Thursday 29 November 2007, 8:35 PM

How the.....?

Posted by Computer Devil

Every piece of my PC has been installed by me. Every screw & every cable.
I have learned as I've gone - I have made more than a few mistakes along the way. I have had some extraordinary luck too, but I have learned from that, also.

I'm not a rich guy, but my PC would cost over £2000 to replace. I have never spent more than £400 in one hit. I research my parts very carefully, buying only components that are compatible, upgradeable &, to a certain extent, future-proof. Once I've found the part I need, I also research prices very carefully, remembering to factor in VAT and P&P.

I am a saver. I prefer to have the cash already in hand to buy PC components. I hate to think of paying interest on anything, especially if it depreciates as soon as it's out of the box.
Once I've bought & tested a component, I sell the older one it replaced. eBay is the obvious place, but I also sell in my local paper.

Through my experiences with upgrades, I have learned to build PCs. I often keep some parts, occasionally compiling a whole PC from older parts. Selling these in the local newspaper generates not only interest in the PC, but repairs to other machines, which I find I can do for less cost than the bigger companies.

Ebuyer, Novatech, Specialtech, eBay, Eclipse Computers, Micro-Direct, Dabs & Komplett are all companies I've bought from in the past. They all have their pros & cons. Novatech are, in my experience, the easiest to buy from, with free, next-day delivery. Unfortunately, their prices aren't always the lowest.
Ebuyer are often the cheapest & offer free delivery on all orders over £50.00. The free delivery is only offered as within 5 working days, but orders can arrive within 2 - 5 days, whichever is convenient to them. Not particularly helpful if you wanted to wait in on a particular day.

From experience, if you upgrade the RAM & processor & maybe the graphics card, you'll sail along nicely for a while. If you're like me, however, you'll find that certain games/programs will benefit from a further improvement in hardware, the motherboard.
I'll talk about what I know, AMD. Intel are the obvious & main competition for AMD, but I have found better value in AMD products, thus far.
All motherboards have their limitations. Socket A (aka socket 462) motherboards, for instance, were limited to 400mhz Front Side Bus, without overclocking. The fastest processor I know of, that runs on a socket A mobo, is the 2.2Ghz AMD 3200+. The socket A was limited to 32-bit processing. Also, its graphics were limited to AGP 8x, whereas the PCI-Express graphics we have now are capable of 16x & even 4x16x, with nVidia SLI.
The newer socket 754 & socket 939 motherboards' architecture allowed for 64-bit processing. Simply speaking, the pipelines between the components & chipset on 64-bit motherbards allow higher bandwidth - more data can move at once. Soon after these improvements, dual core processors & dual channel RAM were released on to the market. Expensive upgrades, but worth it.

As you can see, the motherboard will be the most expensive upgrade, even though a decent one can be bought for less than £100. The new processor socket is unlikely to be compatible with your older processor, the RAM slots incompatible with your older RAM. You will, therefore, need to buy a new processor & RAM to fit &, maybe even graphics card, too.
There are hundreds of bundles; barebones (usually case, motherboard, processor & RAM) & motherboard (usually motherboard, processor & RAM) available, especially on eBay. If they're within your budget & match your needs, fine. Honestly, I've never seen a bundle worth buying. You get what you pay for. There will, in my experience, always be a saving in components, to match the saving in cost. Most often you'll find a cheap motherboard &/or RAM in the bundle. These are 2 of the most important components in your rig.
I prefer good makes, from specialist manufacturers, for my machine. Most nerds like me will know, among others, Corsair, Crucial, Kingston & OCZ as RAM specialists; Asus & Gigabyte as top motherboard manufacturers.
I've had a lot of use out of cheaper power supplies, but I think they're the most overlooked component in the box. I currently use a Thermaltake 750W PSU.

My tip for saving..
Set yourself a specific percentage of your take-home pay. You can set it before outgoings, or after. Put it in a separate bank account. This is what I do. I never take more, or less. It's my computer fund.
I use a credit card, but pay it off before the due date, every month. In the meantime, my savings are generating small, but positive amounts of interest.

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