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

[prophetik music]

excellent image. i can't stress enough how much hassle backing up my older stuff would have saved me. now i'm stuck with most of my pre-2007 music output completely gone (my computer was stolen in 3/07).

[anosou]

Looks like a useful guide but Brad, and I mean no offense, I could never read the whole think if you're writing in all lower case.

[prophetik music]

wait, aren't you not even american or something?

i actually did that for a specific reason. i'm sick of reading these articles and technical descriptions that take everything too seriously. they're not even enjoyable to read. no caps means that people take what i write with a grain of salt instead of just assuming that i'm some super computer man or something. i mean, hell, i referenced so many sources for this that i lost track and just didn't even cite anything. it's obviously supposed to be humorous in parts, too. would 12.7 have the same impact as it does now if i tried to be serious for most of the rest of the guide?

it's also a bit of a trademark of mine, and i felt like continuing it.

edit: so i kind of want a front cover. anyone want to make me a graphic?

[Flash Strife]

I got most of the items needed for my monster build, need a hard drive and a good heatsink for overclocking an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU. Want to get a 1TB drive but I don't know which one is good, looking for something with good RPM and cache that won't die on me and that is less than $100 if possible. I got the cooler master HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case which has three 230mm fans, one in front, side and top, and a 140mm fan on the back so it should cool well and I'm gonna use arctic silver 5 on the CPU. I would like a good heatsink though. Any suggestions?

[prophetik music]

urgh, lost my first post.

cpu and cooling isn't necessarily your biggest limiter when it comes to overclocking - your mobo is. chipset coolers are a great way to extend the life of your cpu. the high-riser sets are the best on this page, but simple heatsinks will work too. hope you got a good mobo, else you're screwed for OCing.

this. a hard drive is a hard drive, unless it's a 10k or an ssd.

xigmatek makes an excellent cooler. i'm pretty sure it should fit - i don't work with amd usually since the performance tradeoff isn't worth the monetary difference. i have one of these (lapped) on my e8400 and i got past 4ghz with ease. you might want to get an aftermarket fan, though - the ones that come with it are decent but not super-powered. if you're already ordering from petra's, nab a yate loon oversize (38mm thick) fan, and use pliers to cut some of the excess plastic away so that it still works with the xigmatek mounting system. it does wonders for your cooling temps. i mean, come on - a 120mm fan that puts out over a hundred CFM, and it's thicker so it's got more force to get air through the fins...and it's only like 6 bucks? sign me up! i bought nine when i ordered from there last time. petra's sells psu and fan dampeners, too, for cheaper than anywhere else. worth looking into.

[Flash Strife]

In case you're wondering about my mobo, I got this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131366

[prophetik music]

urgh, not the best for OCing. don't be afraid to get your chipset coolers, then.

[Pyrion]

Took a look at your hardware FAQ (interesting way of plugging it, by effectively calling me an idiot), and I felt there were some things that needed expounding:

2.2.7 (obviously): Inconsistency between "running comfortably" and "preventing it from exploding." Which is it going to be? There's enough documentation online that indicates that the processors will still work just fine even with inadequate cooling, although probably not for very long.

2.4.2: That's a rather conservative estimate for how long it would take a processor to overheat. When I was installing my i7, I didn't have the heatsink properly seated (the mounting setup for the i7's heatsink is a pain in the ass to figure out if you're used to working with AMD designs) and the system wouldn't even get to the BIOS screen before shutting itself off. That is, perhaps, another thing worth mentioning: Intel chips at least have always been designed with safeguards to protect the processor in the event of a cooling fault. I'm sure AMD chips of the last several generations do this as well, but it wasn't always like this, and I distinctly remember a comparison video of now-really-old processors having their heatsinks removed and what happens to the processor as a result. The Intel throttled itself down to a snail's pace, the AMD gave up the pixie dust and blue-screened.

3.2.3: It should be noted that since AMD released the Athlon 64, none of their motherboards have involved the use of a northbridge, it being on-die instead. The Nehalem line also has an on-die northbridge.

3.2.6: This section is incredibly misleading. First off...

3.2.6.2: PCI is a parallel bus, meaning that every device on the bus has to share that 133MB/sec limit. That's why, for example, the SB Live cards (and pretty much everything Creative Labs has released since) caused so much grief, as they tended to dominate the PCI bus.

3.2.6.3: PCI-Express is a serialized bus, meaning that a PCI-Express X1 slot has its own dedicated 250MB/sec line to the CPU. Also worth mentioning, if the X1 slot is open-ended (where the "back" of the slot isn't closed off) you can theoretically plug a X4, X8 or X16 device into it and it will run, albeit at 1X. PCI-Express 1X cards are becoming increasingly common replacements for sound and network cards, for example.

