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.

First thing was to check the installed hardware in the Windows Control Panel. If you operate a different operating system you need to find and access the equivalent there. The LAN was not listed there anymore. That was bad. It could have been a driver problem so the next step was to check for hardware that was not installed yet. The LAN was not found there either.

Next step was to reboot the computer and check in the Bios. While doing that I verified that the LAN led was still on. The BIOS showed zero LAN configuration options. I knew that there were some before which gave me the confirmation that something was seriously wrong. Next step CMOS reset. This is done by setting a jumper on the motherboard. The LAN options did not show up then either. I could have tried installing a new BIOS but this sounded awfully risky with dead components on the motherboard.

You got two options basically at this point. The fast option is to add a new PCI LAN card and install it on the computer system. Good LAN cards should provide better performance than onboard LAN. That’s what I did. The other option is to contact the manufacturer of the motherboard and wait for an answer. Can take some days, usual result is a replacement or repair which can take weeks or even months. Not a good option if you need to be online most of the day.

To put everything in a list:

• Check if the operating system lists the onboard component.
• Check if it can be found by scanning for hardware.
• Check if the lights are on (if it has lights)
• Shutdown the computer and see if everything is connected properly
• Check the Bios for the onboard component
• Reset the Bios
• Replace the Nic or replace the motherboard or contact support.

Do you have any additional tips on how to cope with a dead onboard LAN?

The following article explains an easy and straightforward way of updating the computer bios. The main question that everyone should ask himself before updating the BIOS is if it is beneficiary to update the Bios. The article takes a look at finding that out as well. The phrase “never change a running system” has some truth to it but it is still a good idea to check for new Bios versions every now and then.

It does make sense to check for Bios updates before upgrading computer components. New Bios versions can add support for faster processors, computer memory, lower temperaturs and even add new features.

Step 1: Identifying the Bios

Probably the most important step in the Bios updating process is to identify the current motherboard and Bios version properly. The easiest way would be to check a receipt or motherboard manual if one was provided with the computer. If that’s long gone you can try software like cpu-z to find out about your motherboard and Bios.

The Mainboard tab contains the information about the motherboard and Bios. Important are the motherboard manufacturer, the motherboard model and the Bios version.

Cpu-Z supports many motherboards but not all. If your motherboard cannot be identified you need to check the post screen during boot. That’s the first screen that is being displayed. Hit the pause key after the computer memory is shown and you should find information about the computer Bios as well.

Step 2: Checking for Bios Updates

With the information gathered in step 1 it is now possible to visit the manufacturer’s website and see if new Bios versions are available. The computer manufacturer above is Gigabyte and the motherboard is the EP35-ds4. A good start would be to enter the name of the manufacturer followed by the motherboard model into a search engine.

That usually leads straight to the page dedicated to the motherboard model. The Bios version shown in the screenshot above was F2, a check on the Gigabyte EP35-DS4 website shows that the latest Bios version is F5. Most manufacturers display information about changes and additions that have been introduced with each new Bios version. In this case support for the Update CPU ID Intel Yorkfield QX9770 CPU has been added as well as a fix for an ICH9R RAID issue.

After identifying the Bios updates it would now be time to make a decision if the update would be useful. In the case of the above Bios it would be useful if the ICH9R Raid was used in the current configuration or if the user had plans to build in the Intel Yorkfield QX9770 CPU.

Step 3: Updating the Bios

Step 3 is the actual update process. Every motherboard manufacturer has his own way and software to update the Bios. Methods range from booting to DOS, to updates directly in Windows to updates in the Bios itself.

In the case of the Gigabyte Bios the Bios was provided with a Dos executable and a batch file. A boot disk would have to be created and the files placed on it. Other manufacturers are offering applications that update the Bios from within Windows which is more comfortable obviously.

The best way is to search the manufacturer’s website for information on how to apply the Bios update. It’s always a good idea to backup the old Bios before applying the new one. That option is usually offered in the software that updates the Bios.

The tool that does this is called Crucial System Scanner (via Shellcity) which is a tool that can give you the information for a safe computer memory upgrade. It is however deeply connected with the Crucial store which sells computer memory.

When you start the tool it opens a website in your default web browser that is showing you your computer’s specifications.

It displays the number of RAM banks, the banks that already contain computer memory but more importantly than that the supported DRAM Types, the computer memory frequencies and the maximum that can be installed on the computer. In my case it would be DDR2 SDRAM with PC”-5300, PC2-6400 and PC2-8500 frequencies and a maximum of 8192 Megabytes of computer memory.

If the software is not able to detect the information properly you could enter the motherboard information manually to receive the same kind of information for the computer memory upgrade. Oh, and you do not have to buy from their store obviously.

Asus is the first company to introduce a motherboard that has a version of Firefox and Skype embedded into the hardware. It is possible to boot directly into a Linux system and run Firefox from there in about 15 seconds which means that users can save some boot time for a quick lookup or phone call.

This new trend does raise some questions however. The first question that I had was if it is possible to update the softwares. If that would be possible it would surely be a similar procedure to updating the bios of your motherboard. Nothing that a “normal” computer user likes to do.

Imagine that you have to flash the softwares every other week if they do get updated frequently. The company plans to embed more applications which means more updating.

A second criteria is price of course. The motherboard sells for $350 which is a very high price for a motherboard. The company behind this technology, DeviceVM, is planning to embed their products into laptops and desktop PCs as well.

I personally think that this is a good idea as long as the method to update the softwares is not complicated. Updating it from within the software or operating system with just the click of the mouse would be the way to go in my opinion.

Read More:

Hardware for Webware: A motherboard with embedded Firefox

CmosPwd is a free program that is able to display information about the bios once it is executed. You do need to create a bootable disk to be able to execute the program in dos mode. To create a bootable disk in windows right-click the disk drive and select format from the list of options. It is important that you enable the option Create an MS-DOS startup disk.

Once the disk is created copy the contents from the dos folder of cmospwd to the disk and restart the computer. You will have to remove all hard drives from the system if you do not automatically boot from disk drive. Type cmospwd.exe in the command line and the password should appear. Ignore the information about the other bios manufacturers and take a look at the one your computer is using.

Another possible method would be to start the computer in safe mode with command prompt which could work as well. You still need to access the files somewhere so make sure that the hard drive is accessible.