PC Motherboard

The main circuit board of a microcomputer. The motherboard contains the connectors for attaching additional boards. Typically, the motherboard contains the CPU, BIOS, memory, mass storage interfaces, serial and parallel ports, expansion slots, and all the controllers required to control standard peripheral devices, such as the display screen, keyboard, and disk drive. Collectively, all these chips that reside on the motherboard are known as the motherboard's chip set.

On most PCs, it is possible to add memory chips directly to the motherboard. You may also be able to upgrade to a faster PC by replacing the CPU chip. To add additional core features, you may need to replace the motherboard entirely.

Motherboard is sometimes abbreviated as mobo.

Sockets and CPUs

A Socket 939 motherboard

The CPU is the first thing that comes to mind when many people think about a computer's speed and performance. The faster the processor, the faster the computer can think. In the early days of PC computers, all processors had the same set of pins that would connect the CPU to the motherboard, called the Pin Grid Array (PGA). These pins fit into a socket layout called Socket 7. This meant that any processor would fit into any motherboard.

Today, however, CPU manufacturers Intel and AMD use a variety of PGAs, none of which fit into Socket 7. As microprocessors advance, they need more and more pins, both to handle new features and to provide more and more power to the chip.

Current socket arrangements are often named for the number of pins in the PGA. Commonly used sockets are:

• Socket 478 - for older Pentium and Celeron processors
• Socket 754 - for AMD Sempron and some AMD Athlon processors
• Socket 939 - for newer and faster AMD Athlon processors
• Socket AM2 - for the newest AMD Athlon processors
• Socket A - for older AMD Athlon processors

A Socket LGA755 motherboard

The newest Intel CPU does not have a PGA. It has an LGA, also known as Socket T. LGA stands for Land Grid Array. An LGA is different from a PGA in that the pins are actually part of the socket, not the CPU.

Anyone who already has a specific CPU in mind should select a motherboard based on that CPU. For example, if you want to use one of the new multi-core chips made by Intel or AMD, you will need to select a motherboard with the correct socket for those chips. CPUs simply will not fit into sockets that don't match their PGA.

Chipsets

The northbridge and southbridge

The chipset is the "glue" that connects the microprocessor to the rest of the motherboard and therefore to the rest of the computer. On a PC, it consists of two basic parts -- thenorthbridge and thesouthbridge. All of the various components of the computer communicate with the CPU through the chipset.

The northbridge connects directly to the processor via the front side bus (FSB). A memory controller is located on the northbridge, which gives the CPU fast access to thememory. The northbridge also connects to the AGP or PCI Express bus and to the memory itself.

The southbridge is slower than the northbridge, and information from the CPU has to go through the northbridge before reaching the southbridge. Other busses connect the southbridge to the PCI bus, the USB ports and the IDE or SATA hard disk connections.

Chipset selection and CPU selection go hand in hand, because manufacturers optimize chipsets to work with specific CPUs. The chipset is an integrated part of the motherboard, so it cannot be removed or upgraded. This means that not only must the motherboard's socket fit the CPU, the motherboard's chipset must work optimally with the CPU.

PC Mouse

In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons. It sometimes features other elements, such as "wheels", which allow the user to perform various system-dependent operations, or extra buttons or features that can add more control or dimensional input. The mouse's motion typically translates into the motion of a cursor on a display, which allows for fine control of a graphical user interface.


In early days the mouse came in such ways, but basically looking like a mouse. Newer PC mouse comes in handy using Bluetooth Technology making old messing wires history.

You can buy yourself a one from here.

PC Monitor_How It Works_2

Monitor Display Technology

Often referred to as a monitor when packaged in a separate case, the display is the most-used output device on a computer. The display provides instant feedback by showing you text and graphic images as you work or play.

Most desktop displays use liquid crystal display (LCD) or cathode ray tube (CRT) technology, while nearly all portable computing devices such as laptops incorporate LCD technology. Because of their slimmer design and lower energy consumption, monitors using LCD technology (also called flat panel or flat screen displays) are replacing the venerable CRT on most desktops.

Resolution refers to the number of individual dots of color, known as pixels, contained on a display. Resolution is expressed by identifying the number of pixels on the horizontal axis (rows) and the number on the vertical axis(columns), such as 800x600. Resolution is affected by a number of factors, including the size of the screen.

As monitor sizes have increased over the years, display standards and resolutions have changed. In addition, some manufacturers offer widescreen displays designed for viewing DVD movies.

