how to computer: computer hardware info - updated 11/22/10, now with capitals!

[prophetik music]

this is pretty outdated at this point, and i've not updated it in a few years for more recent advances to technology, so i've taken this down.

i still have it somewhere if you really want it.

Edited June 3, 2014 by prophetik music

[prophetik music]

here are some featured snippets. i write interesting stuff, and my main attempt was to make this nub-friendly. and funny, once in a while.

Firewire, originally a contender with USB for most useful (and whored) connector ever, lost that battle after USB spread like herpes in a nudist colony through the Windows-based PC market.

Power supplies are rated in the output that they are able to…output…in watts. If you don’t know what watts are, go run over your computer with your car. Or finish 11th grade.

A power inverter basically is the electrical equivalent of a goat. It eats whatever the heck you throw at it and spits out exactly the same thing no matter what – whatever electricity you need. I know goats don’t spit electricity, but you know what I mean.

Hard drives connect to your computer through telepathy. No, really. Computer telepathy. Just watch AI and you’ll know.

Your computer will not run if it overheats constantly. Without cool air blowing over it, your CPU will simply error out. Your graphics card will display weird blotches. Your ram will asplode. Your interwebs will be clogged. Bill Gates will die of a heart attack.

Do it for the children.

i am double posting for a reason - i want space to answer questions, but the previous post is about four characters away from being too many.

so, this post is for questions and additions.

things to add:

-info on BIOSes to mobo section (including passwords and common back-door passwords)

-thermal paste to cooling section/cpu cooler section

-AHCI (gawd i know nothing about macs)

-mini-itx, which i apparently forgot about even though i bloody love it.

things i'm not adding:

-info on overclocking

worklog:

-section 2 done, first post updated to current status.

-section 3 done, first post updated to current status.

-section 4 done, first post updated.

-sections 5 and 6 done, first post updated.

-7-12 are done. this is the end of the first stage. now, editing starts.

-general grammatical fixing done. now onto content editing.

-most content edited. final proofing started.

[Halt]

Looks like its allll there. If its not, thats enough of a guide to get a good idea,

You may want to include something about Thermal Paste, I didnt seem to find anything about that? It seems like a common question Though.

[prophetik music]

good point, that'd fit under cooling. i need to include info on BIOSes, for motherboards as well.

[Halt]

You might also want to include a section on OverClocking, Cause i dont think thats there either, and needed component wise when OverClocking, and/or if your PC is able to as well.

Over all, Awesome Guide

[prophetik music]

eh, there's so much to be said about overclocking that i didn't want to get into it. i'll do an overclocking guide someday, but the decision to not include it was purposeful.

[Skummel Maske]

This seems to be a project of some size, are you going to do it alone? I'm really looking forward to reading your finished version.

[SenPi]

This seems like a VERY nice idea. Im very intrigued by a few things you have up there, I cant wait until its done.

[prophetik music]

This seems to be a project of some size, are you going to do it alone? I'm really looking forward to reading your finished version.

probably. most people who 'know' me on these boards know i have a certain sense of humor - it'd be weird to have someone else do, for example, 2.4.2.1, or 4.4. i just couldn't see it =)

it's not as long as it looks, either. if i had to research, it'd take forever, but i plan on fully taking advantage of sites like hardware secrets and the like. and i know most of this off the top of my head, anyways.

[Blue123]

Oil immersion? I remember reading about that a while ago... it was something along the lines of fill a fish tank with mineral oil and put everything inside it. Bar the case, that is.

Anyway, as it stands, the layout looks great. However, on the issue of the BIOS, are you going to mention passwords? If so, it could be worth mentioning common back-door passwords as well.

[prophetik music]

hey, that's a good point.

yeah, it's the aquarium thing. www.hardcorecomputer.com sells the real thing in a customized case that's possibly the only 4k+ custom computer that i could ever recommend. i want to build one with my current parts when i upgrade to core i7, sometime in the middle/end of next year. it'll let me practice case modding, too, because i'm going to dremel the ocremix logo into the side of the glass and everything =)

[prophetik music]

i should point out that i've got almost the entire cpu section done, up through 2.3.1.4. looks like only half of it, but the terminology section took up four pages single-spaced. i'm already up to seven total single-spaced, and i'm barely out of the woods =) if this is as big of a scope as i want it, i'm going to need to make a pdf that can be downloaded from somewhere...this is just too big of a project otherwise.

[CC Ricers]

You might want to look into processor-specific technologies such as Intel SpeedStep and AMD Cool 'n' Quiet. And why they matter when overclocking (if you choose to write something about that).

Also add AHCI to the list of hard drive/optical drive interfaces. This is a more common in usage for Apple's computers and useful to know how to set up storage devices if you plan to dual boot Macintosh and Windows on the same computer.

[zircon]

IMO that's way too much information if you're trying to tailor things to ReMixing or even music creation in general... the vast majority of it isn't relevant to most people here. Take it from me, as someone who has written a number of guides, it's better to focus on the most relevant areas and concepts than to try to explain everything. People tend to just glaze over it otherwise. Out of everything listed the primary topic I want to hear more about is overclocking, which isn't on the list.

[prophetik music]

oh, this is intended to be a faq, not really a guide. if someone has a computer question, they come here, find it on the list, and read it...and hopefully don't post another topic of 'why do i only have 2.35 gigs of ram' or 'is this e2180 better than my qx9770' or something. i'm planning on doing an overclocking tutorial at some point as well, just not with this. it's way more advanced than a lot of people think - at least if you do it right.

good call, justchris, i'll add that.

