Building your own PC is a fun little project and it gives you the satisfaction of building something. Another good thing about building your own computer is that you will know that the parts you have put in your PC are good quality as many desktop manufacturers use low quality parts to keep their costs down.

Even though it is not that difficult I often get asked how to build a computer and where do you start.

Some things your should know before building your own computer:

• Its not that hard!! The parts all go in quite simply, most of the work is in the research to make sure you get the right parts. If you want to do it just do it.
• Benchmarks are the tests that people do on their hardware to see how much stress they can take and how powerful the hardware is. This can be very useful in comparing different parts against each other. Don’t just rely on benchmarks though you will need to read reviews and research parts also.
• SET A BUDGET!! If you don’t set a budget I guarantee you will end up spending heaps. Set a budget and make sure you stick to it.

Choosing Your New Computers Parts

CPU

I like to start by choosing the CPU (Central Processing Unit) because that is the component that does all the processing(or thinking) and will determine how long it takes for your computer to do tasks.
When choosing a CPU don’t just go for the fastest one. Figure out your needs before you just pick the fastest one. If you are just going to use the computer for internet browsing, word processing or emails you are nit going to need to get the top of the line model.

With the CPU may come a CPU fan or you may need to get one as an extra item. If you are planning on overclocking you may want to look into an after market CPU fan or cooling system as when you overclock your CPU can get to hot and need extra cooling.

A good place to check out CPU benchmarks is http://www.passmark.com/

Mainboard

The mainboard (used to be known as a motherboard) is the board that everything plugs into. You will need to make sure that the CPU is compatable with the mainboard. You can figure this out by looking at the socket type, they will need to match (eg. If you have a 1155 CPU you will need a 1155 socket on tour mainboard).
Some key factors in choosing a motherboard are:
FSB(Front Side Bus) Speed: This is often overlooked by people but the FSB is the component that moves all of the data from your CPU to your RAM. The speed of this can be a bottle neck if your data cannot move from your CPU to your memory quick enough.
CPU Socket: You are going to need to make sure that the CPU socket on the mainboard is the same as your socket on your new CPU.
Memory Socket: This will determine what memory you can put into your PC build, now days most boards have DDR3
Output Ports: These are the actual output plugs on your motherboard. Eg. USB Ports, VGA, Serial, etc. If you need a lot of USB ports make sure that you get a mainboard that has a lot of USB ports on it and if you need a serial port make sure you get a mainboard with a serial port on it and so on and so on.
Card Ports: These will be the slots expantion slots on your board eg. PCI and PCI-e. These will determine what addon cards you can put into your PC build. If you already have some cards(maybe graphics card) that you want to reuse make sure that your mainboard has a slot that can fit it.

RAM

Choosing your RAM(Random Access Memory) is pretty easy. For all you that don’t know RAM is your memory. Do not think that more is always going to be better. You need to pay attention to the frequency of the RAM because that will determine the speed that data can tavel in and out of your memory cache, if you have 8GB of DD2 667mhz ram than that is not going to be as quick as 8GB of DDR3 1333mhz RAM.

You will also need to make sure that your mainboard is compatible with the frequency of the RAM.

A good place for Memory benchmarks is http://www.memorybenchmark.net/

Storage

Often the hard drive is a big bottle neck in computer performance. So you need to pay attention to what sort of storage drive you get. I recommend reading some reviews and benchmark tests on the drives you are looking at.

Now if you can afford an SSD(Solid State Drive) I highly recommend getting one. The performance increase that you get with with a solid state drive over the a hard disk drive is definitely worth it. If you do go for a SSD i recommend using your SSD for your operating system(windows, linux, etc) and a HDD(Hard Disk Drive) for your storage space.

If you do not want to get an SSD and choose to go with a HDD pay attention to both the cache and the spin speed. The more for these the better as they will help with performance of your drive.

A good place for HDD benchmarks is http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/

Graphics Card

When building your computer a graphics card can be a very important component of your PC build. If you play graphics intensive games or you want to do video editing you will need to pay attention to what graphics card you get. If you are just using your computer of general use or non graphics intensive applications you may just be able to use the built in graphics from your mainboard. You can also just use the built in graphics and test out the applications then buy a graphics card later if you need it.

To choose your graphics card you can look up the recommended specifications from the applications that you want to use, eg. if you want to use adobe premier look up adobe premier recommended hardware. Then you will get a list of recommended hardware to use with the software.

For graphics cards don’t just go for the one with the best benchmark. Look up how the card will work on the software that you want to use. Especially if you want to do video editing or CAD work. Most benchmarking software is geared towards FPS(Frames Per Second) which is great for gaming but that is not what you want for CAD or video editing, you want quality of rendering.

You will also need to make sure that the video card will fit into the mainboard that you have bought. Most graphics cards are PCI-E nowdays, but you will need to make sure that you have the compatible slots on your mainboard for the card.

