TANK
Shared on Sat, 01/12/2008 - 15:11Project is still on-going but I thought i'd share a few things i've learned about building a PC today as opposed to building your own PC back in the Pentium 3 era (last time i built one)
#1 : The CPU and Heatsink are no longer attached together or basically the same size. The Intel Core2 Due chip is like oh 2 inches square but the heatsink/fan monstrosity is like 5 inches cubed, it dwarfs the CPU. I actually tossed the CPU aside in the garbage pile while unpacking because i grabbed the heatsink figuring the CPU was connected. CPUs sure are small these days even relative to the old P3 FCPGA chips though i'm more familiar with the edge card style ones.
#2 : Power supplies now come in insane wattages, i was looking for a 400-450 watt one to run 6 drives and was looking at all the different PSU's available today. I found some going up to 900 watts of course built for high end gaming or graphic/CGI intensive workstations with multiple video cards and multiple dual or quad core processors. But i mean shit, that's a lot of power! Not only are PC game machines multiple times the cost to build but they're multiple times the cost to run based on power usage and the utility bill.
#3 : CPU's now have their own individual power port on the motherboard. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why the thing wouldn't do the power on self test (POST), give me any audio cues as to the problem either. Only the fans would turn on, that was my only indication that the system was alive. Even after an hour of letting it sit there turned on, the CPU was cold (I didn't have the heatsink on it). Then i saw this rogue 4 port aux power plug, found a matching cable from the PSU and viola, it's alive!
#4 : There are a ton more fans in computers today. Back in the day you had a fan in the PSU and you maybe had a fan on the cpu but most likely not. This new machine has the PSU fan of course, a monster CPU fan matches the case panel that has a little cone to a dedicated vent to just vent the CPU, a monster 6 inch main system fan and another small fan in front of the internal hard drive bays. No wonder we need 900 watt power supplies these days!
#5 : SATA hard drives not only use a different data cable, they also have a different power cable. Of course the PSU doesn't come with SATA power connectors, just the older style ones i'm used to. So i had to go pick up a power adapter for my SATA system drive and while i was there i picked up a couple splitters for the 'normal' power connectors.
#6: There are a whole lot more plugs on the board now for front panel stuff than there ever used to be. Use to be you had your power switch, power light, hdd light and reset switch oh and speaker. I'm happy to say those were all familiar to me, but now add a bunch of little wires for the on-board sound, more wires for the front mounted USB ports, more wires for the front mounted firewire and all these little fan wires. Once i had everything in, the wires were a mess. So i pulled it all apart and re-ran how the front panel wires were routed so they eneded up being a ton neater, i undid the system fan and rotated it around to eat up slack and screwed it back together, ticked the sound cable away totally since i'm building a server and not a home theater pc right now, i don't need 6.1 surround sound .
#7 : Cases are a lot nicer and easier to work with. This coolermaster one i bought is a mind size tower with both side panels coming of without tools as well as the front panel. Inside there are no tools required to mount any drives, they have this slider slick thing which is pretty slick. Don't even need tools to mount expansion cards, the case has these little clip things that come down to secure the card in place though it's not quite as good as a screw, it's good enough.
#8 : Memory, oh man are there enough choices here? Not only is the voltage of the memory important now there's buffered and unbuffered, ECC, 400, 500, 600. 700, 800 mhz, some with heatsinks themselves now. Pretty crazy, this board i bought supports 400 and 533mhz memory so i picked up a couple 533's, 2.1v i think. Crazy amount of choices with memory.
The adventure continues .....
#1 : The CPU and Heatsink are no longer attached together or basically the same size. The Intel Core2 Due chip is like oh 2 inches square but the heatsink/fan monstrosity is like 5 inches cubed, it dwarfs the CPU. I actually tossed the CPU aside in the garbage pile while unpacking because i grabbed the heatsink figuring the CPU was connected. CPUs sure are small these days even relative to the old P3 FCPGA chips though i'm more familiar with the edge card style ones.
#2 : Power supplies now come in insane wattages, i was looking for a 400-450 watt one to run 6 drives and was looking at all the different PSU's available today. I found some going up to 900 watts of course built for high end gaming or graphic/CGI intensive workstations with multiple video cards and multiple dual or quad core processors. But i mean shit, that's a lot of power! Not only are PC game machines multiple times the cost to build but they're multiple times the cost to run based on power usage and the utility bill.
#3 : CPU's now have their own individual power port on the motherboard. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why the thing wouldn't do the power on self test (POST), give me any audio cues as to the problem either. Only the fans would turn on, that was my only indication that the system was alive. Even after an hour of letting it sit there turned on, the CPU was cold (I didn't have the heatsink on it). Then i saw this rogue 4 port aux power plug, found a matching cable from the PSU and viola, it's alive!
#4 : There are a ton more fans in computers today. Back in the day you had a fan in the PSU and you maybe had a fan on the cpu but most likely not. This new machine has the PSU fan of course, a monster CPU fan matches the case panel that has a little cone to a dedicated vent to just vent the CPU, a monster 6 inch main system fan and another small fan in front of the internal hard drive bays. No wonder we need 900 watt power supplies these days!
#5 : SATA hard drives not only use a different data cable, they also have a different power cable. Of course the PSU doesn't come with SATA power connectors, just the older style ones i'm used to. So i had to go pick up a power adapter for my SATA system drive and while i was there i picked up a couple splitters for the 'normal' power connectors.
#6: There are a whole lot more plugs on the board now for front panel stuff than there ever used to be. Use to be you had your power switch, power light, hdd light and reset switch oh and speaker. I'm happy to say those were all familiar to me, but now add a bunch of little wires for the on-board sound, more wires for the front mounted USB ports, more wires for the front mounted firewire and all these little fan wires. Once i had everything in, the wires were a mess. So i pulled it all apart and re-ran how the front panel wires were routed so they eneded up being a ton neater, i undid the system fan and rotated it around to eat up slack and screwed it back together, ticked the sound cable away totally since i'm building a server and not a home theater pc right now, i don't need 6.1 surround sound .
#7 : Cases are a lot nicer and easier to work with. This coolermaster one i bought is a mind size tower with both side panels coming of without tools as well as the front panel. Inside there are no tools required to mount any drives, they have this slider slick thing which is pretty slick. Don't even need tools to mount expansion cards, the case has these little clip things that come down to secure the card in place though it's not quite as good as a screw, it's good enough.
#8 : Memory, oh man are there enough choices here? Not only is the voltage of the memory important now there's buffered and unbuffered, ECC, 400, 500, 600. 700, 800 mhz, some with heatsinks themselves now. Pretty crazy, this board i bought supports 400 and 533mhz memory so i picked up a couple 533's, 2.1v i think. Crazy amount of choices with memory.
The adventure continues .....
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Comments
Submitted by NotStyro on Sat, 01/12/2008 - 18:00
Submitted by Krazy_E on Mon, 01/14/2008 - 10:34