We all have too much on our plate and on our mind at any one time. Your computer should just work, and it should work well. Starting with a well-built computer makes it less prone to failure over time. Sensible data backup practices can help keep precious memories, invaluable financial records, and everything else safe, in the event of something going wrong. Just like you would insure your car, but you would also want to drive a car that runs well in the first place.
PCs can take on more shapes and sizes than you might think. There is a great deal of thought that can shape the personal computer into a better fit for your use case and environment. Raspberry pis, ultra small form factors, etc.
Attention to specification: Both the specifications of the hardware, and the specifications of you, the customer
Commitment to quality parts and quality builds:
Neat; good, clean cable management.
Efficient; not taking more power, money, or frustration than is needed, functioning optimally and sustainably
Current Market Breakthroughs:
Not only paying attention to the latest standards and technologies hitting the market, but being able to cut through marketing BS, and being honest about the real world performance differences. Additionally, looking at how interactions change between version numbers, downsides to upgrading to the latest update, and whether other vendors and manufacturers will even make use of newest developments in their own products.
Motherboard Processor Hard Drive Memory Power Supply Cooling & Fans Graphics Card Peripherals
Hard Drive
This MoBo has a processor (CPU) and memory (RAM) installed, and is more like what you would see in a complete PC build
Form Factors: eATX, ATX, mATX, ITX, mITX
mATX
This MoBo is a different “form factor”, in other words it has different dimensions. This allows it to fit in smaller cases. You can easily tell this type from its square shape, as opposed to the more rectangular shape of the larger MoBo form factors
eATX
This MoBo has shielding covering parts of the PCB (printed circuit board) giving it those flat surfaces where other boards show capacitors and other components
Everything must match
As the motherboard is the one part of the computer that everything else connects to, it dictates a lot about the rest of your computer. You’re limited by the physical shape of the processor socket type, depending on the generation of processor, you’re limited to a specific iteration of RAM, i.e DDR3, DDR4, etc. which is also dictated by the motherboard. Graphics cards will plug into the motherboard’s PCIe slots, so those are also relevant and important for people building gaming rigs and workstations alike. Try to go;
Chassis (fit the space or use case first) ->
Motherboard (have it meet your requirements of specs and features, fits) ->
Storage, followed by everything else
RAM
BIOS
Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
I/O Panel
The I/O Panel is the part of the motherboard that will face the back of the PC case, generally. This is where all your motherboard ports will be. USB, audio, VGA, usually HDMI or Display Port build in to newer boards, if there’s a place to screw in your wifi antennas to the board, generally this will also be on the I/O back part of the board along with the ports.
Some motherboards, especially newer ones, and ones geared towards ‘gaming’ computers, will have an I/O shield build onto the motherboard itself, usually from some combination of metal and plastic. These are generally pretty sturdy and help support all the ports rather than leaving them free-hanging on the board with less support. In the case of older boards, or more baseline boards that don’t have the I/O shield built in, you’ll get an accompanying metal plate with cutouts to match your boards specific port layout. Sometimes the plates will have punch outs for additional ports or optional things.
Here’s an example I/O shield plate. This doesn’t match the exact motherboard shown below, but illustrates the concept
You can see the I/O ports ‘in the back’ are just soldered and secured to the board where they are, and aren’t supported by an additional plastic shroud. In this instance, the metal plate comes into play to fill the gaps around the different I/O ports.
CPU Socket
Here you see the CPU socket and retention lever on the right hand side.
Socket Type
This needs to be matched to the motherboard to fit the physical shape and electrical standards from generation to generation. See more info on the different sockets under the motherboard ttab, but for now, know that these are the basic socket types;
Intel:
AMD:
Frequency
Cache
Ryzen (AMD) vs Intel
Model Numbers & Generations
What do we mean by rotational? Rotational Hard Drives are sometimes referred to as HDD, as opposed to SSD (Solid State Drive) or m.2 (the latest standard since SSD). The rotation refers to the spinning of thin magnetic “disk platters” or different plates that are stacked on top of each other.
When a rotational drive writes or reads files, it’s actually making tiny electrical sequences using magnets and a positive charge plus negative charge. These changes are done with the drive head, which is almost akin to a needle on a record player. When writing files to the hard drive, the drive head moves over a specified area on a specified platter (most hard drives have several platters, sometimes supporting writing to both sides of each platter). Just like the record and needle, the drive head arm moves into position over the platter, but the platter itself is doing the spinning, once the drive head is in place.
These older drives suffer from two major drawbacks due to their mechanical, moving parts. SSDs and m.2 drives are ‘flash memory’ and can be simplified as just a big flash drive. A flash drive has no moving parts, it stores data on chips, and that data is written by USB signals from your computer
Rotational Drive (HDD)
This shows the top of the drive, and is the most familiar picture to most people when they imagine a hard drive, at least if you’re talking about the older rotational drives
This view of the bottom end of the drive shows a good view of the parts of the drive relevant to most PC builders: sata power and sata data, and the small rectangle of pins in the corner are jumper pins that can be bridged with a jumper pin to disable or configure certain features
There are also, more compact rotational hard drives. The bigger ones pictured above are 3.5″ across, while the smaller ones are designed for use in laptops and take up a fraction of the space. Those are 2.5″ drives, and sometimes you’ll hear them referred to as such (i.e. 2.5″ HDD, 3.5″ HDD). Below you can see a 2.5″ drive, and while it is much more compact, it has the benefit of still fitting the same standard side-by-side SATA power and data on 3.5″ drives. This SATA arrangement is also the standard for Solid State Drives.
Solid State Drive (SSD)
m.2 Drives (nVME & others)
SATA vs mSATA vs eSATA
IDE (Legacy)
RAID
Basic Info
SODIMM
Frequency
Latency
XMP / Overclocking
Air Flow
Case Fans
Air Cooling
Heat sink + fan
Water Cooling (AIO, All-in-One)
All about the PCIe standard
Channels
Bandwidth limitations
AMD vs nVIDIA
GTX, RTX, etc. (model numbers & generations)
AI-Assisted Graphics Cards & Breakdown
VRAM Cache
Ray Tracing
Vsync/Gsync, & Monitors
Refresh Rate
Mouse
Keyboard
Audio
Monitor
GSync/VSync/FreeSync
Brightness/Color Grading
If you aren’t in the market for a computer or service, but want to thank or support me, check out these Amazon affiliate links. These are not AI generated top 10 lists; these are real world tested, abused, modified, etc. items that I personally wrote opinions on and made a decision ro pick one model over the other based on several metrics or personal requirements. If you are interested in any of these items, read my readups and look at my pictures and videos, you’ll be more informed whether you’re buying a pair of headphones or shopping for a VPN provider.
Cost/Value Picks; [amazon affiliate links]
Monitors
Peripherals – Keyboard, Mouse (bonus: mousepad), Headphones, Microphone, Speakers, Printers,
Components – GPU, Motherboard, Power Supply, RAM, Processor, Cooler, Case, Hard Drive
Backup Storage Media – SD Cards, Flash Drives, External Drives, Drive Adapters/Cloners, Optical Discs