A good site for looking up graphics card benchmarks is http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

Computer Case

When building your own computer you may just want a case to hold all your components in or you may want a case that looks really cool. This is something that you are going to have to decide.

Some key things when choosing the case for your computer build are that it will fit the motherboard form factor(So an ATX case for an ATX motherboard), that the computer will fit where you need it to and that it has enough ventilation for your components to keep cool. If you have a high end computer with more powerful parts you will need more cooling as the more power used the more heat is outputted from the components.

Power Supply

Your case may have a power supply included and in most regular cases these will do. You will want to check your power supply needs on a power supply calculator.

Some power supply calculators are:

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

http://www.coolermaster.outervision.com/

http://support.asus.com/powersupply.aspx

These are just a few examples of the power supply calculators, there are many more just take your pick.

If you need a after market power supply make sure that it will fit in the case. The power supply’s descriptions will have measurements on them and you will need to make sure they fit into the case.

 

If you need any help when designing your computer build or want me to have a look at your plan just hit me up on google plus https://plus.google.com/+jakengardner/

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OK so yesterday I was doing a little bit of video editing and I thought I’d take a look at how hot my CPU was when I was doing it. And honestly I got quite a shock to see that some of my CPU core temperatures were getting above 70 degrees Celsius!!

So I decided to do some investigating, I found this wonderful little utility from Intel (who is the manufacturer of my CPU) that tests your cpu, its called Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool.
So I downloaded the tool and ran it, it told me that not only my processor was fine that it is capable of up to 100 degrees. Here I was worried about 70 degrees.
Just thought you all might like to know in case you run into this and get a bit worried.

 

 

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OK to build a high powered laser you are going to need a 2 things, the driver and the diode.

Now we can just purchase the driver but it is a lot cheaper and more fun to make your laser driver. (Its fairly easy as well!!)

What you will need:

• Soldering Iron: For soldering wires and components together
• Solder: For soldering wires and components together
• LM317 Voltage Controller: To control the voltage, this will bring the voltage down to 1.25V
• Battery Pack: We use this for a power source, I prefer a 9V Battery
• Resistor: To manage the current that passes through the laser(to much current will fry your laser)
• Focus-able Laser Diode: This is the part that actually puts out the light. We need to make sure it is a focus-able laser diode so we can adjust the focus on the laser.

You will need to figure out what size resistor you need. To do this the formula is “Resistance = Voltage / Watts”. The LM317 Voltage controller only lets through 1.25 volts. So that gives us “Resistance = 1.25 / Watts”. Now You need to get the rating of your laser, lets say its 250mw this will now be “Resistance = 1.25/.25” so we need to calculate 1.25 divided by .25, this equals 5Ohms. So we need a 5 Ohm resistor.

On the LM317 Voltage controller there are three pins on the bottom, we will need to use all of these for our laser driver. The right pin or the “V In” pin is were we are going to put our positive current into from the battery pack (which is the red wire). The middle and right pins need the resistor between them. You can use a bread board to do this or you can just make a small one straight off the pins of the LM317.

The left pin or the “Adjust” pin is what you will be hooking your positive wire up to your laser. Now hook your battery up to the “V In” pin and hook the battery up to the black wire coming off the diode. Now you have light.

Now you will need to test it to see if the laser or the laser driver produces alot of heat. If it does then you will need to make some sort of heat sink or another way to get rid of your excess heat.

There you go hope you have fun with your laser 🙂

Please remember:

• Don’t shine laser at planes
• Don’t look into laser
• Always wear safety glasses
• Don’t shine laser at people
• Lasers can blind

You can also check out a video of my first laser build

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So you may be wondering actually what is a server?(especially if you read What is active directory)

What is a server

Well a server is just a computer that serves information hence the name server. When you think of servers you may think of huge racks of whirring powerful machines in a server room giving thousands of people information, but that is not the only kind of server there is. Realistically any computer can be a server, it does not need any special server grade hardware or big fancy racks.

So what does a server do?

A server serves information or resourses to other computers(called clients), an example of this is the internet, all webpages and downloads come from a server(or many servers) somewhere that is serving you the webpage or download.

Different types of servers

There are many types of servers for many different applications some examples of these are:
Application server: these are a server dedicated to one application
Database server: A database server is used to run a database from they will usually have a raid configuration and fast hard drives so they can find data quickly
Fax server: A fax server is used to manage fax services
File server: A file server is a shared place for data to be stored and then accessed
Game server: A game server connects people together to play video games commonly used for online gaming
Home server: A home server is a server that is used for the home environment
Name server: A name sever also referred to as a DNS(domain name service) server provides domain name resolution.
Print server: Has printers installed on it to share through your network
Proxy server: A proxy server acts as an intermediary for a client and server.
Web server: A web server is used to host web pages and then serve it to clients upon request.

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