Component Information

The CPU (or central processing unit) is the heart of a computer system that interprets and carries out the instructions contained in computer software. There are many CPU models out there, but they fall mainly into two broad categories - those from Intel and those from AMD. Traditionally, Intel CPUs have been dominant in the market. But in the last 3 years or so, AMD has managed to come up with CPUs equal or better in performance than those from Intel. The selection and purchase of a CPU is often the most important part of setting up a computer system. When you decide it is time to upgrade or purchase a new computer, the first thought that should come to your mind is: 'What CPU should I get?' In summary, always consider your computing needs when selecting a CPU. If you want to do simple word processing or general computer tasks, go for the budget or low end processors. If you are more into gaming or do CPU intensive work like video editing, go for a mid-range or high-end processor.

Computer memory is an important component of your computer. It's sort of the storage area in the computer's brain. When we talk about computer memory, we are usually referring to Random-Access Memory (RAM) which is stored in memory chips installed on the motherboard. This is opposed to Read-Only Memory (ROM) which is typically found in CD-ROM's or DVD's. Additional computer memory will give your system a big boost in performance and delay an full computer system upgrade. If you choose 1024mb or 2048mb DDR RAM, and a DUAL DDR motherboard, your memory will run at dual speed (800mhz) Don't worry if you find it difficult to work out how much RAM you need, our website is updated very regularly and therefore the minimum amount of RAM on our website will be enough for moderate usage.

Are you baffled by the term 'motherboard'? The motherboard is certainly the most complex piece of electronics and circuitry in a computer system. Motherboards come in all shapes and sizes, but fall into three categories: ATX, AT and Baby-AT. The AT and Baby AT is an older motherboard design specification - most motherboards these days are of the ATX specification. The motherboard contains the 'glue' that connects all your computer components together. Your CPU, video card, keyboard, serial ports, parallel ports, Firewire ports, mouse, storage devices and power supply all connect to the motherboard. They also have a small program called the BIOS which allows you to configure your various computer components. Traditionally, computer motherboards were a monsters when it came to configuration. It was extremely tough to connect all the components to the board and set up everything to work correctly. These days, motherboards are much friendlier - set up and configuration can be done using the BIOS directly, instead of playing around with jumpers on the board itself.

PCI PORTS
Motherboards have a number of PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) ports. You put items such as the modem, network card, USB card, TV card etc into these ports.

USB PORTS
USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports are ports on your computer that allow you to connect peripherals such as the printer, scanner, webcam, external cable modem, mobile phone, portable hard disk and much more to your computer quickly and fast. It is therefore recommended to have a large amount of USB ports so in the future you can add components quickly and easily.

AGP PORT
An AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) port is where you connect your graphics card to. An 8x AGP port is the fastest AGP type available.

PCI-E (PCI Express)
An PCI-E port is where you connect your graphics card to. PCI-E is roughly twice as fast as AGP.

ATA
ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) is a disk drive implementation that integrates the controller on the disk drive itself. There are mainly 3 tiers to this: ATA 60, ATA 100, and ATA 133. Basically an ATA hard drive will talk to the rest of your computer via an ATA cable which connects to your motherboard. Most computer these days have 4 IDE ports via 2 IDE channels which connect via the ATA interface.

IDE PORT
An IDE port is what you would connect your optical drives, or hard drives to. Each IDE cable has 2 connectors for connecting a device.

SERIAL ATA (SATA) (Serial - Advanced Technology Attachment)

SATA is a serial interface. The speed of the interface for the current phase is ATA 150, ultimately being envisioned to rise to 600 megabytes/sec (ATA 600). Existing ATA drives use a 64 bit wide bus to communicate with the IDE drive. To do so requires a wide, flexible ribbon cable. One of the main problems with the ribbon cable is that, with multiple disk drives (HDD's, CD, and DVD), the Ribbon cables begin to block the airflow through the chassis, impeding cooling. SATA solves this problem by replacing the ribbon cables with thin cables containing two differential cable pairs. In addition, SATA promises a higher speed interface for the future. Another reason for the SATA is that it reduces the number of traces on the motherboard as the connector has significantly fewer pins than the parallel ATA. With Serial-ATA there is no master/slave configuration, and therefore you can easily and hassle free add or remove hard drives. Additionally, with a Serial ATA card you can add additional hard drives. This breaks the barrier of only being able to add 4 IDE devices with parallel ATA. You could, if you needed the storage, have say 4 hard drives as well as a CD writer, DVD writer and DVD ROM.

