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The Rest of the Machine

Now that the core of the system has been decided on, I needed to look into the other supporting components I would need for my machine. The next major, and integral part needed was the system's RAM. Now the motherboard can support Dual-Channel DDR400 RAM, which of course I would use (at a minimum), so I began looking for what type of RAM to use. Since I wanted to make use of the Dual-Channel feature, I would need to use two sticks of RAM that were the exact same speed and size, so I decided to use 1024 MB of RAM (2 x 512 MB sticks). In the past, all my computers have been built using the same brand of RAM, Crucial.com, simply because their RAM works great and I have never had a problem with it. However, in my new machine I wanted to push the performance further, that is why I finally decided to go with Corsair XMS TWINX1024-4000 RAM. Wow, that's a lot to swallow, let's break it down. Corsair is a well known producer of high quality RAM, and the XMS or extreme memory speed, is their top of the line models intended for overclocking. The twin pack represents two sticks of 512 MB of RAM that have been tested and successfully work in dual-channel mode. Finally, the 4000 represents the fact that it is PC4000 RAM, or that it is DDR500. Now my particular motherboard supports DDR400 RAM, this means that to achieve the design speed of the RAM, I would have to overclock my machine, again pushing my computer to get more performance.

Next, what can arguably be the most important part of the computer, especially for gamers, is the graphics card. Also, making the decision is no easy task as it has been discussed a million times over which graphics card is the "best". One method for determining the quality of a graphics board is to run various benchmark programs that test the different features. I will post another article on my benchmark results at a later date, but for now I simply used others' results to decide on what card I would use. The two main choices at the time of building my computer were the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB and the nVidia GeForce 5900 128 MB, while the ATI also supports a 256 MB version, the increase in price does not reflect a significant increase in performance. In the past I would've chosen an nVidia graphics board, however recent benchmarks have shown the ATI board to produce better results. One thing to note in these tests however, is that the recent nVidia graphics drivers have actually produced flawed results and performance should improve with newer releases. But due to the benchmarks at the time, I decided to go with the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and I have no regrets for the choice I made.

Now the majority of the computer itself has been decided on, the last internal components needed were the hard drive(s) and various cd/burner drives. Since I love to collect tv shows on my computer, and encode them now myself, I needed a lot of hard drive space. So I decided to use three 120 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM hard drives. I had wished to use Serial ATA drives due to their increased transfer speeds, however I just don't have the money to support such a purchase. As for cd drives, I decided to use only a single DVD±R/RW drive in my machine, in order to conserve space but still have plenty of flexibility. I chose the Sony DRU510A which supports 4x dvd burning, as well as CD burning all in one device. It also supports both +R and -R dvd formats making it easy to write to any DVD media.

Now that I had everything I needed to build my machine I realized I needed one final part, a very important one in fact... the case. Choosing a case for your computer is not as simple as just choosing the one that physically looks the best. Size, air flow, ease of access, power support, all these must be taken into account when choosing a case. After much discussion on several forums, I finally decided on an Antec SLK 3700AMB case as it came highly recommended for good air flow and ease of access to the interior. The case itself is also quite a pleasant thing to look at, it has a gunmetal gray exterior and a door which covers the internal 5-1/4 drive slots. Internally it supports two 120mm case fans and an air filter to help prevent dust build up inside the case. Finally, the case itself ships with a 350 watt Antec power supply, more than enough for the standard user, however I have already looked into upgrading it, once I find some more cash...

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