[DeathOutdone]

Can someone give me a good tutorial on hardware, either online or in a post?

I want to know:

Processors: The differenet aspects explained (what the caches are, what the cores do, what types of cores are bettter than others, the voltage, everything)

Motherboards-everything about them

Graphics cards- everyhting about them

Heatsink and Fan- everything about them

Cases- everything about them

and..RAM and hard drives and accessories- everything about them.

Because I am a newbie when it comes to hardware, and i should get the basics down before trying to build a PC with a limited knowledge.

Please link me to some tutorials or write some if you have time, thank you very much.

[Advertisements]

Hi,

Go here it has some things that may be of interest to you.

Rick

[Doby]

Hi,

Go here it has some things that may be of interest to you.

Rick

[DeathOutdone]

Well it sort of does, but it watsnt exactly what i was looking for.

I want basic explanations of each of the things, like of a CPU, and what parts it has, and how each of those parts work: core, l1, l2, voltage, memory, or whatever, etc. and a comparison of those cores and what each one does (i know which are the best because i asked warriorscot but i still dont know what each one of them does).

[warriorscot]

Dude that would be a very large book worth of knowledge, either go to wikipedia or if you have a decent knowledge of electricals then you can try and get the tech sheet from AMD or intel and work it all out from there.

[DeathOutdone]

Okay, nvm then, i guess its too much to learn. It seems like its hard to use software to explain hardware, such as google, the internet, etc, I have never found any explanations that I am happy with, and yet, i want a new computer and need to learn more, and cant understand technical stuff. Oh well the dilemna continues. I've already tried Wikipedia, it went into the history of CPU's and the really technical stuff, none of which helped me. and i have no knowledge of electricals, im not even sure what they are.

Edited by DeathOutdone, 07 January 2006 - 12:30 PM.

[warriorscot]

Well if you ask specific questions are even just a little bit more specific it would help, and is all you are wanting to know the basics of the basic or do you want more depth or do you just want to know what cpu to buy.

But for example to write everything i know about motherboard or gfx cards would be several thousand words a piece and it still wouldnt be everything.

Edited by warriorscot, 07 January 2006 - 01:09 PM.

[DeathOutdone]

Ok, well, how about I narrow it down.

First of all, I want to learn all about Central Processing Units:

Here is what I already know

3 companies make them:

AMD
Intel
and (i forget the other one)

OK so..that;s that.

I know Intel makes a lot of different lines, Pentium is the one everyone uses. but i dont know hte difference between all of the types intel makes. And I know AMD makes a lot of lines and most people use the Athlon but i dont know the difference between the types AMD makes.

Cores: I know each CPU has a core, dont know what it does, know a list of cores, not sure what each one does compared to the others, how they are different, etc.

L1 and L2 cache: not quite sure what they for, same with FSB front serial bus or something.

And power, voltage, electricty, hyper-transport threading, not sure what that stuff is either.

Does this help any?

[warriorscot]

Well ill give you a bit now , itll be as much as i can be bothered before i go to sleep.

The cpu is the main data processing unit of your PC, its full of millions of transistors that work in unison being either on or off to process data in a binary fashion. Thats about as simple as i can explain that you really only need to know what its for to understand the rest.

The cache is like a [bleep] or resevoir it holds the data while its waiting to be processed and in a computer there is many of these dams from the L1 cache to the L2 and then the ram which leads to the source of the data in the hard drive.

The core of the cpu is the CPU itself its what it is, now they name these so they can tell the differnce between old ones and new ones which have a different architecture or a different size of L2 cache, So an example is venice has a 512kb L2 cache, and the san diego while essentially very similar differs in that it has a 1Mb L2 cache, the bigger the L2 cache generally the faster the chip as it can hold more data in the fast cache memory and therefore process more before it has to send for more data from the slower ram or HD.

In terms of who make them lots of people make CPUs intel and AMD are the biggst more well known you were probably thinking of Sun microsystems they also make them and are quite well known, or it could have been IBM they make the power PC chips, but companies like sony and toshiba also make the cell cpu and there are others of less noteriety.

Power is power everything needs energy in order to work and newer cpus need more energy as they use higher clock speeds.

