A project for HPC by Derek Girardi during the Fall 2012.

This project was begun on October 20th and is anticipated to take 5 Days.

The purpose of this project will be able to well, build a computer!

In order to successfully accomplish/perform this project, the listed resources/experiences need to be consulted/achieved:

• Linux command line
• Linux file management
• Archiving
• hardware knowledge
• ability to put parts together RIGHT

Building a computer is starting to become a very popular among all nerds alike! Its a lot cheaper then buying a computer straight up and you get to make it to exactly how you want it. It can become tedious and a little pricey still, you need to know what parts you are going to need to buy, can you upgrade in the future with it, do you have enough power to handle all of it, is it going to fit within your tower, etc. There are many things to take into consideration but its not as hard as it all seems!

I will just state steps and give suggestions what should be bought/taken into consideration for buying a computer.

Step 1: The first things is always the one question people ask “why”. Well for starters, if you buy a shitty default computer from best buy, it will run like crap and it wont be everything you want. It comes loaded with software you dont want and it is doing things that you can not control. So when you build a computer, everything is run by you and you alone so thats why.

Step 2: Now you need to pick out the essentials. You need to decide on a processor, motherboard, the case, the RAM, the graphics card, the hard drive, the optical, and the power supply. Those are the main parts that would want to take into consideration. There are also some other parts you might want to take into consideration, such as bluetooth peripherals, external SD card reader, wifi capability, etc.

Step 3: Now to get into the actual choosing of parts. Now lets start with the processor. You are going to want to look at the number of cores and its clock speed. The clock speed determines how many instructions a core can handle and how fast it will execute those instructions. So more cores and higher clock speed is good! But it depends on what you want it for, if youre going for gaming then you will only need a dual core with a high clock rate but if you are video processing you might need multiple cores. There is quite a bit to take into consideration.

Step 4: Now for the motherboard, A motherboard comes with a lot of bells and whistles to look out for. Some things you might need to keep an eye out for is number of external ports. This is important when you want multiple USB's or maybe you want fast gigabit port, or more serial ports or more Ethernet ports! You need to check the socket type, once you have actually chosen a motherboard make sure you have compatible socket types. Then you have the sizes with are usually mini, half or full sized. This is important for what you want, the more advanced you get, the bigger its going to be. The amount of supported RAM that can be held is important, the RAM, the better speed you get. Integrated graphics are not a really a big deal if you are going to get a separate graphics card. Number of SATA are important because it determines how many optical drives and hard drives your computer can have. Number PCI slots help if you want to expand on your cards like extra sound card, extra usb parts, extra LAN ports, etc. Then you have your chipset which determines how advanced your motherboard can get. Like some will support overclocking, some will support crossfire and SLI, some support Hackintoshes. If you want any of this, chipset should definitely be taken into consideration. Brands to watch for are ASUS, GIGABYTE and MSI.

Step 5: Now to choose the case. When choosing your case you have to look for size, Airflow, noise, number of drive bays, ports on the front and the look. The size matters because if you have a big motherboard, you need a bigger size of a tower. I like a really big tower because you can fit a lot into there. Airflow is great for you know, keeping everything cool and clean. Noise because you want a nice quiet tower not vietnam. Drive bays are good because the more you need, the more you should have. If you have more than a few hard drives and an optical drive, you might need a lot of drive bays and MAKE SURE YOUR DRIVES CAN FIT INTO THE BAYS. There are different size bays. Then you have ports in the front so make sure you have a ton of those if you plan on having a lot and make sure there is good cable management with the tower so you have a clean area. And finally, make it look like a beast.

Step 6: The RAM. Not much is needed for this just need to take into account which is the size, the channels, the type, and the speed. The size is good starting at 4GB and you can always upgrade your RAM easily and cheap in the future. The channels depend on your motherboard. If you have a 2 channel motherboard then you want 2 RAM sticks of 2GB (4GB all together). Most RAM will be DDR3 so the type isnt something to worry about. The speed isnt a huge thing to worry about because they wont affect it much but if you want to overclock, still take this into account.

Step 7: The graphics card is an easy thing to look out for. There is nothing really specific to look out for but when going to choose your graphics card, you will want to read reviews of other on popular sites and make your best judgement on how you want your computer to perform.

Step 8: The hard drive. You need to think of size, speed and solid state drives. The size is important if you want to upgrade later on so get a reasonably sized one. The speed is good for your computer to speed up at a fast rate, you will want to find one that is at least 7200 RPM. most hard drives run at this speed so its no issue there. Now the solid state drives are separate but are smaller then the regular hard drive but if you want speed, solid state drive is the way to go. Hitatchi and samsung are good choices.

Step 9: The optical drive. This isnt a huge deal, its pretty much what do want! A cd player, a dvd player, bluetooth, external SD card reader!

step 10: The power supply is really important. The watts are important depends on your machine. If its a low power machine then you are going to want low watts and vice versa for high powered. Efficiency You just want to find something that is efficient on the price of power it pulls from the wall. Try to look for modular power supply, which means the cables come detached from the power supply so you only use what you need! Also get one with noise and if needed, there is uninterpreted power which in case of power outage, you dont lose your work right away and keeps everything going.

Step 11: Then you go and buy all the parts you want and when they arrive its time to put them together! You are going to want to mount your motherboard first into the slot that says motherboard (near cd slots most likely) then the processor will come next and pop that right into the motherboard followed by the fan. Then comes your RAM, PCI slots and hard drive. Then optical drives and power supply then boom! The computer should all be ready to go to turn on and boot right up to your BIOS menu.

No code needed for this one :p

I learned how to build a computer effectively!

In performing this project, the following resources were referenced:

• http://lifehacker.com/5827491/how-to-build-a-computer-from-scratch-lesson-3-building-the-computer