Common Display Standards and Resolutions

Standard	Resolution	Typical Use
XGA (Extended Graphics Array)	1024x768	15- and 17-inch CRT monitors 15-inch LCD monitors
SXGA (Super XGA)	1280x1024	15- and 17-inch CRT monitors 17-and 19-inch LCD monitors
UXGA (Ultra XGA)	1600x1200	19-, 20-, 21-inch CRT monitors 20-inch LCD monitors
QXGA (Quad XGA)	2048x1536	21-inch and larger CRT monitors
WXGA (Wide XGA)	1280x800	Wide aspect 15.4-inch laptops LCD displays
WSXGA+ (Wide SXGA plus)	1680x1050	Wide aspect 20-inch LCD monitors
WUXGA (Wide Ultra XGA)	1920x1200	Wide aspect 22-inch and larger LCD monitors

In addition to the screen size, display standards and resolutions are related to something called the aspect ratio. Next, we'll discuss what an aspect ratio is and how screen size is measured.

Water-cooling your PC

Why would you want to water cool a PC? First of all it can much more quiet and it drops the temperature of your computer greatly. My quad core went from 50C under load to 28C Idle and under load! It is also good for overclocking. When you overclock the components of a PC get hot. The more you do it the hotter they get. It gets to a point were air cooling just won't cut it.

I really enjoy water cooling and it recently became one of my new hobbies. A water cooling rig requires maintenance. You need to know your way around a computer pretty well to be able to do this. I've been building computer since I was 10 and this really pushes you to the limit. I want to go even farther and try vapor phase change cooling. It's pretty much building a refrigerator inside of your computer. Drops things to around -20C

Deciding on the parts depends on how much you want to spend. I spent about $275 on my current setup. Its going to be about $375 once I watercool my GPU. A good kit I would recommend is this one from petra's tech shop for $250. It has pretty much every single part my kit has. I didn't even know there was this kit before I bought from them. The people there are really nice. This kit is better for a cheaper build or a smaller system that doesn't throw off as much heat. These kits aren't like ones you will see on newegg or other computer stores. They have a good combination of parts from different company's. The best watercooling rig has parts for all different companies.

You will also need about 10-15 gallons of distilled water. You can pick this up at your local grocery store. You also need tubing. You need to buy the right size tubing according to the type of pump, radiator, waterblock, and reservoir have. They are called barbs. I prefer 1/2 barbs. Make sure all your barbs are the same size. I recommend you use Tygon tubing. You can also use deionized water. I finally figured out the differences, I was pretty confused. Deionized water is less pure then distilled and still has some minerals and things like that in it. Both are still a bit conductive.

You also need some thermal paste. It helps create a strong bond between the CPU and water block so the heat can transfer. You can get a tube of it for about $1
grab thermal paste here

Once you get all your parts I would read through all the manuals. I never read manuals, but for watercooling I would. They have warnings that could really mess up your rig if you didn't pay attention to that. After you do that you need to do what is called flushing. When the parts are manufactured they have oils and grime and other things from them being made. If you just run your rig like that you will have dirt and grime flowing through all your parts and it will start to clog. Get some of your tubing cut it short and hook it up to one end of your radiator. Get a funnel and run about a gallon of distilled water through it. It helps to shake it up and around the radiator. Also heating the water helps it too. Next take apart your water block which should be pretty simple just unscrew a few screws. Get some rubbing alcohol and rub it through all the groves in your block.

Take out all the parts of your computer you won't be using. Such as your ram HDD's and GPU if you aren't water cooling it. Your going to need to pretty much have to take apart your computer anyways to install the water block.


Take the motherboard out of your case and put it in a safe place to work on it where static won't get to it. Put a dot sized dab of the thermal paste I mentioned before only a dot or 2. Get your screws that came with the waterblock and stick them up through the bottom of where your heatsink would screw in. Put the heatsink on and secure it.


It is hard to explain since all blocks mount a bit different. Your block should come with some kind of diagram. Think through where you are going to be installing you radiator and water pump. You might have to drill some holes into your case if you are mounting your radiator outside of your case. Once you found the places mount and screw them into place. Put your computer back together with only the essentials as you won't be needing to be able to boot just turn it on.

Plan out how you are going to do the tubing and connect them all on the valves. Get some hoseclamps and tightly secure them on. You might need to use kind of lubricant to get them to slide on. Make sure have things how you want them because it is extremely hard to get the hoses back off.

Put all the things you took out and put them back in. If you did everything right your computer should turn on and be fine. Monitor temperatures for a bit to see if everything is going right. 