Voltage well im not going to explain voltage to you most cpus run between 1.4V and 1.6V that kind of thing is totally automated by the mobo and you only need to be aware of voltages when overclocking. HT is a way to introduce a level of multi tasking letting it switch between one task and another more efficiently, its complicated to explain at least the way i understand it its complicated to explain.
Basically it lets you run multiple programs easier.

Thats all your getting for now its time for a last look round the forum then bed. Ask some more questions if you want.

[howlleo]

Different lines: you probably mean the Athlon, Sempron, Turion, Opterion, from AMD, and the Pentium 3, 4, M, D, from Intel.

I'm not too familiar with the Intels, except that M and D are the faster versions and M is mobile and D is desktop.

Athlon is considered the better chip, Sempron is like the lower grade version. Turion is the mobile version of Athlon, Opteron is for servers.

Some Athlons have an "x2" tagged on, which means they have a dual core, which means there are really two processors in there doing the work.

Athlon 64 means that its a 64-bit processor. dunno what the Intel 64 bits are called, but Intel doesn't have too many.

there's other stuff: the 2.4 core speed measurements of the Intels versus the 3200+ speed of AMDs, but I dont know the faintest about that, though if someone would explain I'd be interested to learn.

Also, Intel chips tend to run hotter, requiring more cooling.

I think that is the sum total of my knowledge of processors which was not yet covered. As you see, ;-) it takes up a lot less space.

[howlleo]

http://news.yahoo.co...=1740&ncid=1729

there's an article that explains a lot about CPUs.

[DeathOutdone]

Thanks a lot, that helps guys.

Now for motherboards- I dont quite understand everything about them , I know they have to be PCI, PCI-e, or AGP compatible...other than that, i am pretty clueless.

Cases- do just cases need fans and heatsinks or does graphics cards and mobos and CPU's need their own heatsink/fans too? Do they generally come with everything or do you need to buy them on your own? Do PSU 's come with a case or do u need to buy seperately?

[howlleo]

I'm not very knowlegable about this, but I can get the ball rolling:

AGP and PCI are older standards, in expansion slots. PCIe is the latest and fastest and you should make sure your mobo has a few. Up-to-date motherboards have only PCI and PCIe. When you buy a graphics card, it should be PCIe, to ensure that you've got a fast connection.

There are other things to look out for in a motherboard: RAM slots (you'll want a 4GB dual channel one, allows your RAM to share work better- someone els can explain this better), processor pin socket size, (get 939, its the newer standard. More pins, more connectivity), SATA compatible, (SATA has overtaken PATA for connection- the cables are thinner, the connection is faster). Most motherboards come with onboard 7.1 sound. You only need to upgrade to a sound card if you are picky about your audio. Also look out for the USB connections, LAN, etc.



the processor and graphics card should come with their own heatsinks, you shouldn't need to think about that unless one breaks. The case comes with its own fans and power source, but the wattage isn't always enough, depends on your card and CPU. A power source under 400 watts should probably be upgraded.

[warriorscot]

Ill probably do more later but its not PATA ,that bugs me, its IDE or ATA there isnt actually a thing called PATA they made it up for people to tell the difference but its unnecesary and just sounds stupid, if you dont know the differnce between ATA and S-ATA adding a P isnt going to help and for those of us that do know its superflous.

Feel much better now, just callin IDE or ATA: PATA is one of my pet hates, dont know why nothing particualrly wrong with it its not that bad or wrong it just annoys me for no reason, got that off my chest. Ill probabl add more later i can see this thread stretching on a while, most of your information can be put into google and itll give you the answers as well, just search for PCI express youll find lots of documents explaning it, and read some hardware reviews they explain things quite well if its a good article.

[DeathOutdone]

Allright thanks for that info then, i ll end the thread then. I just have a hard time finding stuff when i research it, especially hardware related stuff. its usually way over my head

[warriorscot]

Im sure people will get round to posting stuff but obviously while we like to hlep the actual problems take priority, and we are all busy people if yould started the thread a month ago over the holidays you would have got more while many of us were escaped form the drudgery of normal life over the holidays.

If you read the reviews you will pick stuff up, it looks more complicated than it is an you can always look up indiviudal terms on wikipedia and the rest is common sense.