Both components vary highly depending on the needs of the user building the PC. A gamer naturally wants a fast video card to play games, someone who collects photos or videos needs lots of storage and Office worker a quiet video card.

Build your own PC: Storage

Storage devices are hard drives and optical drives. Hard drives can be divided into the two categories Solid State Drives (SSD) and conventional hard drives.

There are basically two options for selecting hard drives:

• Pick only conventional hard drives
• Combine conventional and solid state drives

Conventional hard drives have the advantage that they provide more storage for a cheaper price than Solid State Drives. Solid State Drives on the other hand are more expensive, offer way less storage but are way faster than convention drives. This is beneficial during system boot, playing games or loading applications.

The PC budget plays a big role in deciding the storage components. A good reliable Solid State Drive sells for about $250 for 64 Gigabytes of storage. Good conventional hard drives provide more than ten times the storage for that price.

PC users with a budget of about $400 for hard drives can consider combining Solid State Drives and conventional hard drives. The SSD would be used for the operating system and important applications (or games) whereas the standard hard drive would be used for storage.

Users with a lower budget should concentrate on buying a good fast hard drive instead that will be used for all files and the operating system.

When buying a Solid State Drive buyers need to make sure that it supports TRIM and garbage collection either out of the box or with a firmware update. TRIM and garbage collection ensure that the performance of the drive does not drop over time. This was a huge problem with first generation SSDs.

Hard drives come with speeds of 5400 and 7200. The former are more quiet while the latter are faster. A user who only works with light applications could consider buying a 5400 rpm drive whereas gamers or users with high end applications should buy a 7200 rpm drive.

The best combination at this point in time is to use a SSD as the boot drive and a 5400 rpm hard drive for storage.

Our Picks

• SSD: Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2M080G2R5 80 GB ($300)
• Hard Drive: Samsung EcoGreen F3 2000GB SATA II 32MB ($200)

The Intel X25-M is one of the fastest SSD when it comes to read speeds. The write speeds are usually lower in benchmarks but better in real life situations. It also offers 80 Gigabytes instead of 64 Gigabytes that most SSDs offer in that price range. It supports both TRIM and garbage collection.

The Samsung EcoGreen F3 is a drive with a speed of 5400. It has slower access and read speeds but offers 2 Terabytes of storage space. It is used to store everything but the most important applications, games and the operating system.

Build your own PC: Video Card

Selecting the right video cards usually depend on the level of gaming activity on the PC. We currently would suggest to buy an Ati Radeon 5000er video card as it is the only video card series currently supporting DirectX 11.

Gamers need to look at the Radeon 5850 or 5870 video cards for optimal performance. The selection here again depends on the budget. The Radeon 5870 retails for about $400, the 5850 for about $300. The 5870 is the faster card of the two and manages to beat the 5750 by 10fps+ in all benchmarks. Both cards can be used to play all modern games just fine.

Casual gamers might want to take a look at the ATI Radeon 5770 video card instead which retails for about $180.

Our Picks:

• High End Gaming: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X ($440)
• Mid Level Gaming: ASUS EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 ($300)
• Casual / No Gaming: POWERCOLOR PCS+ AX5770 ($170)

Our PC System:

Case: Lian Li PC-8NB ($100)
PSU: Enermax Modu 87+ 700W ($200)
CPU: Intel Core i7-860 ($300)
CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems Rev.B CPU Cooler ($60), 120mm fan, for example be quiet Silent Wings USC (BL013) ($20)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 ($120)
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 ($270)
Hard Drive 1: SSD: Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2M080G2R5 80 GB ($300)
Hard Drive 2: Samsung EcoGreen F3 2000GB SATA II 32MB ($200)
Video Card: High End Gaming: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X ($440)

Some components have not been discussed yet. This includes optical drives, keyboard, computer mouse, monitor, printer, sound adapter, network cards and other peripherals.

We have selected the Intel Core i7-860 as the cpu, the GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 as the motherboard and the CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 as the RAM for the computer system.

The computer’s processor obviously determines the cpu cooler that we need. There are some choices here. Retail cpus usually come with a cpu cooler that can be used. The disadvantage of that cooler is that it does not cool the cpu that well and that it is rather noisy to the ear.

