Obtaining Your Components

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Once you have an idea of what you want your system to be, its time to go shopping. There are many retailers that you can use to get parts from. One of my favorites is http://www.newegg.com. They have a very wide selection and include tons of information on each product. They also have great prices. You can also use http://www.pricewatch.com to track down good prices.

You can also recycle parts off of your older computers. I have reused the same 3.5” disk drive in several of my computers. CD-ROM and DVD drives are also good for recycling.

Ordering New Components

If you order new components from the internet you will often see “retail box” and “non retail box”. If you choose retail box, it will be more expensive, and your hard drive will show up in a nice box, like you might find at the local mall. If you choose “non-retail box” your hard drive will arrive in a small bag. NewEgg offers most of their drives, and other components in non-retail format. This adds up to great cost savings.

Figure 1-6 shows the parts for one of my computers as they arrived.

Figure 1-6: A processor, graphics card, motherboard, hard drive & two DVD drives

The above picture shows products in retail box on the left and non-retail on the right.

Checking Compatibility

It is very important that you only buy components that will work with your motherboard. In particular you should pay attention to the following.

Before buying, make sure you remember the following!!

• Make sure your mother board and power supply match. Both must be either ATX or ATX 12v. You cannot interchange ATX and ATX 12v!
• Make sure your RAM matches your motherboard. Both your motherboard and ram must be either DDR or DDR2. You cannot interchange DDR and DDR2!
• Make sure your motherboard has a slot that is compatible with the type of video card your are buying.
• Always make sure the processor includes a cooling fan

For example, if I bought the following motherboard. These are its specs from NewEgg.

Model Brand ABIT

Model AA8

Supported CPU

CPU Socket Type Socket T (LGA 775)

CPU Type Intel Pentium 4 EE HT/Pentium 4/Celeron

FSB 800/533MHz

Supported CPU Technologies Hyper-Threading Technology

Chipsets North Bridge Intel 925X

South Bridge Intel ICH6R

Memory Number of DDR2 Slots 4x 240pin DDR2

DDR2 Standard DDR2 533

Maximum Memory Supported 4GB

Dual Channel Supported Yes

Expansion Slots AGP Slots None

PCI Express x16 1

PCI Express x1 3

PCI Slots 2

Storage Devices PATA 1 x ATA 100 up to 2 Devices

SATA 4 x SATA 150

SATA RAID RAID 0/1/Matrix RAID

Onboard Video Integrated Video No

Onboard Audio Audio Channels 8 Channels

Onboard LAN LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps

Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps

Rear Panel Ports PS/2 2

COM 1

LPT 1

USB 4x USB2.0

IEEE1394 1x 1394

S/PDIF Out 1x Optical and 1x Coaxial

S/PDIF In 1x Optical and 1x Coaxial

Audio Ports 6 jacks

Onboard USB Onboard USB Connectors 4x USB2.0 (2x headers)

Onboard 1394 Onboard 1394 Connectors 2x 1394a

Physical Spec Form Factor ATX Dimensions 12.0" x 9.6"

From these specs I can see exactly what components I need for this motherboard.

For my processor I need a Pentium 4, with hyperthreading. For my RAM, I need DDR2. For my video card, I need PCI Express. I can use SATA hard drives with this motherboard.

To see how I matched it up, here are the specs from my processor.

Model Brand Intel

Series Pentium 4

Model BX80547PG3000F

CPU Socket Type LGA 775

Tech Spec Core Prescott

Name Pentium 4 630

Operating Frequency 3.0GHz

FSB 800MHz

L1 Cache 12KB+16KB

L2 Cache 2MB

Process Type 90 nm

Hyper-Threading Support Yes

64 bit Support Yes

Multimedia Instruction MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3

Cooling Device Heatsink and Fan

Warranty Manufacturer Warranty 3-year warranty

Notice that the socket types match? Both are LGA 775, that means it will work!

Recycling Old Components

You can save money by reusing old parts from older computers. Figure 1-6 shows my collection of components that I have taken from older computers. This can often save quite a bit of money, if you just want a faster computer, you can keep your old drives.

Figure 1-7: Shows older components that I may recycle into new computers