The GAMING Computer

When it comes to gaming computers, the most versatile graphic cards, best built motherboards and speediest RAM are beat in a matter of weeks. Worse yet, they become obsolete to the gaming fanatic in a year. It's an expensive, addictive hobby, but someone's going to have the fastest computer out there, and so the competition continues. 


This post shows the simple task of putting together a top-of-the-line gaming machine. Remember, this rig won't be top-of-the-line for long. It has, maybe, a few weeks in the spotlight as the fastest computer on my block. It arguably has the best graphics on the market today, its one of the best overall gaming rigs out there, and sits in a unique and versatile case that won't become phased-out for some time. 

The PC Case
Any case will do, as long as everything fits. Premium cases keep the computer colder with advanced airflow capabilities and have bigger interiors to keep everything neatly tucked away.

There are great products from Gigabyte (Aurora 3D 570) and Thermaltake (Kandalf Extreme Edition) but I chose Cooler Master's Stacker 830 Nvidia edition for it's cooling abilities and interesting design. The case has a side fan tray with four 120 x 25mm fans pushed it to the top of the list. It going to be loud, but cold. Plus the removable motherboard tray is an interesting bonus, making for a faster build and easier upgrade.

The Motherboard

For a gaming machine, expect to overclock the motherboard. Normally I use a motherboard that supports the Intel chipset like Intel's D975XBX2 which is in my other rig. This time however, Im choosing the nForce 680i chipset for an SLI configuration (with two graphic cards).

Since there are few alternative motherboards for this set up, I chose to stick with the Nvidia brand to boost compatibly and stability when overclocking. Also the layout of this board is extraordinarily well-designed. Just look at the way the power connectors, floppy /IDE/ SATA ports, and the front panel are located around the outer edge and close to the top of the board. The makes the wiring easy with shorter cable runs that can be bundled giving better airflow and a neat appearance.


The CPU
AMD held the title as the best CPU for a long time. Now it's Intel's turn with the introduction of the Core 2 and quad cores.

Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Is the chip of choice for gaming. Make note that no games take advantage of the quad cores as of yet. If you want to future proof your rig and sacrifice a bit of speed, though, get yourself a quad core. 




The RAM
I realized that 4GBs of DDR2 RAM is overkill. But remember that what's on the game's box is the minimal requirement for the game to run. If you want to max out the textures, shading and lighting, the overall graphic quality, then install as much RAM as you can afford --at least 2GB.

The GPU
The most important component in a gaming PC is the graphic card. Last year I built a rig using dual ATI's Radeon X1900 in crossfire mode. It was a great system then.For comparison, the Playstation3 is running a tweaked version of the Nvidia 7900 graphic card architecture, and the 8800 GTX is approximately twice as fast.

When deciding on a card look for the most RAM and cooling power, and make sure it's Direct X 10 ready. Currently Nvidia's the only one that's works in Direct X 10. Keep in mind, Ati is a formidable adversary and the tides can turn quickly. 

The Sound Card
Motherboards usually come with onboard sounds. But you aren't going to settle for the squeak that comes out of the motherboard. Even a generic sound card usually does better. The only other brand I 've used is M-AUDIO , not a bad performer. But Creative has made a name for themselves on sound cards. In fact this card is over a year old an still holding first place. The X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional(way to long of a name) allows you to hook up your computer to your stereo for surround sound that will wake up your neighbors.  lOl




Hard Drives
This PC contains one optical and two hard drives. This is a good area to keep costs down because upgrades are easy and good components can come cheap.

For DVD drives, for example, even the cheapest component will do.

But when it comes to hard drives, you might want to be a bit more picky. The main drive, a Western Digital Raptor at 74 GB running at 10,000 rpm, is for speedy boot time. The other drive is a 500 GB Seagate that will handle all my gaming storage. This rig can handle way more storage. You could raid two drives together, which could increase both speed and storage, or just buy more harddrives. Since I'm only playing 2 or 3 games at a time, 574 GB total is all I require. Next time, however I'll be looking into measuring my storage in terabytes. 

PSU
This rig is going to need a lot of juice to make it run. Not quite an entire Kilowatt, but, almost!
The Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR delivers 1000 watts (1 Kw) of continuous, power with a peak output of 1100 Watts. If you're not opting for this much power, still buy a bit more than you need in quality and power remember cheap power supplies burnout quickly without warning, sometimes frying other components with them. 

After all, here is the gaming computer you are looking for.

