Episode: 1258
Title: HPR1258: How to Build a Desktop Computer
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1258/hpr1258.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 22:33:18

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Hello, this is how to build a desktop computer.
Usually you start off with the build versus buy kind of discussion where do you have the
interest in time to research and build a desktop computer.
You probably won't save a lot of money, but with all the research you may get better quality
parts.
You'll know exactly what's in your system should any issues or questions ever arise.
The first sort of thing you want to do is define the purpose of the system.
You want to gather the requirements, is it going to be used for gaming or video, photo
processing, maybe web browsing or documents.
The applications should really drive most of your hardware decisions.
Then you start talking about protection and you have data protection.
How much data do you plan to have?
How resilient does it need to be?
Does it need to be on-site mirrored?
It can be raid?
Does it have to be off-site stored?
There's power protection.
You have surge suppression or you can have UPS.
Then you start talking about physical protection.
You can have a key case lock, prevent disassembly or maybe you have a cable to anchor it down,
case their theft.
These are the sorts of things you want to start off with when you're deciding on how
to build a desk to have a computer.
There's other things like defining a budget and deciding what you were willing to spend
maybe a maximum or a target price, maybe even a minimum that you're willing to spend.
Check some of the off-to-shelf models to get the price points and sort of the going price
on the market.
Understand that there are trade-offs and if everything is needed at once or if you can
add the capabilities later, maybe you'll help prevent some sticker shock.
If you have the time, you might want to buy components when the price is a dip, especially
things like memory where prices tend to be volatile.
Be careful about return policy.
Some have 30 days or 90 days or maybe even only a little replace it but they won't give
you a refund kind of stuff.
You also want to learn about the technology and the prices.
For example, the core of the system, you're talking about CPU, memory, motherboard, graphics
controller, power supply.
Then there's things like storage where you've got solid state drives, rotating hard drives,
removable media like DVDs and USB.
There's also auxiliary components like audio, monitor, power protection, webcam, printer,
scanner, backup drive.
You talk about interfaces like SATA or IDE and DDR2 and DDR3 memory or PCI versus PCIe
and USB or SATA.
These are all sort of interfaces that you can have to your system.
These are things you're going to want to learn about before you delve into building your
own desktop.
You also want to get a sort of a determined and approximate price range that you're trying
to get your hands around on this and where to research this stuff.
You want to go to Wikipedia and Tom's Hardware, a non-tech, that's A-N-A-N-D-T-E-C-H.
You want to check the specs on the vendor's websites.
Typically shop at neweg.com or Amazon.com.
So let me check with HP or Dell's websites.
You'll find some good deals out there and give you a real good idea where to sort of start.
Sometimes you can pick up a cheap monitor on sale or something.
Another factor to consider is understanding compatibility.
Hardware to hardware compatibility.
We're taking memory to a motherboard or CPU to the motherboard and memory.
Usually what you'll do there is you'll check the CPU supported lists or memory support
lists or qualified vendor lists.
Some call it a qualified hardware list.
Usually if you stick to the qualified hardware parts, the hardware compatibility is much
more assured.
Then you've got things like hardware to operating system compatibility.
Here you've got drivers, maybe either built into the operating system or maybe you have
to go to a vendor website to get them.
Pay attention to 32-bit versus 64-bit in both operating systems and their drivers.
Operating system and application compatibility.
This isn't something I'm going to address in this podcast, but it's something to research
and understand before you get too far into it.
You may find that you have certain limits on what applications you need to have and
those maybe restrict your operating system choices.
You also define what kind of components you need.
You'll need to have the core and storage components, but there may be other auxiliary components
that you don't need or maybe have from a previous system.
You may find that you can reuse them with your new system, especially things like speakers
or printers, monitors, thrall prime candidates.
Building your own desktop.
Assuming you've reached the point where you assured yourselves that you want to do this
and this is something you're keen on doing and you think it'll maybe save you a little
bit of money.
Who knows?
But you've reached the point where you're going to build your own system.
The first component you want to pick is your CPU.
You typically start with either an Intel or AMD as your brand.
You want to pick out what brand of CPU you're going to have and once you know that then you
can pick out a model which is typically dictated by your needs in your budget.
If you're going to be doing gaming, you're going to want to look for the higher end systems
or higher end CPUs.
You also want to dictate which motherboard, the CPU will dictate which motherboard socket
you can use.
Be sure to buy a CPU in a box set so it includes the CPU fan and heat sink.
Otherwise you'll need to figure out the thermal dissipation needs and the physical dimension
limitations of the case in order to select the appropriate third party CPU fan and heat
sink.
This can involve liquid cooling solutions and all kinds of exotic hardware.
I'm not covering the thermal solutions in this podcast.
Just make sure when you buy your CPU, get it in a box set and it'll come with the CPU
and heat sink and fan everything in one box.
The next thing you'll want to look for is your motherboard.