Front Side Bus (FSB)
Front-Side-Bus (FSB) is a term describing a Processor (CPU)-to-system memory data bus. It has also known as CPU bus speed , external CPU speed , memory bus and system bus . It is the speed that the CPU communicates with RAM (memory). The front side bus on a computer connects the processor to the north side bridge, which comprises the memory bus, PCI bus and AGP bus. In general, a faster frontside bus means higher processing speeds and a faster computer.

HYPER THREADING TECHNOLOGY

Hyper-Threading technology is an innovative design from Intel that enables multi-threaded software applications to process threads in parallel within each processor resulting in increased utilization of processor execution resources. To make it short, it is to place two logical processors into a single CPU die. As a result, an average improvement of ~40% in CPU resource utilization yields higher processing throughput.

PARALLEL PORT :
This is the port for connecting older printers to so that you don't have to buy a new printer when upgrading your pc

PS/2:
This is simply a connector for the keyboard and mouse.

The hard drive is where all the information on your computer is stored. To decide what size hard drive you will need, you need to consider that for example an 80GB hard drive is 81,920 megabytes.

1,024 Byte = 1 Kilobyte (KB)
1,024 Kilobyte (KB) = 1 Megabyte (MB)
1,024 Megabyte (MB) = 1 Gigabyte (GB)

To safely install Windows XP on your computer you need approximately 5 gigabytes of space. A large computer game may take up 2 gigabyte of space, but usually games only take up a few hundred megabytes. Most programs range from 5 to 500 megabytes, and therefore the average computer user will struggle to use up 80gigabytes of hard drive space. However, if you download movie clips, music and install lots of games, and you may find you will need a 120gb or larger hard drive to cope with everything.

RPM
RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) is the speed that your hard drive rotates. The more revolutions per minute a hard drive rotates, the more data it can copy/move within the given period of time. A 7200rpm hard drive can copy/move data faster than a 5400rpm hard drive.

RAID
RAID is the linking together of two hard drives, either for performance (RAID 0) or security (RAID 1). Most computer users do not need to use RAID. If you are unsure of what RAID is, have a quick read below to see if you think it will benefit you. A dictionary definition: What is RAID? - RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is a method whereby information is spread across several disks, using techniques such as disk striping (RAID Level 0) and disk mirroring (RAID level 1) to achieve redundancy, lower latency and/or higher bandwidth for reading and/or writing, and data recoverability.

RAID 0: Striping
RAID level 0 refers to striping data across multiple disks without any redundant information.
Striping can be used to enhance performance in either a request rate intensive or transfer rate intensive environment. Unfortunately. striping reduces the level of data availability since a disk failure will cause the entire array to be inaccessible.

Advantages:
High performance
No cost penalty - all storage is usable

Disadvantages:
Significantly reduced data availability - all data is lost if one hard drive fails.

RAID 1: Shadowing/Mirroring/Duplexing
RAID level 1 refers to maintaining duplicate sets of all data on separate disk drives. Of the RAID levels, level 1 provides the highest data availability since two complete copies of all information are maintained. If one of your hard drives fail, you will have an exact copy of all your data on your other hard drive, meaning that you can carry on working as normal without having to restore lost files. You could see it as having a permanent automatic back-up of all your data. Even if one hard drive fails, you can then use the other hard drive to create a new RAID array and so in theory (unless you have an electrical surge, or both hard drives fail simultaneously) you can never be caught out when you turn on your computer one day to find that your hard drive has failed, because you always have a backup.

