your computer. In this post I am going to look at some of the more technical details to be considered when buying a hard drive.

Interface type

First thing to know is that in the home PC world there is basically two types of hard drive interfaces that we need to be concerned with, SCSI and ATA. The ATA standard has also recently been separated further into Parallel ATA (PATA) and Serial ATA (SATA) with SATA being the interface being used by the majority of recent drives.  SCSI is more often used in professional systems that demand fast and stable data access and is probably overkill for a home system. I would suggest going for a  hard drive that uses a SATA interface which is supported by the majority of the newer drives on the market. However you do need to make sure your motherboard has the necessary controllers  (Most modern motherboards will).

Capacity

The other things to think about are disk capacity and speed. As most people know the capacity of a hard drive is usually measured in Gigabytes although soon it may be Terabytes!  As we mentioned in the last post the size of the drive you need will be determined by what you want to do with your computer but as a rule of thumb you should buy the biggest drive you can afford. I would recommend at least a 500 GB or 750 GB drive.
Speed and Cache

A disk’s data access speed is a function of the rotation speed of the disk inside the hard drive and the amount of memory cache included with the drive. The rotation speed is measured in RPMs  (Rotations per Minute). The faster the drive rotates, the more quickly data can be written to and read from, the hard drive.  I would generally recommend buying a 7200 RPM drive. A drive’s memory cache helps to speed up the accessing of the information on the drive and the more of it the better. Drives with a higher capacity will have often have 32 MB or more of cache which would be my recommendation.

A good choice might be the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 - Hard drive which is  a 750 GB, 7200 RPM drive with a 32 MB cache.

Continuing our series of posts on the subject of building your own PC lets have a look at buying a hard disk drive. The disk drive is the all important central storage area for your PC. It is the persistent memory in which all your personal data resides when the computer is turned off and from where it can be retrieved when next using the computer.

Choosing a disk drive

Just like for other key components choosing the right hard disk drive for your home build computer depends to a large extent on how you want to use your computer. Over the years the capacity the capacity of disk drives has increased dramatically from Megabytes to Terabytes. A good thing too as we care now producing a huge amount of personal content, in the form of music, image, video files and the increasing disk requirements of some modern games.  If you are someone who is into digital photography or video in a big way then you are going to need big amounts of storage, however if your computer is a more business computer used largely for storing letters, documents and email etc. then your requirements are significantly less.

Apply the sweet spot rule

However the simple rule to apply when purchasing a drive is too buy the largest capacity drive that you can afford. Even if you are the business user I mentioned above you will undoubtedly need more capacity than you initially think.  Similar to when we looked at CPU’s there is a often a sweet spot of value that sits below the premium you would pay for the top of the range products. The value sweet spot is generally the third or fourth tier down from that top of the range model, assuming of course it is using the more modern Serial ATA (SATA) drive interface. A example might be the Samsung SpinPoint HD753LJ F1 750GB drive.

In an upcoming post we are going to look at some of the more technical differences and aspects, such as SATA, that you may want to consider when choosing a drive.

A couple of days ago I posted about the “instant on” feature that Dell has now included in its new range of Latitude laptops.  Essentially the idea is that  included with your normal operating system you have a small but completely separate sub system that will let you have very quick access to the Internet and your emails. This sub system is based on an embedded Linux-based internet appliance-like environment running off a flash memory chip,  linked directly to the BIOS. This avoids having to boot up your full system or to continuously maintain it in a “suspend” state saving both  time and battery life.

Dell and Asus

This a pretty interesting idea and not one that just Dell is looking at either.  Asus have also been developing systems and components that have this capability.  The Asus brand name for
this is called Express Gate and is essentially an Asus branded version of the Splashtop product from embedded Linux developer DeviceVM.

Laptops and motherboards

Asus have been aggressively introducing this into a significant proportion of its motherboard range and like Dell is now selling laptops which include this feature.  We will  have a look at a couple of the Asus laptops and some of the feature of Splashtop in future posts.  However if you are building your own PC and like the idea, you can now get Asus motherboards that support Express Gate. The Asus P5Q Deluxe Motherboard is a good example of a well rated board that includes Express Gate.

I haven’t been able to actually try any “instant on” system yet. Have you?

At their developers forum in San Francisco Intel released details of their new processor that will form the basis of their new products from next year onwards.  With the official name of Core i7 the chips will begin to appear in laptops, desktops and servers during 2009.  We have become fairly used the never ending performance increases implied by Moore’s law when talking about new processors, so what is new or different about the Core i7 processor?