Build Your Own PC: CPU Cooler

We therefor recommend to purchase a separate cpu cooler to increase the cooling and decrease the noise of the system. The choice of the cpu cooler depends a lot on the user’s intention with the computer system. A user who needs the computer for Office and work that does not require lots of performance might even be happy with the boxed cooler. But there are also users who want to play games, overclock the cpu or reduce the noise of the PC system by buying a cpu cooler that supports large slow spinning fans.

The cooler that we want to use should be as noiseless as possible but still support performance intensive tasks but no overclocking.

The Prolimatech Megahalems is compatible with the 1156 cpu socket. It received many excellent ratings and combines proper cooling with good noise reduction especially in combination with a 120mm fan. The only drawback is the size of the cooler which means that users need to make sure that it fits in the case and that it does not block any of the slots, e.g. memory.

My Selection

• Prolimatech Megahalems Rev.B CPU Cooler ($60)
• 120mm fan, for example be quiet Silent Wings USC (BL013) ($20)

Build Your Own PC: Case

The case selection is as complicated as the cpu cooler selection. There are literary hundreds of cases available from cheap but functional cases for $30 to advanced cases with all kinds of gadgets and expensive materials for $150 and more.

The Lian Li PC-8NB is a case made of aluminum. The components fit in the case which comes with two fans at the front and back. The fans are relatively noisy and need to be undervolted or replaced by fans that are quieter.

My Selection

• Lian Li PC-8NB ($100)

Build Your Own PC: Power Supply Unit

The power supply unit needs to provide enough power to the PC system. A PSU with 80 Plus certification was desired. The psu should be as quiet as possible as well. The following two power supply units were selected by us:

• Enermax Modu 87+ 700W ($200)
• Seasonic X-650 ($180)

Both power supply units have received a 80+ Gold certification which is the highest possible certification for desktop psus. They are both very quiet and therefor ideal for users who prefer a quiet computer.

So far:

We now have six components for the PC that we are going to build, they are:

Case: Lian Li PC-8NB ($100)
PSU: Enermax Modu 87+ 700W ($200)
CPU: Intel Core i7-860 ($300)
CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems Rev.B CPU Cooler ($60), 120mm fan, for example be quiet Silent Wings USC (BL013) ($20)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 ($120)
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 ($270)

That’s a total of $1070 and we still have to pick a video card, hard drives and other components like a DVD drive, mouse and keyboard.

The project aims to build a quiet cpu that can be used to work without distraction and to play the latest games.

The PC that I want to build for instance has to be an all purpose PC. It should be able to run the latest games but it will mostly be used for work. The PC should be as silent as possible without running to hot. The operating system will be Windows 7 64-bit. It should support USB 3.0 which has been released some time ago and will become the new standard to connect USB devices.

I have decided to divide the article into different parts to be able to concentrate on specific hardware and why I have chosen them. We begin with the selection of the CPU, motherboard and RAM, the core components of a computer.

Build Your Own PC: CPU

PC users have a wide selection of CPUs. It basically comes down to the two manufacturers AMD and Intel who both produce processors for lots of different purposes. We are looking for a desktop cpu which means that we will concentrate our search on those. Top of the line CPUs are usually to expensive for their performance gain over the rest of the CPU lineup (unless you have the cash lying around).

This basically leaves two options: An Intel Core-i7, Core-i5 or an AMD Phenom II X4. It is now time to use the Internet or computer magazines to find benchmarks and reviews of those CPUs. You can use many hardware shops like Newegg, CPU Benchmarks or Tomshardware as well as many other sites for that.

You will end up with a few CPUs that would make a good selection: Intel Core i7-860, Intel Core i7-920, Intel Core i5-750 or AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE. The final selection now is not only determined by the performance but also the price and quality of the CPU. The AMD CPU is cheaper than all Intel CPUs. It’s performance is lower than the Intel CPU performance but it should be sufficient for all computing tasks.

The Intel Core i7-860 is the fastest Intel CPU in this field but also the most expensive one, we are talking about a difference of €100 here.

• My Selection: Intel Core i7-860
• Alternative: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE

Build Your Own PC: Motherboard

The selected CPU leads directly to the motherboard that we need. The Intel Core i7-860 needs an LGA-1156 CPU socket type  motherboard. We use our needs and wishes that we came up with earlier in this step. The motherboard needs to offer all the connectors that we need, e.g. Firewire, which makes the selection process easier for us as we need to find and evaluate only those motherboards that support all the features that we need.