Advantages:
Excellent data availability
Higher read performance than a single disk

Disadvantages:
Expensive - requires two hard drives (if you order 2 x 160Gb, you will only have 160GB total storage space and not 320GB)

Summary
RAID 0 requires two hard drives. Data is written to both hard drives (part of the data on one hard drive, and part of the data on the other) to give faster write times and also faster read times. Hard drives act as one drive - e.g. one large 320GB hard drive consisting of 2 x 160GB hard drives. However, if one hard drive fails, the array will be broken and all data will be lost.

RAID 1 requires two hard drives. Data is written to both hard drives simultaneously (files are written in full to each hard drive) and therefore you will have an automatic back-up should your hard drive ever fail. However, this security comes at a cost - two hard drives are required and you can only fill one hard drive, (as the other will be automatically filled as you go along) but for some people the added security is well worth the extra cost.

CD Writer
A CD Writer/CD ROM is an optical drive which allows you to read, write and re-write data onto a compact disc. For example if the speed of a CD Writer is 52 x 32 x 52 this means that you can read CD's at 52 speed, re-write CD's at 32 speed and write CD's at 52 speed. Most cd-writers are the same regardless of brand.

DVD ROM
A DVD ROM/CD ROM is an optical drive which allows you to read both CD's and DVD's. If you do not have a DVD drive in your computer you will not be able to watch DVD movies, or read DVD's.

DVD Writer
A DVD Writer is basically a drive that can do everything. A DVD writer can read DVD's, write DVD's and re-write DVD's. It can also read CD's, write CD's and re-write CD's.

CD Writer/DVD ROM (Combi Drive)
A CD Writer/DVD ROM (Combi Drive) is an optical drive which allows you to read, write and re-write data onto a compact disc. A CD Writer/DVD ROM ( Combi Drive ) can also read DVD's.

A graphics card is vital to a computer. Although most people know what the purpose of a graphics card is, you can still easily get caught out when choosing the right graphics card for your system. Not only do you need to look our for a graphics card with a decent amount of memory  but you also need to look for a graphics card with a powerful GPU (graphics processing unit). You can also choose to have two graphics cards in your computer. This enables gaming enthusiasts to have up to double the power when matching two identical graphics cards which means an ultimate gaming experience!

When searching for the right graphics card for you, just like when you are looking for a new computer, you will be looking for a powerful processor and a large amount of RAM. For example:

• 256mb RADEON 9200
• 128mb RADEON 9800
• 256mb RADEON 9800 PRO 
  

Which is best? The RADEON 9800 PRO is the best, followed by the 9800 and then the 9200. Even though the RADEON 9800 only has half the memory of the RADEON 9200, the GPU on the 9800 is much more powerful, and in a gaming experience the game will be more realistic and more responsive. It will be a totally different experience.

To discover which graphics card is best for you (and your budget) you could try visiting the manufacturers website's on:

• www.ati.com
• www.nvidia.com

DVI
DVI (Digital video Interface) is a digital connector for a digital monitor - the future of all monitors eventually. A graphics card with DVI enables users to choose whether they want to connect a normal monitor to it, or a digital monitor through the DVI connector. It is especially good for the latest digital TFT monitors.

TV-OUT
The TV Out feature provides an alternative display device besides your normal CRT/TFT monitor. Since a TV Set usually has a larger screen and lower resolution, the display on the TV Set is best suited for business presentation or games requiring a low resolution.

SLI Technology
PC enthusiasts and professionals are constantly searching for ways to increase the performance of their PCs. And now they can with NVIDIA breakthrough 3D platform technology. NVIDIA® SLI™ (Scalable Link Interface) technology is a revolutionary approach to scalability and increased performance. NVIDIA SLI takes advantage of the increased bandwidth of the PCI Express™ bus architecture, and features hardware and software innovations within NVIDIA GPUs (graphics processing units) and NVIDIA nForce4 MCPs (media and communications processors). Together the NVIDIA SLI patent-pending technologies work seamlessly to deliver heart-pounding PC performance. And depending on the application, NVIDIA SLI can deliver as much as 2x the performance of a single GPU configuration for unparalleled gaming experiences.

