Choosing the right PC
Too often I hear people telling me what a great deal they got on they’re new computer. You know, the $400 deal that came with a printer and a real nice flat panel monitor. Yeah ok. Let’s clarify a few things here. First of all, if there is any industry where the “You get what you pay for” adage holds true, it’s technology. A decent flat panel will cost you $300 - $400 alone. Anything less isn’t worth buying.
There’s a reason why a PC is $400, actually there are several reasons. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think everyone needs the latest and greatest but you should know what you’re getting and what to expect. Here’s a breakdown
CPU: The CPU or processor is the ‘brain’ of your computer. It handles all tasks and controls all I/O functions. A low cost computer will usually incorporate an Intel Celeron or AMD processor. Which are both less costly than a Pentium 4 or XEON. Although the frequency appears to be what you what, all CPU’s are NOT created equal. 3.0Ghz is not equal to 3.0Ghz, well sort of. Actually a cycle IS equal to a cycle but the architecture of the CPU is very different.
With the Celeron, the lack of on chip cache is probably the biggest difference and is also very important to system performance.
With the AMD processors, you will hear people talk about them benchmarking better than the Pentium 4. From what I’ve seen, that’s only true for the floating point, (math) functions. Good for gamers but doesn’t help anyone else.
If you plan on doing anything more than sending e-mail or reading a book, spend the extra money and by a genuine Pentium 4 or XEON.
Motherboard: This is surely the component, which affects system performance the most. The motherboard or mainboard is the connection of all other components to the CPU. A well-designed motherboard is worth its weight in gold. If you care about performance DO NOT buy a motherboard with on board video or sound. If the video chip or sound chip are on integrated into the motherboard that means they don’t have a unique controller chip. This is to say they are using precious clock cycles from your CPU to function. You don’t want that.
A motherboard with on-board video will perform 30% slower than the same board without. I recommend Supermicro, Intel or ASUS
RAM: Memory isn’t always about quantity. As a matter of fact, blue screens, freezes and random crashes are almost, always caused by inferior RAM. Not lack of RAM, inferior quality RAM. Don’t skimp. Buy less, higher quality RAM if you want to save a few bucks. You can always add later.
If your motherboard supports it, for a truly stable system, buy Registered ECC memory from a well-known memory source like Crucial or Kingston.
Hard Drive: Again, Quality over quantity. Hard drives come in many sizes and use many different technologies. The new buzzword is SATA or Serial ATA. SATA drives are slowly phasing out the more costly SCSI drives and slower performing IDE drives.
Many SATA drives have a spindle speed of 10,000 rpm’s as do SCSI disks. This is the speed at which the platters in the drive rotate, obviously the faster the better. A low budget PC will usually have a 5400-rpm disk. Higher quality IDE drives, although fine for most applications, still only have a spindle speed of 7200 rpm’s.
This speed also has a huge impact on overall system performance. Know what you’re buying. I recommend the SATA Western Digital Raptor 74Gb.
Video: Your choice of video cards should depend on the PC’s intended use. Just in case you missed it, do NOT get a motherboard with on-board video. You’ll regret it. Most on-board video devices also use shared memory. Which means, guess what, you can only use part of the RAM that you paid for because the video chip set needs the rest.
If you’re a gamer then you probably don’t need to read this. For gaming purposes the amount of video ram is important 128 Megs should be enough in most cases. For the serious gamer go to 256Megs. I personally like the nVidia GeForce chips.
If you’re not a gamer I still recommend 128 Megs of video RAM just in case. Although you can spend a lot of money in this department, you don’t need to. A decent, all purpose video card should cost you under $150, depending on the amount of video RAM you decide you need.
Having said all that, my claim is always that you can build a new up to date computer for under $1000 plus monitor and peripherals. Or if you don't want to build you can have a custom PC built for you, or purchase an Acer or IBM from an authorized reseller.