3.2.6.4: Users will have to be mindful of the fact that PCI-Express X8 and PCI-Express X16 share the same slot form-factor. X8 is just an X16 slot with half of its lanes disabled. Reason I mention this is that some motherboards, typically on the cheap side, have multiple X16 slots but only one will actually have full X16 functionality, the rest will be X8 (or sometimes even lower).

3.2.7: This isn't a recent development: parallel ATA drives aren't limited to the speed of the slowest drive in the chain. I agree that they are a pain in the ass, in some ways, but in others they're much less of a pain in the ass. For instance, cable management. SATA cables are so damn small that it's not hard to find them coming dislodged from the drives. Parallel ATA, on the other hand, is a pain in the ass to remove once you get it in. Also maybe get in a mention for SAS?

3.2.8.1: Worth mentioning is that USB is entirely host-based, meaning the reason that USB devices can afford to be so damn small (compared to equivalent PCI/PCI-Express devices, anyway) is that practically everything they do is offloaded to the CPU. So a USB TV tuner, for example, will consume much more CPU cycles to decode a TV signal than a PCI tuner would. Some USB mice (if you ramp up the sampling rate) can consume an inordinate amount of CPU cycles as well. Also, USB host controllers do tend to be flaky, so it's not uncommon to boot a system and find that the keyboard or mouse or other devices aren't showing up.

3.2.8.3: Should mention that if you unplug a PS/2 device while the system is running, you'll have to restart the system for it to be recognized again.

3.2.11.1: You can also use a 20-pin connector on a 24-pin board, although it isn't recommended, as the current draw may be too great for the wiring. Worth to mention, much in the same vein as overclocking, YMMV.

3.4: Must be mentioned: running a server board implies running a server OS. I'm not bullshitting on this. If you try to run anything greater than a dual-processor rig on a client version of Windows, it will not utilize (nor will it even recognize) the additional processors. Client versions of Windows are license-limited to two physical processors. Not physical cores or logical cores, mind you. You can have two eight-core processors and utilize all sixteen cores, although I agree, that's overkill. Also, server boards typically don't have room for as many expansion slots as a desktop board would, so you may be limited to onboard video, or a single PCI-Express slot that won't necessarily be X16.

4.2.1.3: Absolute minimum for Vista is 128MB, and that's just enough for DWM to function. Otherwise, you're stuck in GDI+ rendering, which is ass.

4.2.6.1: Bear in mind that a single-slot card will vent hot air back into the case, which is dumb, because the orientation of the overwhelming majority of computers has the card pointing downwards, meaning it's just going to suck that hot air back in. If you get a single-slot card, you're probably just going to have to get a slot blower fan to expel that air anyway.

4.2.6.5: I don't know if you mention this in your PSU section, as I have yet to read it, but what really matters for video card power requirements is not wattage, it's the number of amps on the +12V rail. More is better.

5.3.1: Beware of Creative Labs cards in Vista. Their drivers are garbage. This is news to nobody, btw.

Ahh, I got to your PSU section. Hm.

6.2.3: If your overall power factor is less than the power company's threshold, you will likely be charged extra for the discrepancy.

6.2.9: The problem with a multiple rail setup is that unused power on a rail is wasted power. It doesn't get recovered. Better to get a single large rail than multiple dedicated rails. Also, it's rather hilarious that some PSUs that are marketed as multiple rails actually only have a single large rail anyways when they're taken apart and looked at by people that know wtf they're doing.

6.2.9.3: No mention of the absolute necessity of amps on the +12V rail? Shame.

6.3.8: I had one of these. 500W. Ran fine until I tried SLI, then it couldn't keep up. Not enough amps on the +12V rail.

6.3.9: Are you sure Apevia is NewEgg's brand name? Or at least, their only brand name? ABS comes to mind.

6.3.11: One thing to mention that I appreciate from PCP&C is that they market their PSUs based entirely around efficiency, so their Silencer 750W will actually provide 750W, for example.

6.4.1: This should be explained in the manual you get when you buy one of these, but under no circumstances should you ever connect a laser printer to a UPS. You'll kill the printer and likely damage the UPS as well. Just felt like mentioning that.

6.4.3: I know I'm being pedantic, but these should be more appropriately referred to as "socket multipliers," since that's all they really do.

7.2.2.1: "all ATA drives are essentially limited by the slowest unit on the cable." Uh, no. Look up "independent device timing." Heck, just read the Wikipedia entry on Parallel ATA, it goes into this.

7.2.7: Quite true. Disabling NCQ, when you can actually do it, results in a net increase in read and write speeds from the drive because it doesn't have to waste time queuing up requests and sorting them for the sake of seek efficiency.

7.3.2: Seagate went from good to questionable when they defied logic by buying out Maxtor.

8.2.1.9: I seem to recall the early Pentium 4's used RDRAM, which was hilarious cuz the latency was horrible.