Here we're talking about needing to narrow the search for the motherboard because there
are dozens and dozens and dozens of these things.
So the first thing you want to do is narrow your search down to the types that have the
right socket for your CPU.
You can decide on the motherboard form factor.
It can be ATX or mini ATX or micro ATX or mini ATX or not and not it goes.
You can look that up with a PDF for motherboard sizes.
Usually I would recommend just using ATX as sort of the standard but then you typically
have a larger case.
The next thing I want to decide about the motherboard is whether you want to have onboard
video or discrete video and what I mean by discrete is that it'll actually be a separate
card you have to buy separately and it goes into a slot inside the motherboard.
If it's an onboard video card that you're opting for, check that it has dedicated memory
or if it borrows main memory from the system.
If it borrows from the main system, you only want to increase the amount of memory that
you put in your system a little bit.
I'd recommend using a discrete card if you have any kind of 3D requirements.
One of the later versions of GNOME actually required 3D at one point to not go into fallback
mode but I think they've corrected that.
But you can go discrete later if you want even if you go with the onboard initially.
You'll just have wasted a little bit of money on the motherboard.
If you do go with discrete, ensure that the motherboard has enough high-end PCIe slots
for your needs, otherwise you could run a follow-up capacity limitation.
Still on the motherboard, you can decide whether you want to have audio onboard or you
could have a discrete or you could even have an external.
If you're going to go with the onboard audio, check the motherboard has a suitable output
port for your needs and if it's discrete, ensure the motherboard has a slot for the audio
card.
If you're going with an external audio system, make sure the motherboard has the ports
to support it.
On Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, while there's a few other boards that have these, they're generally
considered inferior in terms of performance for connectivity and security, a non-mobile
device like a desktop.
It's also easy to add a card or USB device to obtain these Wi-Fi or Bluetooth types of
features, communication channels.
Also when it's integrated on the motherboard, there tend to be harder to upgrade later.
Moving on to output ports, you want to make sure that you get enough output ports to meet
your needs.
While some output ports like the parallel port, the serial com port, or kind of legacy, some
systems, some people still prefer PS2, maybe you've got some keyboard you want to keep
or something like that, want to make sure your motherboard has a PS2 port.
I also want to make sure it has enough USB.
There never seems to be enough of those.
If you're going to have external hard drives, you might want to consider an eSate a port.
This stands for external serial ATA.
There's also the SP diff for audio, high quality audio, optical stuff.
HDMI is another port that's very common and I would highly recommend.
There's Ethernet type ports, whatever your output ports need are.
Make sure they come on your motherboard, otherwise you're going to be shuffling out money
for a district card to do whatever you need.
At this point, knowing these sorts of parameters, the video, the audio, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth,
the USB ports, whatever output ports you need, you should be narrowing your search down
fairly narrowly.
What you want to do is you want to compare prices, read the reviews, compare the ratings,
and then decide on a motherboard vendor in model.
That's the motherboard.
Next thing you want to do is pick out your memory.
Typically the memory is based on the motherboard and you want to make sure you find a matching
type of memory for your motherboard.
It's usually DDR2 and DDR3 are the common types nowadays.
There are five memory properties.
There's the DDR revision, which is currently the DDR2 and DDR3.
There's the chip classification, like DDR2, hyphen 13333, where that 1333 is the maximum
clock speed and megahertz the memory chip support.
Third item is the module classification, and here we'll be talking about PC3, hyphen
10666, where the 10666 is the maximum transfer rate in megabytes.
The fourth item about memory properties is the timing, and here you'll see it in like
four numbers that are separated by hyphens, be like 7, hyphen 8, hyphen 8, hyphen 24.
This measures the time the memory chip delays doing something internally.
The fifth property is the voltage.
Now, out of all those properties, only the first two or three are really critical to
understand for picking out a system, unless you're going to start doing overclocking, in
which case the timing and the voltage also become relevant.
Note that the prop memory properties are maximums.
The actual rates will be lower based on the motherboard.
If you match those first three properties, the DDR revision, the chip classification,
and the module classification, you should be in pretty good shape.
The DDR revision has to match.
If you can get an exact match on the chip and module classifications, make sure the
memory module is faster than the motherboard.
So you want the module to have higher numbers than the motherboard does.
Like I said, the other two properties you'd probably don't need to worry about unless
you're going to overclock, and I'm not going to cover that in this podcast either.
For more assurance, get memory that's on the motherboard maker's certified list.
Again, most memory will probably work just fine as long as the DDR version matches and
the chip classification and the module classification works are matching.
I personally recommend buying memory in higher capacities per module for future expansion.
So if you have four memory module slots, say which can accept one gig, two gig, or four
gig modules, I'd opt for the four gig modules.
I recommend that all the memory modules be the same size, optimally the same brand and
model if possible.
That'll avoid a lot of timing issues that can happen when you mix memory modules.
So that's memory in a nutshell.
The next item is video card.
If using an onboard video controller, you've already decided this.