What should the motherboard offer?

• Minimum number of memory slots: 4
• CPU: At least Intel Core i7-860
• Memory: At least DDR3 1600
• USB 3.0
• Onboard Lan: 1000/100/10
• Onboard Sounds: Indifferent
• Onboard Video: No
• SLI: No
• SATA 3 GB/s: At least six
• Raid: No
• Other Connectors: Not needed

This may obviously look different when you build your own PC. It is again important to make an initial selection of 2-3 motherboards that offer what you are looking for. The next step is very important. Perform a search for that motherboard on the Internet and add keywords like problem, error, or help to it. Take a look at those posts and the number of them to see how likely it is that you might run into troubles.

The Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 is one of the few motherboards that support USB 3.0 right now. It is not as expensive as many other  motherboards that offer USB 3.0 (costs $120).  The other motherboards that I have taken a look at are the  MSI P55-GD85 which retails for about $220 which has a surprisingly similar configuration to the Gigabyte motherboard and the ASUS P7H57D-V EVO for $200 which is the only one of the three with an HDMI port.

The Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 offers everything that I need plus it is roughly $100 cheaper than the rest of the motherboards. That’s enough to make it my pick in the motherboard category.

My Selection:

• GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3

Build Your Own PC: RAM

The selection of the motherboard determines the RAM – or computer memory – that we can use. We also need to determine at this point if we want more than 4 Gigabytes of RAM. We would need a 64-bit operating system if we do.

We do need DDR3 RAM (to be precise 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM)  as this is the computer memory supported by our motherboard. We also need dual-channel or quad-channel and not triple-channel RAM as we have selected the Core i7-860 cpu. This means that we either need to shop for 4 Gigabytes of RAM or a factor of that (8, 12 or 16 which is the maximum supported by the motherboard).

It does not really make sense to buy less than 4 Gigabytes as it would limit the PC”s performance. Avid gamers or those that run applications that need as fast RAM as they can get might want to take a look at overclocked RAM or RAM that can be overclocked nicely. I usually stay away from that RAM though as the performance gains usually do not justify the price increase. The motherboard supports up to DDR3-2200.

My Selection

• CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 ($270)
• G.SKILL Trident 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (if you want faster) ($290)

This was the first part of the Build your own PC February edition. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I do. Leave a comment if you have questions or suggestions.

I decided to go for a slightly larger PSU to accommodate all the needs of the components. I also decided to purchase the new Intel Wolfdale CPU running on 45nm instead of the 65nm of the older CPUs. My last decision was to forgo the purchase of a Solid State Disk. The technology is incredible, the only problem is that the new faster disks are not available yet or so expensive that some would cost more than all other components combined in the PC.

Other components have been changed as well. I switched to the Gigabyte motherboard which saves me $10 and received great ratings across the board. The RAM was changed slightly from DDR2 800 to DDR2 1066 which increased the price by $50.

I might get a nice audio card as well, maybe the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer. All other components are still in my old PC and will be used in the new one as well. This includes Samsung DVD writer, Logitech Mouse and Keyboard. I’m thinking of purchasing a new 24″ monitor to replace my old 19″ Samsung monitor.

Any thoughts on this setup ? The PSU should be sufficient to handle everything smoothly. The overall costs are $1,031.91 at the moment.

I’m not saying that this will be a perfect build. It will be a good allround Pc with enough power for all the applications, games and multimedia that you throw at it.

Please add your opinion about this build because I will need at least another month before I make the purchase and there is not a problem to replace a component if a better one is available. I’m using Newegg for price comparision as always.

I still have not made a decision about the Solid State Drive that I want to purchase and use as the hard drive for the operating system. A good one cuts boot time and application launches in half but they are very rare and expensive. Many of them are called SSD but do not have the read advantages yet. I don’t want to build a PC without them and buy them later because this would mean that I would have to setup Windows and Linux once again when I make that purchase.

I guess I have to pay more attention to hardware websites in the next month and hope that some will write a few comparisons so that I’m able to collect more information about them.

The price for the computer was mainly reduced because I removed the SSD for now which attributed to $700 last month. I made sure to pick a 512 MB video card this time, everything else remained the same.