This extract was taken from http://www.nvidia.com/page/sli.html where you can read all about SLI Technology and its benefits. Please also note on the NVIDIA website which graphics cards in particular support SLI Technology, as not all NVIDIA graphics cards support SLI Technology.

In order for SLI Technology to function, you need to choose two identical graphics cards for your system, i.e. you cannot put two different graphics cards into your computer in any circumstances. SLI Technology is only available on selected systems where you have the choice of two graphics cards and does not function on any ATI graphics cards. You can only configure SLI Technology on PCI Express systems and not AGP systems

In order for your computer to produce sound, it will need to have a sound card/sound device installed. The onboard sound is usually enough for most computer users, but if you are:

• A serious gamer or musician
• A music/film editor
• A serious music lover
• Someone who already has surround speakers 

It might be worthwhile purchasing a creative sound card. Otherwise, you will probably be fine with the onboard sound, in that you will not notice a difference in sound quality.

In order to connect to the internet, 99% of people either connect via a 56k modem, ADSL modem, or cable modem. If you are unsure of how you connect to the internet look at the computer you are on now, did you have to dial up to connect via your telephone line? If the answer is yes you will most likely connect via a 56k modem and you will need a modem in your new computer. Otherwise you will probably not need a modem in your new computer.

 

A network card (usually onboard) allows you to do the following (and more...) :

• Network a computer
• Connect to the internet via broadband
• Connect a laptop or other device to a computer

All our computers come with this facility and there is no extra charge for this as this facility is onboard.

WIRELESS NETWORKING

Wireless networking is now available on all our computer systems. To allow you to use your computer in a wireless environment, you will need to ensure that you select a wireless network card in your new computer. The wireless network card will allow you to search out wireless networks available to you and connect to these. All this can be configured using your operating system or by using the software provided.

Setting up a wireless network connection

It is quite simple to set up a wireless network in your home, but how successful your wireless network is depends on several factors:

• The thickness of the walls in your house (old houses can be challenging)
• The distance each computer is apart (you may need access points) 

 In order to setup a wireless network, you need a wireless network card in each computer/laptop that you wish to connect to the network, and also a router and modem. Our routers come with built in ADSL modems, so you will not need to purchase a modem.

To simplify wireless networking, your internet connection comes into your premises and into the modem (the router). Each computer/laptop connects to the router (either wired or wirelessly) and each computer/laptop can receive signals from the router. Therefore each computer can receive high speed internet wirelessly.

Your computer can also send signals to the router and the router can relay these to other computers. Thus, you can access the hard drives on computers in other rooms and transfer, edit and even delete files. You can manage this through My Network Places in Windows XP, and you can choose which folders you would like to share, and which folders you would like to make private.

A floppy disk drive allows for the usage of the continuingly obsolete 1.44mb floppy disks. We strongly recommend all our computers come with a floppy disk drive as drivers for RAID/SATA configurations may need to be loaded.

As floppy drives are low in cost you never know when it may come in useful! 

A memory card reader is a device that allows you to connect flash memory and other such memory to a computer for fast access and modification. If you have a digital camera you may wish to purchase a memory card reader to transfer your photos quickly and without having to use a program to do so.

Our 7 in 1 memory card readers can read the following media types:

• CompactFlash™
  
• (Type-I/II)Microdrive™*
• SD Memory Card™
• MultiMedia Card™
• Memory Stick™
• Smart Media™
• They also act as a 1.44mb floppy disk drive.

The computer case is an important part of any computer. All of our computer cases will support the components you choose to have installed inside your computer and all of our cases (apart from the affordable cases) can support extremely high specification systems with our advanced cooling solutions, for example 80mm & 120mm fans, Intel TAC 1.1 approved air vents, and other vents to allow air to flow freely through the computer.