[Yoozer]

TBQH overclocking is pretty much useless and all the money, time and energy spent on that could be spent better on working more so you get more money to just buy better parts. The extra power and noise involved go directly against a quiet computer in the studio. Kind of like the $10K car, riced up with R-Type stickers for $20K while you would've had a better car if you just spent $30K initially anyway.

Also, why have separate paragraphs for fan sizes? It's not like a 40 mm will do something that's radically different from a 120 mm, except whine and make more noise and be useless for anything bigger than a GeForce 2 MX.

[prophetik music]

you are completely right about overclocking - IF you need to actually jack up the voltage to make it work. if you can do overclocking on your chip with either stock voltage or just a touch more, then it's worth it. my computer's e8400 ships at 3ghz, and i've got it running stably at 3.8 on air cooling on stock voltage without being a lot hotter. that's when it's worth it...but you need to get lucky with the right chip.

40mm fans are for chipsets and heatsinks, not gpus. they're good in their context.

i just wrote them in there so i'd remember what sizes i wanted to actually discuss. i probably will edit that down to just small, medium, and large sizes when i get there.

[The Pezman]

yeah, it's the aquarium thing. www.hardcorecomputer.com sells the real thing in a customized case

Go figure. Yesterday I find out about mineral oil cooled computers and today there's a company selling ridiculously overpriced versions. I'll definitely want to hear how your work on one of these goes, as it's looking more and more like something I'll want to build myself someday.

[Dhsu]

oh, this is intended to be a faq, not really a guide. if someone has a computer question, they come here, find it on the list, and read it...and hopefully don't post another topic of 'why do i only have 2.35 gigs of ram' or 'is this e2180 better than my qx9770' or something. i'm planning on doing an overclocking tutorial at some point as well, just not with this. it's way more advanced than a lot of people think - at least if you do it right.

I don't really see much of a point in a cooling section without discussing overclocking though. Maybe a section on quiet fans and passive cooling for people wanting silent setups, but all that other stuff is not gonna make much sense outside of the context of overclocking.

I can vouch for the value of OCing though - I have an E6300 (1.86GHz at stock), but with the addition of a $40 cooler it can easily run 3.15GHz without even touching the voltage (at least until I added 2 extra sticks of RAM for some reason). That's faster than processors that cost hundreds more at the time.

[The Pezman]

Half the people I tell about OCR want to know what Overclocked even means. For that reason alone it should be there. I mean, come on people, it's in the frickin name.

[prophetik music]

i might add it in, but i'll only talk about it - i won't talk about how to do it. it's just too extensive of a topic to have in there.

and i missed this before, but i'm going to add in info on cool'n'quiet and speedstep, since it'll prevent people from freaking when they see their cpu operating at exactly 66% of its posted speed =)

[Dhsu]

Actually I was suggesting something more along the lines of cutting out most of your cooling section, and saving it for your overclocking tutorial. Again, a comprehensive discussion of cooling doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you're not overclocking.

[prophetik music]

until some idiot asks me why his brand new asus rampage burned out because he put a 1k$ processor on stock cooling in a tiny case with one (or non! passive cooling is all the rage) fan. cooling is one of the most important and most forgotten things when you build a computer, besides the power supply...surprise! power supplies have the longest section by far on my guide. people who don't think that cooling is as important as other things probably wonder why their computer's room is ten degrees hotter during the summer than the rest of the house.

it's the same as the rest - information that people should have access to. there's less than nothing about cooling available as compared to the rest of the stuff that's in this faq. i'm doing overclocking in a different writeup. i'm being quite serious when i say that there's more up-to-date info on overclocking on the web than probably any other major computer enthusiast 'thing'. it's on mobo ads, cpu ads, tech websites...and it's all better than what i'd write up, which could be distilled to 'follow someone elses instructions until you know what the hell you are doing'. there's a reason there's all these huge computer geeks on this site, and there's maybe 25 computers that access this site that are overclocked. it's not useful in the mainstream. information detailing what stuff like active pfc is in non-technical terms, types of cooling processes...those are the things that are important for a layperson to understand in real words, not technobabble. not overclocking. it's like pot - everyone talks about it, everyone wants to do it, but it's mostly bad to everyone. fun while it lasts, sucks when you burn out your central processor (lolpun brain wut) and are stuck with garbage.

[Dhsu]

I seriously don't know anyone who's ever had a problem with stock cooling who wasn't overclocking, but even so I didn't say to cut the cooling section entirely. It's just I don't see the point of including exotic solutions like phase change and oil induction or even liquid, considering your target layperson audience is never, ever going to need it. You say an overclocking section wouldn't be useful because only 25 people on this site do it...how many people do you think have their computer in a fishtank filled with oil??

Edit: I don't really mean to sound like I'm trying to convince you one way or another, I just figured cutting stuff out would save you some effort. It's your time of course, and if you really want to write about specialized cooling that's totally your prerogative.

[Blue123]

On teh subject of cooling, it may be worth putting in a small note that reads CLEAN INSIDE YOUR COMPUTAR. Although it depends on the conditions of the room the machine is in, dust always builds up inside, acting as an insulator (which leads to heat buildup...). Every 6 months it's worth investing in a small can of compressed air, opening up the case and giving a good spray on the fans and crevices. It's made a big difference for me.