Performance and energy efficiency

Intel are trying to both increase performance and reduce power consumption at the same time. This is a neat trick if it can be managed as usually there is a trade off between one or the other. Intel will increase performance through putting more multiple processing cores on a single chip while at the same time increasing the memory to processor performance by removing the FSB bottleneck (which is something AMD have done for a while). At the same time the processor will reduce energy requirements by having the ability to turn off any processing cores on the chip that are not actually being used.

In the meantime

Of course in the meantime the world continues to turn, so if you are looking for an new processor you could do worse than look at the popular and highly rated Intel Core 2 Duo Quad Q6600 Processor. As time goes on more applications exist to take advantage of the Quad and this processor would be ideal for someone that needs good multi-tasking performance.

Dell has this week announced the release of a new range of its Latitude business range of laptop computers. Nothing too strange about that you might think, vendors are always coming out with new releases of their products as technology advances and prices come down. But this is a little different if Dells claims are true, in that these systems are capable of 19 hours battery life!

Of course battery life claims by the laptop vendors always seem to be optimistic to say the least, but a 19 hour claim is huge. After further research I found that to reach this goal you will need to have opted for a 9 cell battery instead of the standard 6 cell battery and purchase what Dell calls a 12 cell slice. This slice is a separate “slice” of laptop that fits beneath the laptop effectively giving you over three times the normal battery capacity. Still if battery life is important to you this might be a nice solution for you.

Other things that Dell offer do not appear to be big steps over the competition but this is what you would expect in such a commodatised marketplace. However there are some nice touches with things like an ability to provide access to e-mail, calendar, attachments, contacts and the Internet without actually booting into Windows.  More on this in a later post. Other nice touches include LED-backlit displays, backlit keyboards, and USB ports that can charge cell phones and MP3 players even when the system is powered off.

All in all a competent new range of business laptops. What this means is in the short term though is that you can get some real nice deals on the existing models. The Dell Latitude D400 range is selling at about a 20% discount if you follow the links through from the PriceGrabber website.  The Dell Latitude D4300 is presently a good example of such a nice bargain.

If you have been reading this blog regularly then you will know that I am a big fan of the Asus Eee and that I have invested in an Asus Eee 4G PC  which was supposed to be a first computer for my youngest son. I say supposed because it often gets requisitioned by my wife who seems to prefer it to the other notebooks available in the household.  Early this year Asus launched a updated version of the Eee called the Asus Eee 900 and we have talked about the updated specifications in a previous post. Recently I got the chance to get my hands on one of these and I thought I would share my first impressions.

First of all there appears to be little change in terms of size and general appearance when closed, however as soon as you open up the lid you immediately notice the much bigger screen which fills the entire lid real estate. The screen resolution has increased also to very nice 1,024 x 600 which combined with the larger screen really makes the Eee 900 an even better experience than the original 4G PC.  The touchpad is now bigger and in my opinion nicer and easier to use and the keypad seems a lot more responsive although of course still the same small size which does take a little bit of getting used to.

A lot of the other improvements which don’t have an instant impact are present under the bonnet, such as increased memory, storage and camera  which are obviously important  and will improve overall performance. All in all the new Asus Eee 900 has improved the capability of the Eee brand for a small increase in price.

I still think that price is worth paying although it might be worth looking at the even newer models that Asus have recently released. We will have a look at those in an upcoming post.

Continuing the series of posts on building your own PC, we are looking at the things that you need to consider when buying a CPU.  As discussed in the last post we generally should be looking for something that is in the value sweet spot.

Choose something that fits your needs

As with the other components is is important to get something that fits your needs. So you need  to decide up front what you want from your final computer. Is it a media PC, an office type PC,   something as cheap as possible or a high spec gaming rig?  Whichever of these it is, will mean different aspects will be more important to you, but generally the faster the better.

Things to consider when buying a your CPU

1. Motherboard support - Your choice of processor will have some determination on which board you can go for and visa versa. This is because it is important that your choice of CPU is compatable with your choice of board.
2. Vendor - Most people will probably go for for Intel but there are other options such as AMD who are producing some fast processors  and providing some good value at the basic end of the market.  Make sure you check your motherboard support!
3. Multiprocessors - The questions here is not whether to get a multiprocessor, as my recommendation would be to by a least a Core 2 Duo or its AMD equivalent, but whether to go for a Quad Core. Unless you have an application that can really take advantage of the Quad Core I would stick to the Core 2 Duo.
4. Clock speed - In general the faster the better. But be careful as clock speed is only a valid way of comparing processors of the same architecture such as the Core 2 Duo.
5. L2 Cache - A bigger L2 cache memory will generally speed up a processor’s operations. It does this by saving recently accessed data and making it available much quicker to the processor.
6. FSB - On Intel chips a faster FSB (Front Side Bus) will allow faster performance.