If you are ordering a very high specification system, for example a system with a very powerful processor or graphics card, we recommend you call us just to check that you have selected a good case for your requirements.

 

Power Supply (PSU):
A Power Supply Unit is the device that power all the components within your computer, such as, the CPU, hard disk drive etc. Each component in your computer uses a proportion of your power supply's power output capabilities. As a rough guide, the following components use:

• Processor - 110W
• RAM  - 25W per stick
• Basic Graphics Card - 50W
• Hard Drive - 25W each
• CD/DVD ROM - 20W each
• CD/DVD Writer - 30W each
• PCI Card - 5W
• Motherboard - 25W
• Fans - 10W
• Floppy, Keyboard & Mouse - 10W
  

As the PSU is usually the noisiest part of your computer system it is worth paying extra to get a 'silent' PSU

Firewire is a 1995 Macintosh/IBM PC serial bus interface standard offering high-speed communications. Firewire can transfer data between a computer and its peripherals at 400 Mbps.

It is most commonly used for camcorders, external hard drives, and networking and is faster than USB 2.0 over sustained throughput. If you don't currently use firewire it is most likely that you will not need to use it in the near future, but we will leave that decision down to you as to whether or not to purchase a firewire card. Basically, if you are planning on purchasing a firewire device you will need to purchase a firewire card.

We sell both CRT and TFT (flat panel) monitors. A display screen made with TFT (thin-film transistor) technology is a liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor.

A TFT monitor is only a few inches deep compared to a CRT monitor, which has a large behind area containing the tubes for the display. Flat panel displays are revolutionising the way people look at their computers. Thin, light, space-saving, brighter, flicker-free, low power consumption, and better for the environment.

If you are a heavy gamer, choose a TFT monitor with a refresh rate of 14ms or lower. There are a 2 ways in which your monitor will connect to your PC. The traditional way is via an analog connection (VGA), or the newer digital connection which is called DVI (Digital Visual Interface). DVI provides a much better picture quality.

We sell keyboards and keyboard and mouse combos where you get a matching keyboard and mouse. The Logitech Deluxe desktop is very professional, where as the cheaper combos are more value for money. Our internet keyboards have hotkeys, such as email, internet, and programmable buttons for quicker access of applications.

 

Mouse:
We sell various mice such as optical mice, wireless mice, and standard ball mice:

• An optical mouse does not have a ball that can get clogged up and cause it to malfunction.
• A wireless mouse allows for the freedom of having no wires.
• A ball mouse offers value for money with nice ergonomics.

Depending on your budget and needs, you can choose yourself a mouse.

Speakers are an important part of any PC system. Speakers are divided into the following categories:

• 2.0 Speakers - This is the standard 2 speaker setup. These are fine if you have a minimal use for sound with your PC.
• 2.1 Speakers - This setup consists of 2 satellite speakers and a sub-woofer unit (for bass). These speakers are ideal for most people.
• 5.1 Speakers - For those of you who want surround sound, includes 5 satellites (Front Left/Right, Rear Left/Right, Front Centre) and a sub-woofer.
• 6.1 Speakers - The same setup as the 5.1 except you will have a Rear Centre speaker.
• 7.1 Speakers - How many speakers can you handle? This setup includes 7 satellites and a sub-woofer!

You can choose a printer from our list to suit your needs. For more information on each printer, please let us know what you expect from your printer and we will be able to advise the best make and model.

We do however recommend Epson printers as ink for these is usually cheaper than any other brand along with great quality results on all media types.

Printers come in a number of styles such as a basic inkjet or laser, stand alone, or multi-function (e.g. having a built in scanner with the printer)

A TV-Card will allow you to watch television on your computer screen either in a window or full screen, effectively turning your PC into a Television set. In addition you can use the video inputs to capture video from a Camcorder or VCR which you can then send via the Internet.

You can also plug a Camcorder into your TV-Card and use it as a Webcam. With modern software and a fast PC you can use your PC as a VCR.