The PC guide Part 1/3 the family PC.

I'm a fan of customized PC's sure you might have to pay a little more, but it's honestly worth it!

I work at a place where we service computers, so I see what computer manufacture do wrong, most frustrating error, and this is usally cheap manufactures like Packard Bell, E-System, and Medion(Or whatever they call themselves in your country) is powersupply, and it makes sense, it's hard to tell people that, Hey this computer has the same specs as that cheap PC, but this one is better because it has a 550W powersupply! the first thing people ask me as I tell them about what powersupply is, So does it use the amount of W? and that's understandable because 550W is a hell of a lot, but of course it doesn't use that, it's simply saying what the powersupply is capable of delivering, and I think most computers are idle something like 85% of the time, and with the new innovations in powersaving your computer will be consuming basically nothing while using it for browsing the internet or writing something. I've seen computers with quadcore CPU's and dual video cards with a 400W powersupply, and I just want to pull my hair out, and I honestly didn't think anyone would use anything less than a 300W powersupply for a standard desktop, but oh no, the ones I often have to chance a powersupply on have a cheap 250W, and it wouldn't be that bad if it was only the powersupply that had to be changed, but way to often it will take down the harddisk with it.

The next thing is motherboard, I always try and keep an open mind, so when a company fails, I look forward seeing them making an impressive return, there is one company that I hate, and I hope fails! I honestly hope they never ever get success and just dissappears, they don't make competition, they're just a horrible electronics company, it is ECS, I first encountered ECS while working at a PC store where we made custom made PC's and we decided for our budget PC's we would try this motherboard maker. The worst decision ever, it was so bad that we didn't even care to try and find errors on them when they got returned, we just short circuited them, and make sure they were broken. And I wasn't surprised when I saw the same company had motherboards failing where I work now, it's a cheap motherboard in every sense, and here's the other problem with them, you get horrible performance, it's disgusting to see someone piss on consumers like ECS does it.(Yes I have a huge problem with them!) You usually get what you pay for, but not with ECS, you get ten times more value getting Asrock, wich is also cheap, but atleast gives you something useable.

My own experience is that motherboard builders you can count on is MSI, Asus, Intel, where as them you can't really count on is ECS, PC chips(also ECS owned, who could have guessed?) and Soltek, which I can with joy say aren't making motherboards anymore. Now I don't mind someone trying to make cheap motherboards, what I do mind is when someone makes complete crap! something almost guaranteed to fail because of cheap components, and horrible design.

I mentioned Asrock because I usually have good experience with them, I wouldn't use it for my own PC, but that's because I'm a nerd, if I was ever to buy a TV I wouldn't get one less that 1080P again because I'm a nerd. But I can recognize that Asrock works for most people, it's cheap, it performs decent, they have some motherboards that for my taste is a little overly gimmicky, but atleast it works wich is more than you can say about ECS's standard motherboards.

But yes now that I'm done ranting about ECS, it's about time I walk the walk, so I'm going to go through some of the details for custom made PC's for what needs you should have. There's the family PC as I like to call it, a low power PC that's not just filled with slow components, it seems to be the biggest problem of builders, they seem to think, hey let's just put the cheapest and slowest components in this PC, and that's just not the case, that will just give you a horribly bad PC.

Now motherboard, the most important is to go after a combination that works well, and if you are looking to make a family friendly PC, that not only will be low power, but also fast, responsive, and be able to play smaller games, and even HD movies if needed, you need to go for a motherboard with the chipset combination of 78xG/890G and SB7xx/SB850 why? well it's produced by ATI/AMD, it's really low power, and low heat output, so even with a dusty PC your chipset won't overheat(Trust me, I've seen it!), next thing you need is a CPU, and there's a lot out there, but today a low power Dual core is enough for most users, currently you can get AMD Athlon II x2 really cheap and really low power (65W at 2.8GHz) a quick note about AMD CPU's they are in fact pretty good quality, but! the reason some people will complain and understandably so is AMD sells two kinds, In a Box, and OEM, OEM basically means CPU and only CPU, and yeah they aren't treated the best, and sadly they seem to have a lot of errors, but I've never seen an AMD CPU sold as in a box with any problems, and you get a decent cooler with it.