The last two above will have a greater or lesser effect depending on what you are actually doing on the computer but may allow a lower clock speed processor to perform better than another with a higher clock speed due to a larger cache and faster FSB.  To finish off with an example the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core has the same clock speed and FSB as the Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Dual Core we looked at in the last post but has a bigger L2 cache.

What do you look for when buying a CPU?

I think it is time to carry on the series about buying components for a home build PC. In this and the next post we will move on to another very important component the processor or CPU.  This is the engine for your computer and is the component that will be doing the majority of the hard work when you ask your computer to run your applications.  So it generally follows that the faster your CPU the better, but like most things it is not always as simple as that as amongst other things we have multiple processors to consider like the Core 2 Duo processor or even the Quad Core .

Multiprocessors

Back in March we  talked about the benefits of the Core 2 Duo and the whether it was worth going for a Quad Core processor. Both those posts are still valid today, and if you are building your own my advice is that you have to be buying one of these  or the AMD equivalent.  They provide some substantial benefits to the user in the areas of multitasking, such as running two programs at once as each of the two processors can handle different things at the same time. Multiple core processors  can also take advantage of any software that is coded to utilise multiple threads, i.e. Software that needs to different jobs, or needs to do the same thing multiple times, and has been programmed to allow this to happen in parallel.

Value sweet spot

The best value for money can be achieved by buying a CPU that is in the value sweet spot. Huh!, what is he on about?  Well just like for a lot of things you will often have to pay a significant  premium the top of the range product. For a CPU it is just the same, you will usually be paying a lot extra to get your hands on the top processor  and at the bottom end you will  find cheaper prices but obsolete technology and low performance.  The value sweet spot is generally the third or fourth CPU down from that top of the range model, assuming of course it is still utilises current technology.

An Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Dual Core is an example of a processor that I feel is sitting in that sweet spot. Do you have a good example! In the next post we look at all the things you need to consider when buying a CPU.

In this post I am going to continue the series of posts on building your own PC and today we are going to look at the motherboard. You will only really buy a motherboard if your building your own PC or upgrading an old one and for both of these situations the things you need to consider are the same.

Choose something that fits you needs

The most important thing is to buy a motherboard that fits your needs.  You need to decide  whether you building a media PC, an office type PC for using business applications or a top of the range gaming rig.  Whichever of these it is, will mean different features will be more important to you than others, so make sure you focus on those.

Things to consider when buying a your motherboard;

1. Form factor and size - Just as we discussed with the cases some thought needs to go in to the size or form factor that you will need as this will effect the choice of both case and the motherboard you will eventually choose.
2. Processor support - Your choice of processor will have some determination on which board you can go for. For most applications at present this is likely to mean that it would to support an Intel dual core processor as this will get you the best performance for your money.  The major exception to this is if you are building a media PC where the processor is generally not required to be such a high performer.
3. Graphics - A lot of motherboards can provide a graphics capability on the board. This should be perfectly good enough for a standard PC.  For a media PC is can be useful as long as it is up to the heavy work required for playing back video.  A gamer will more likely add a specialist graphics card so is not required on board.
4. Memory - Ensure the motherboard you purchase will provide you with enough memory.  My recommendation is for as much as you can afford but no less than 2 GB.  The other consideration is the type of memory. I would stick with the standard DDR2 memory at the time of writing as this will keep  your memory costs down.
5. Other Features - Last but definitely not least is everything else provided by the board, such as overclocking capability, networking, sound, USB connectors etc.  These are slightly less important than the other aspects but could be important for your specific needs.

Just to finish off with an example the ABIT IP35 Pro is one of the highest rated motherboards on PriceGrabber.

What do you think are the most important aspects to consider when buying a motherboard?

In yesterdays post I looked at some of the things you need to consider when buying a case for a home build PC.  Today I thought I would just take a quick look at a few examples that shows  the range of cases that are available.

First off is the highly rated Antec Nine Hundred which is squarely focused at the gaming market. A gaming system will use high level components that generate an awful lot of heat so this product is designed with cooling in mind and provides  no less than 4 fans, one of which is a large exhaust fan (blows hot air out of the case).

A second example is the Asus TM-21 Mini Tower which is a nice case if you looking for something with a smaller footprint  in which to build a good functional computer. This is an example of where the size of the case will mean you will have to buy a Micro ATX form factor motherboard as the standard ATX form factor will not fit. The 300w power unit will need to be considered if it is sufficient for your proposed system and what it is going to be used for.

The last example is a case aimed specifically at those people interested in building a media centre PC. In these cases the focus is usually on consumer appliance looks and quiet running to ensure that the PC does not look out of place in the living room.  A good example of this is the Antec Fusion v2 430 Media Center which again uses the Micro ATX form factor.  This case also provides more of the things a media centre would need, like a front LCD and IR receiver for the remote!

Have you bought a computer case recently?