8.2.1.12: Ah! My favorite subject (even before PSU +12V amperage)! Worth mentioning that if you're running a 32-bit program in 64-bit windows, and it isn't compiled/"flagged" as large address-aware, 64-bit Windows will still limit it to that 1.86GB chunk. A good example for triggering this is old versions of Supreme Commander, as this is heavily documented. GPG even went so far as to compile newer versions (including the Forged Alliance expansion) as large address-aware so that this ceased to be an issue. You can force the issue however, at least with some applications, by using a Visual Studio commandline tool called "editbin" (which is crap) or "LaaTiDo" (google it, I'm too lazy to format this for the forum) to re-flag an application as large address-aware (but this will break any content protection built in that does a CRC check on the file, so for instance Microsoft Games for Windows Live won't run on Fallout 3 if you rig it to run as large address-aware).

8.2.5/8.2.5.1: As far as the i7's are concerned, your vTT and vDIMM have to be within 0.5v of eachother to avoid damaging the CPU. That's the word of God, at least as far as Intel is concerned. In practice, you can go beyond this, but it's advisable not to, as processors have been killed in the line of duty/experimentation. One thing to bear in mind though, is that the voltage you specify and the voltage you get are often two entirely different things. eVGA, for instance, has put voltage sensor points on their boards so you can hook up a multimeter and check them yourself, if you're so inclined.

8.5: 64-bit editions of Windows require twice as much as 32-bit, because the word sizes are twice as long. So Vista x64 requires 2GB minimum (but if you're going to run x64 in this day and age, this shouldn't be a problem in the first place since you'll start out with at least 4GB and hit the current ceiling of 12GB).

11.3.2: Thing to bear in mind is that aluminum oxidizes, so you might not want to buy an aluminum case if you live in a region that experiences high humidity, or if you live along a coastline. Also, being really light means aluminum is flimsier than steel, which could be an issue with some cases built to save on overall weight for, say, hauling the rig to a LAN party.

11.6.2: They weren't always this way. I had a Lian-Li server case that didn't have beveled edges, and sliced my right pinky finger open down to the tendon while trying to pry the front cover off of a drive bay. Just felt like mentioning that. I still have the scar.

Would you believe I spent about two hours typing all that? *yawns*

EDIT:

vista 32-bit, with sp1, has a glitch where it shows what's installed, not what's available for usage.

That's not a glitch. That was done on purpose, because they got a lot of complaints from idiots that had 4GB installed and it didn't say they had 4GB, but instead showed how much they could actually use!

[prophetik music]

i had no idea you were so pissed at me, pyrion

i don't know if you noticed while reading, but i used a fair bit of humor throughout this entire thing. in case you didn't know, CPUs rarely explode unless they're using LN2 for cooling, and even then it's really rare with the custom-made pots they use. the statement "prevent it from exploding" is an example of my odd sense of humor.

actually, it DOES take around 30 seconds to get to 100c. you have to disable the auto-off, but after the cpu throttles itself it gets up there after approximately 20 more seconds. that's how i torched my first celeron =)

you're right about the northbridge, i had forgotten about that. i didn't realize that the i7s had it on-die, either.

i was quite clear to point out that if it fit, it will run when it comes to pci and pci-e slots. so i think that information is pretty clear, in that regard. i have no idea why your average computer user - which is what this guide was intended to be for - needs to know the difference between parallel and serialized graphics and expansion ports. i know i don't need to know that. i also don't know why there were issues with 3.2.6.2 and .3, or 3.2.7 for that matter. i didn't even mention that.

i guess i'd assume that someone would know that a usb device doesn't process on it's own. doesn't everyone know that?

while i didn't specifically say that ps/2 plugs aren't hot-pluggable, i think i made that idea pretty clear, didn't i?

i didn't mention the part about 20-pins fitting because i didn't want some idiot to come complain to me that they did what i said and it torched their system or psu or something. yeah, they fit - but who cares? it's so rare to find 20-pin PSUs now, and they're so cheap to buy that it's just not worth the risk.

3.4: do i really even need to mention that? i expect people to use their eyes - if they want a server board, despite all the stuff i say about them, i think they'd know to check if their quadfire setup will fit on it.

i don't even need to mention minimums, particularly since i'm giving real-world numbers and not bare hardware minimums.

again, with gpu coolers - i fully realize and understand this. don't know why it matters - i'm not recommending that people buy them, i'm just telling them what it is. i only mention it so that someone doesn't buy a dualie and block their only NIC port or something.

about pfc, i've never encountered that, even using this computer at a lot of really shady (power-wise) locations.

there are problems with both a multi-rail setup and a single-rail setup. i recommend - like i said - that you have one rail for every major power-drawing processor on your system. that way people don't buy a huge psu with forty rails and blame me when it can't run their gtx 295s.

i didn't talk about amps because you don't really need to worry about them with the consumer market the way it is. if you buy a psu under the above specs - enough watts, with the right number of rails - you'll get the right number of amps on each rail. it's simple math. and it's easier for joe counterstrike to figure out.

that's nice, which is why i said specifically that they're cheapo desktop units. not for power systems. or did you think that your psu could really handle an sli setup with a 500w psu?

apevia is newegg's brand name. it's not their only one, but it's their primary one.

actually, pcp&c's 750w psu only supplies around 700w. but you were close.