Next you need memory, this is a pretty nice thing about AMD, their CPU's are very compatible with older products, currently all Athlon II's are for the socket AM3, in AMD's platforms that means it's the socket coupled with DDR3 memory, but you can put the CPU in an AM2+ motherboard as well if you want to go with DDR2 memory, it doesn't matter that much when building a PC for normal use, fact is that DDR2 memory is still performing really well, so whatever has the best price, and what you will need is anywhere from 2Gb and over, I recommend 4Gb and a 64bit operating system.

Then there's the harddisk, harddisks are pretty cheap to get a whole lot of space, a 500Gb or 750Gb is more than enough for casual use, even if you take a lot of pictures and have a lot of kids games on it. luckily there's no ECS of harddisks, I've had most good experiences with Seagate, but it honestly doesn't matter in a casual PC, DVD drives I would say it's almost the same, but if you want something quiet, Asus and. Samsung makes some great drives. now if you want to build it from the bottom up, as I would, next thing we look at is case, again do you want the big case next to the desktop, or would you like a small box under the screen? like if you want a small box you need to make sure the motherboard fits in it, and how small? The standard small, is called Micro ATX, and you can get some cases that small that they have their own custom made powersupply, if that's the case, a 200-250W is actually enough because we have already focused on making it really low power. but I would recommend getting a case where you can use a normal powersupply because then you can choose one that is low noise as well, and in case it should break it's easy to change. Now with motherboards again, you can use Micro ATX in a normal ATX case, but you can't use an ATX motherboard in a Micro ATX case, A final note on cases, don't go for the cheapest, unless you want to cut yourself, or damage your local tech guy, I recommend Antec, but they are pricey, if you just want something cheap and yet decent Aopen, CoolerMaster, I would avoid Codegen, and generally too cheap cases, the best way to recognize them is the gimmick they have while still being cheap, I have a nasty scar on my hand that is my reason(and yet I don't hate it like I hate ECS). Now powersupplies, again there's no direct ECS of powersupplies, but there's some damn cheap ones. Want quality? there's the following companies to go after. Corsair, Antec, Seasonic, OCZ, Chieftec, and Zalman, and for that PC? 300 or 450W I would take the 450W if you think you might want to upgrade, and with a 450W you could put in a pretty decent video card without problems. We're pretty close to being done, Now screen? Well most screens today are pretty ok, so one thing I would say is important is that you chose one with the right resolution, because LCD screens are build for their max resolution, so if you feel like setting it down to some other resolution the picture quality simply won't look good, the easiest way to show this is, if you have an LCD screen right now, try and put it on the lowest resolution possible, and then look at the edges of your cursor as you move it around.

Looks nasty doesn't it?

I have a 22" inch Samsung screen running with the resolution of 1680x1050, and that has a pretty decent size, and they come at a very decent price. If you don't know how you feel about the resolutions, I would try and go to a store and see if they have running examples, and feel free to explore the menu because sometimes the quality will look strange because some idiot went over and ruined the standard settings on it. If you want a more movie friendly screen you basically just need to make sure that the format is 16:9 the resolution I mentioned earlier is 16:10, today these are pretty much the only formats that matters, I liked the old 4:3 as you see on most CRT screens, but it's simply too expensive and 16:x screens work.

Keyboard mouse? Go nuts! for a casual PC it matters so little, of course I would recommend a decent Logitech kit since they work, and if you want wireless they work even better, now if you want something ergonomic, Microsoft has some really interesting keyboards, I use the Microsoft Natural 4000 myself and it's awesome!

Time to end on some notes about my choices, first of all I think someone will challenge me on why I didn't chose Intel, and the answer is simple really, Intel's low end platform doesn't belong in a family setting, their chipsets with onboard graphics is simply too weak, I am writing this on a Lenovo T500, it's a intel based laptop with their supposedly better onboard graphics at the time, the GMA4500, and yeah I can't even play HD movies on it, the 78XG/890G does it for breakfast, you can get some intel based boards with nVidia onboard, and while it's certainly better than intels own chipset on that front, it still has it's problems, with heat and power compared to ATI's offering. Intel definitely have some decent CPU's but so does AMD, and AMD's are cheaper, and faster than the Intel CPU's priced the same.

I actually planned to make this blog about small home PC, a cheap gamer PC, and the ultimate gam0r PC'z?!?!+1 But seeing how long this is already I will make them seperate. I didn't write any prices because the prices are different from country to country, and so is the lovely currency, but one we all know is the US dollar, a quick calculation fronm DKK to USD would bring this PC around 6-700$ for a complete PC.

Stay around for Part 2, which might come tomorrow.. Bwahahaa...