The Definition of RAM

Pronounced ramm, acronym for random access memory, a type of computer memory that can be accessed randomly; that is, any byte of memory can be accessed without touching the preceding bytes. RAM is the most common type of memory found in computers and other devices, such as printers.

There are two different types of RAM: DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and SRAM (Static Random Access Memory).

The two types differ in the technology they use to hold data, with DRAM being the more common type. In terms of speed, SRAM is faster. DRAM needs to be refreshed thousands of times per second while SRAM does not need to be refreshed, which is what makes it faster than DRAM. DRAM supports access times of about 60 nanoseconds, SRAM can give access times as low as 10 nanoseconds. Despite SRAM being faster, it's not as commonly used as DRAM because it's so much more expensive. Both types of RAM are volatile, meaning that they lose their contents when the power is turned off.

In common usage, the term RAM is synonymous with main memory, the memory available to programs. For example, a computer with 8MB RAM has approximately 8 million bytes of memory that programs can use. In contrast,ROM (read-only memory) refers to special memory used to store programs that boot the computer and perform diagnostics. Most personal computers have a small amount of ROM (a few thousand bytes). In fact, both types of memory (ROM and RAM) allow random access. To be precise, therefore, RAM should be referred to as read/write RAM and ROM as read-only RAM.

The Development of the Computer

The ideas and inventions of many engineers, mathematicians and scientists led to the development of the computer. The first computer was developed in 1642 and consisted of gears and wheels. The first wheel would count from 1 to 9, the second wheel would count from 10 to 99, the third wheel would count from 100 to 999, etc. The only problem with the first computer, was that it could only add and subtract. It’s inventor was a French Mathermation and Scientist by the name of Blaise Pascal. In 1670, the German mathematician, Liebniz improved Blaise’s invention so that it could multiply and divide as well. Liebniz also found a system of counting other than decimal, called binary which made the machine easier to use. George Boole, in the 1800's, perfected binary mathematics and could logically work out complex binary calculations in his head which helped greatly to move the computer industry. The French textile weaver, Joseph Jacquard, made his contribution to the computer in 1801 with the loom. The loom was a machine that used punched cards to weave patterns. Holes would be punched in patterns on cards and then placed between the rising needle and thread creating the pattern punched. By changing cards and alternating patterns, Jacquard could create complex woven patterns. Charles Babbage was inspired by these punched hole cards and during the 1830's developed the idea of a mechanical computer. He worked on this idea for 40 years but, unfortunately, he did not have the technology to provide for the precision parts needed to build this computer. Hollerith, an American inventor, invented a punched hole computer called a Tabulator in 1888. His machine used electrically charged nails that, when passed through a hole punched in a card, created a circuit. The circuit would then register on another part where it was read and recorded. He founded the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. Over the next few years, Hollerith continued to improve the machine. He then sold his shares in 1911 and the name was changed to The Computing Tabulating Recording Company. Then in 1924, the name was changed to International Business Machines Corporations or IBM. An American electrical engineer started work to develop a computer that would help scientists do long and complex calculations. Vannevar Bush built a differential analyser to solve equations like quantities of weight, voltage or speed. These computers became known as analog computers. These analog computers are not as accurate as normal computers. Examples are thermometers, thermostats, speedometers, simulators etc. Scientists saw greater potential in computer electronics. John Atanasoff built the first special purpose analog computer in 1939. This was inpoved in 1944 by using switching devices called electromechanical relays. In 1946, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) computer was developed. Instead of electromechanical relays, it used 18000 electric valves. This computer weighed more then 27 metric tons, occupied more then 140 square metres of floor space and used 150 kilowatts of power during operation. It was able to do 5000 addition and 1000 multiplications per second. The only problem was that it took very long to program the computer to do the calculations as it could not store the information. Stored programming techniques was worked on by an American team who developed the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) in 1951. At the same time, two of the team members worked on a more advanced computer that could use both numbers and the alphabet. This was called theUNIVAC 1 (UNIVersal Automatic Computer) and was the first computer available to be sold to people and businesses. The invention of the transistor in 1947, meant that computers could be faster and more reliable. The first fully transistorized computer was introduced in 1958 by Control Data Corporation followed by IBM in 1959. Technology advancements in the 1960's saw the creation of the integrated circuit which contained thousands of transistors and other parts on a silicon chip. This meant that computers could become smaller. During the early 1970's, many different kinds of circuits were available some of which could even hold memory as well as computer logic. This resulted in smaller computers becoming available and the central chip that controlled the computer became known as the microprocessor. Today, the technology has become so good that it is possible to hold a computer in the palm of your hand.