6.4.3: which is why i said that there's a difference between a good one that includes a warranty and a pos one from walmart.

for christs sake, pyrion. did you notice the word "essentially"? IDT only works on certain components, and the nature of it means that it doesn't always work. which is why i said that you should never expect more than the slowest device on the cable.

they went from questionable to horrid when 1/3rd of drives were bricking out of the box, and the firmware update that they gave out not only torched another 1/3 of the drives but also invalidated the warranty on them.

rdram was in the p4? i had no idea. cool.

ugh, 64bit vs. 32bit makes my head hurt. why they didn't just go 64-bit after xp - or after vista, for that matter - makes no sense to me.

you can't really buy ddr3 that isn't within that guideline, though - at least, the stuff outside the guideline is WAY outside (like, 2.2v).

didn't think about the oxidation problem with aluminum, but i did point out that it's not as strong as steel.

lian-li is now the top dog in overall quality and consistency, which is all i cared about when i put this together.

as a whole, i appreciate your comments, but some of the stuff that you pointed out i either omitted on purpose for the sake of brevity (i know, it's 64 pages...) or else just didn't worry about because it didn't need to be said.

ninja edit: i know it's not a glitch. i just worded it a little weird.

edit 2: i'm not trying to be snarky, either, for what it's worth. this was one of those stream of consciousness posts.

[Pyrion]

Yeah I responded stream-of-consciousness as well, just reading and typing whatever came to mind as far as responding. I know that a lot of that isn't really absolutely necessary, but I figured I'd put it out there anyways.

Anyway, MS didn't force the 64-bit issue because they could technically get away with 32-bit addressing in Vista. The OS would still run. It'd be dogshit slow and compared to Vista x64, but it'd still work. I'm thinking they'll force the issue when 4GB of memory is the minimum recommended amount.

What's funny is 32-bit Vista doesn't require signed kernel-mode drivers, whereas 64-bit does. They were originally going to force that issue, until the threat of lawsuits from antivirus vendors nixed it, because guess what, most of those products operated by hooking directly into the Windows kernel, same as most rootkits do, instead of running services with elevated permissions as MS intended.

[prophetik music]

ba-da-bump

[prophetik music]

bi-di-bump.

[prophetik music]

bi-di-bip.

[zircon]

Brad, this is really annoying to read without capitalization.

[Dafydd]

Moar caps lock

Lol, I tried to write that in caps, but it kept getting converted back to normal text. Conclusion: repost the entire guide in caps and the forum software will fix the capitalization for you.

[prophetik music]

Brad, this is really annoying to read without capitalization.

people can overlook enormous amounts of grammar mistakes as long as there's capitalization. that blows my mind.

i need to go back and add some stuff. i finished this immediately before the i# series came out, and being able to add info regarding the GTX series as well would be nice.

[anosou]

people can overlook enormous amounts of grammar mistakes as long as there's capitalization. that blows my mind.

i need to go back and add some stuff. i finished this immediately before the i# series came out, and being able to add info regarding the GTX series as well would be nice.

That's because even school kids with bad grammar can handle proper capitalization.

[Dafydd]

It's say it makes it a lot easier to tell where sentences end and begin. Without upper-case letters here and there, it all looks like an overwhelming blob of text, like it's all the same, huge sentence. I don't care that much, but if you want people to read it, you might as well get stuff like that right.

[prophetik music]

bump. haven't spellchecked the doc yet sorry swede.

[prophetik music]

another bump. still haven't spellchecked the doc yet, but it's actually on my to-do list, now.

[prophetik music]

triple bump!

you're never going to guess what i'm starting to do RIGHT NOW.

[prophetik music]

i've gone through the entire thing, updated a lot of grammar, and prettied it up. and added a fully functional table of contents.

i need to go through and edit for clarity, and add some content about the newest series of graphics cards and processors, as well as some windows 7 info.

[Skummel Maske]

I think you're doing an amazing job on this, keep it up!

[prophetik music]

i've gone through the whole thing, updating where necessary and doing some major grammatical review. i still need to update the SSD section, since there kind of isn't one.

take a look, folks, and tell me what you think!

edit: from the second post in the thread...

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.

[prophetik music]

bumpage, since it's been over six months.

i realized there's a few errors in the factual info in this, so i'll be editing it at some point to clean that up. notably in the power inverter section.