All components are chosen from the online store Newegg to be able to compare them with previous months. I will use a best-price-finder before I buy the computer to find the best prices and shops for the components.

Some thoughts. I made several changes to last months components. I changed the memory for instance slightly which added $10 to the costs. The benefit is that the new Dual Channel Kit has a latency of 4 instead of 5.

The video card has been changed as well. This one costs roughly $60 less and is faster than the previous one from Asus. Since most Geforce 8800 GT cards are sold out it remains to be seen which will be available when I make the purchases.

I reduced hard drive capacities from 500 Gigabytes each to 250 again which lowered the price by $100. I have plans to either purchase a third big internal hard drive with a capacity of 1 Terabyte or an external hard drive with at least 500 Gigabytes.

The Solid State Disk is still giving me headaches. I have to make sure that it really lives up to the promise of delivering this incredible speed gain over normal hard drives. The new one that I selected costs almost $700 for 32 Gigabytes. I hope prices are falling fast for those drives and that some magazines or websites will test them so that I have some benchmarks that help me select the right SSD.

The computer will have everything that is needed to run it except for external components such as a monitor, computer mouse or keyboard because I decided to use those components from my old PC.

The Newegg online shop was my choice to be able to compare prices. It most likely would result in a cheaper price if I would research prices on several online shops. The Geforce 8800GT card is sold out in most locations and you have to be really lucky to buy one before christmas.

The major change in this month is the replacement of the Quad Core CPU with a Dual Core CPU from Intel and the replacement of the two 250 Gigabyte Seagate hard drives with two 500 Gigabyte Seagate hard drives.

G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory	$94.99 USD
MSI P35 Neo2-FR ATX Intel Motherboard	$119.99 USD
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor	$279.99 USD
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler	$21.99 USD
COOLER MASTER CAVALIER 3 CAV-T03-UK Black Computer Case	$59.99 USD
AeroCool ZERODBA ZERODBA-S500 500W Power Supply	$84.99 USD
Seagate 500GB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive	$239.98 USD
SUPER TALENT FSD32GB25M 2.5″ Internal Solid state disk (SSD)	$499.99 USD
ASUS GeForce 8800GT EN8800GT/G/HTDP/512M Video Card	$299.99 USD

The total price for all components rose from $1,581.90 to $1,701.90 USD which can be largely attributed to the exchange of the two 250 GB hard drives with 500 GB models. The price for the Solid State Disk went up by $70 because I replaced the placeholder from last month with a available one.

Prices will most likely fall in January. Analysts say that SSD, Solid State Disks, will become more affordable in the first quarter of 2008. Lets hope that they are right.

The total for all those components is $806 which is close to the $800 mark. They are unfortunately forgetting something important here. If you click on the check prices link next to each item of the new pc you will be taken to a “best price” website which displays the best deals for the selected item. It does not add shipping costs to the price which means that you will have to add those to the total amount of money that you are going to spend for the new pc.

Shipping costs would not be a huge problem if you purchase everything from one merchant – it would be one if you select the best price only and buy it from 6-8 different merchants. You could add about $6 to every item that you purchase at different merchants which is not that much but could range between $24 – $40 which have to be added to the total.

Checking the Geforce 7600 GT at the merchants revealed that the cheapest price for the item was $163 and not $109 as claimed in the article. Could be that the card is currently in short supplies and that the prices rose therefor. I know that you can purchase a Geforce 7600 GT for about that price but someone who is inexperienced and uses the link on the website will probably not find it by himself.

I did a quick check and added all cheapest prices and came up with a total of $836 instead of $806. Add shipping costs of $24 to it and the total would be $860.

There is something else missing of course, the display. The article assumes that everyone has a capable monitor at home and does not need one it seems. What if you are stuck with an old 14″ display and need a new one ? If they assume that you have a monitor at home they also should assume that you have a mouse and a keyboard at least which can be used as well.

Last but not least I would suggest a change in the setup. Instead of buying a audio card I would use on board sound and get a more powerful graphics card instead. A Ati Radeon 1950 Pro for instance can be bought for about $165 and should have some impact on gaming performance.

So, the system will be more expensive even if you have a display at home that you can use. It should also be noted that you have to build it by yourself. It does not help that much if you buy a cheap system but are not able to build it.