If you're using a discrete video card, narrow the search down to the available motherboard
slots.
If you've only got one PCIe 16X slot, you're not going to be able to do AMD's crossfire
X or Nvidia's SLI card linking because you don't have two slots.
If you buy a high end discrete card or cards, be sure to check the video card vendors recommended
power supply wattage and required power connector.
These cards can often require a separate power connector from the power supply.
Another thing to be careful of is the heat dissipation.
Typically, the higher in cards have their own fan, which can generate a lot of heat inside
the case and justify their need for more fans and ventilation.
If you're going to have like dual monitors, it might be proven to get.
Make sure you can handle two video cards, discrete video cards inside the case.
So that's video cards.
Internal storage.
By internal storage, I mean storage devices that will be housed inside the computer
case.
Most motherboards come with an onboard storage controller, typically SATA2.
Some have an ID controller for legacy support, like for, you know, floppiness or what
have you.
Server motherboards may have some version of scuzzy or serial attached storage or SAS controllers.
These onboard controllers are configured from within the BIOS or UEFI.
Depending on the motherboard's soft bridge chipset, it may support a few raid levels,
usually raid zero, which is striping and one, which is mirroring, or maybe I got the
other way, may have seen the way around.
In any case, storage devices come in different physical sizes, which require different size
bays.
There's five and a quarter inch, straight and half inch, two and a half inch, one point
eight inch.
These refer to the size of the storage medium, not the actual bay size.
So a five and a quarter inch bay comes in half height versions, which are typically what
you see for standard CD and DVD drives in today's computers.
The three and a half inch bays are usually used for floppies or zip drives or, you know,
more legacy type equipment.
Again, you can check Wikipedia and some of the other sources for some of that kind of
reference information.
Storage devices can vary significantly in terms of their storage capacity.
Often the larger the storage capacity, the higher the latency and storing and retrieving
data from it.
The cache on board the disk can mitigate this latency.
So large cache sizes are preferred, particularly for large capacity drives.
Cache sizes currently include somewhere between eight mag, 16 mag, 32 mag and 64 mag sizes.
With rotating magnetic disks, the speed at which they rotate can also mitigate this latency.
These speeds include like 5400 RPMs, 7200 RPMs, and 10,000 RPMs, and 15,000 RPMs.
With each steps and speed requiring more power and giving off more heat, this is something
sort of cognizant of when you're talking about rotating disks or the number of disks.
If you need more than two or three drives, you'll need to make sure that your case has
adequate physical space for them and that your power supply is sized appropriately.
That's it for this internal storage.
Now there's case and power supply.
Some cases are bundled with a power supply, which might work great for average to low-end
system configurations.
Based on the motherboard form factor and the internal storage requirements, you pick
out your computer case.
These features to consider is the power supply location.
It's always in the rear, but can be on the top or the bottom of a tower configuration.
So if your computer is going to sit on the floor, having the power supply on the bottom
might turn it into a dust-bunny haven.
The number and type of storage drive base is another thing to consider in your case.
Removable or washable dust filters, those can come in kind of handy, especially if you're
in a dusty environment.
Some people like to show off their system so they'll put in lighting kits or something
like that.
Another thing to consider is the front panel ports and the static suppression.
A lot of times when, especially in colder climates, there's a lot of static that builds up
because of the dry weather.
And when you touch that front panel where you plug in USB ports or external stated drives,
you could create some static issues.
The number and size of fans is limited by the case's design.
So a typical case will come with one rear fan, but most offers some kind of front side
or top vents where fans can be mounted.
The fan size is range from about 25 millimeters to 250 millimeters.
The popular size is seen to be about 80, 92, 120 or 140 millimeters.
Make sure the power supply is sized correctly and there's a couple of things to consider
here.
There's three things.
There's the physical dimensions of the power supply fit in the case.
There's some slim power supplies out there for smaller form factor cases.
There's the wattage output which is driven by the video cards and the number of internal
storage devices.
And then the third thing is connectors required by the motherboard, CPU fan, case fans, video
cards, internal storage devices.
Without a discrete video card and two to three internal storage devices, a three to
400 watt power supply is more than adequate.
If you're getting a discrete video card, check on its specific power requirements.
Power supplies have efficiency ratings under the 80 plus certification, which span from
vanilla 80 plus to bronze, silver, gold, and platinum.
If you want more information on that, you might want to check Wikipedia.
Some of the things to consider is the monitors and printers needs that you may have.
What kind of operating system you're going to want.
But I thought that just going over these basic parts of the system would be helpful to
those who maybe haven't gone through that process before.
Again, the steps are pick your CPU, pick your motherboard, pick the memory, then the
video card, the internal storage, and then the case and power supply.
Then you can pick all your monitors and printers and other items.
I hope this has been beneficial to you.
Thank you, Hacker Public Radio, for providing a platform in which for us geeks and broadcast
to the world.
Thanks.
This is Toby signing off.
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