Guide: Choosing a Case

While choosing a your computer case is a fairly simple task and helps to give your PC it's customized feel, it's important to choose a case that meets all of your needs. This article will go over the primary features of cases that you should look at, as well as give some suggestions for each case size.

1) Case Form Factor (Size)

This is the most important thing to look at in your case as if your motherboard doesnt fit in your case, you may have a problem. The four major case sizes are; ATX full tower, ATX mid tower, MicroATX, and MiniITX

ATX full tower: These cases are the largest consumer aimed cases you can get. They are gigantic and generally accommodate large amounts of air flow. They will generally accommodate Extended-ATX, ATX, MircoATX, and MiniITX motherboards. Most of these cases will allow for larger air coolers such as the often used Cooler Master 212 EVO.

Suggested cases: NZXT Phantom, Antec Twelve-Hundred

ATX mid tower: These cases are smaller than the ATX full tower cases and will accept the same motherboards with the exception of the Extended-ATX. Since most motherboards are ATX and smaller this will not be an issue for a vast majority of builds. These cases very somewhat heavily in level of airflow, clearances, and cable management. Most quality cases will offer adequate levels of all three however.

Suggested cases: NZXT Phantom 410, Cooler Master HAF, NZXT Source 210 Elite

Micro-ATX: These cases are generally very small and many do not accommodate larger coolers. The fact that it will only accept Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX motherboards, hinders a good amount of upgradability. However these cases are compact and much easier to transport, and tend to be fairly cheap. Some of these cases may be slim form factor which will prohibit you from using most video cards.

Suggested cases: Fractal Design Core 1000, Xion Performance 560, NZXT Vulcan

Mini-ITX: These cases are generally very small and many of them are slim form factor. There is generally very little room for larger CPU coolers and video cards may not fit well in cases not designed around accommodating large video cards. cheaper ITX cases are almost always slim however BitFenix, Cooler Master, and Silverstone all make ITX lines that accommodate full size video cards

Suggested cases: Cooler Master Elite 120, BitFenix Prodigy, Silverstone Sugo SG05

2) Internal Clearances and Cable Management

Ensure that the case you choose has ample room for your chosen video card and room for your aftermarket coolers if you have chosen to purchase one. Many cases have room behind the motherboard tray to allow you to route cables out of the way of any airflow and keep the case looking neat and tidy. Other cable management features include hard points to zip tie cables to, and rubber grommets where you pass cables behind the motherboard tray.

3) Airflow and Fans

Take your build into consideration when looking at the present cooling available in a case. Most cases will include enough fans to ensure adequate airflow for mid-range builds, but for extreme overclocks and multi-GPU setups, additional cooling considerations may be needed

4) Other features

Ensure that your selected case has all the features that you want present in your finished product. Examples include; USB 3.0 front panel (requires a motherboard with 3.0 front panel header), Sound dampening, dust filters, toolless bays, etc.

5) Build Quality

Just because a case is full of features doesn't mean it's more structurally sound than a tin can. Higher quality cases will generally be much more structurally sound and just generally feel more solid than their cheap counterparts

6) Cosmetics

Make sure you like the way the case looks. Your case is one of the defining features that sets apart a custom build from something pre-made.

Guide: Choosing a Power Supply (PSU)

1) Determining power needs

The first step you should take when determining what power supply to purchase is determining just how much power your build needs. To get an estimate take CPU TDP, add GPU TDP, add 100w IF you plan to overclock your CPU, add 50w misc. power needs, then multiply the total by 1.25 to ensure adaquate headroom. The formula will look like this.

[(CPU TDP) + (GPU TDP) + (100w if you intend to overclock the CPU) + (50w)] * (1.25) = Minimum recommended power supply

Lets create an example. For a computer that will not be overclocked, has an AMD FX-6300 CPU (95w) and an AMD HD 7870 Ghz Video card (175w) you will need

[95w+175w+0w+50w]*1.25 = 320w*1.25 = 400w

From this you can see that this example build should have at least a 400w power supply. If you think you may upgrade the computer in the future it may be wise to purchase a power supply more powerful than the recommended wattage. Remember, a power supply only uses the electricity it needs, its ratings serve only serve as a maximum. A higher wattage power supply will not use any significant amount of extra electricity assuming that it is of the same efficiency so there is no downside to overbuying except for the cost.

2) Selecting the power supply

Once you have determined your needs. You should look for a power supply manufactured by a reputable brand that meets your wattage demands. Corsair, Antec, XFX, Seasonic, OCZ are highly recommended. Other manufactures make great power supplies as well but remember to check reviews and to check the 12v amperage ratings to ensure that it is capable of delivering enough amperage as 12V as some less reputable brands may under perform in this respect.

3) Examples

Non overclocked CPU + low to mid range video card = quality 400w+ PSU.
Examples: Corsair CX 430, Antec VP-450

Overclocked CPU + low to mid range video card OR
Non overclocked CPU + high end single GPU video card = quality 500w+ PSU
Examples: Corsair CX 500, Rosewill HIVE 550

Overclocked CPU + high end single GPU video card = quality 600w+ PSU
Examples: OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W, Corsair CX 600

Guide: Choosing a Hard Drive and/or SSD

1) Hard Drive and SSD Features

It's important to know what the various features of HDD's and SSD's are so you can make an educated design about what is right for your PC

The major stats on HDDs are capacity, spindle speed, read/write speed, and response and seek time.

• Capacity is a pretty obvious stat, Larger capaicty means it can hold more data. I recommend drives with at least 1TB of storage when building a PC. While many can get by just fine with less, the amount of money saved by dropping to a 500GB hard drive is generally minimal.
• Spindle speed and read/write speed tends to go hand in hand. Spindle speed is the speed at which the internal platters rotate, drives are generally 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM. The slower 5400 RPM drives use less energy and generally have more capacity, but are slower and often ill suited for use as a main hard drive and better suited for media storage and backup. The faster 7200 RPM drives generally boast faster read/write speeds and are better suited for gaming and general use.
• Response and seek times are much less important now than they have been in the past, most reputable brands have very fast timings on all of their drives with the advantage going to the faster drives as the speed of the platter is more often than not the limiting factor. An important consideration however is power saving features such as what are present on some 5400 RPM drives, when a drive slows down to save power the next time it is used it will incur a bit of lag time before it will operate.

The major stats on SSDs are capacity, read/write speed, and max random IOPS

• Capacity is obvious again, but is much lower than HDD's and will often be paired with a HDD as a secondary drive to compensate for this. price is much more linear in terms of GB per dollar however I still recommend at least a 120GB SDD to ensure that there is enough space to install all of your heavily used programs onto it.
• Read/write speeds on SSDs are many times faster than HDDs and are the reason people choose to use them. Read speeds on low end models tends to be near the limit of SATA 6.0 gbps however write speeds are significantly lower than the high end models (write speed will likely not effect gaming and general use, this effects professional work such as video editing much more)
• Random IOPS (input outputs per second) is a measure of how many random inputs and outputs that the drive can handle per second. As most files and programs will not load in a continuous manner, this is important to maintain the high speeds that the drive is capable of.

2) Choosing your Storage Solution

Single hard drive:

Pros

• Good capacity
• Consistent performance
• Cheap (a 1TB drive is around 70 dollars at the time of writing)

Cons

• Not as fast as an SSD
• No redundancy

Single SSD:

Pros

• Very fast
• Consistent performance
• Somewhat cheap (a 128GB SSD costs around 100 dollars at the time of writing)

Cons

• Low capacity
• No redundancy

SSD + HDD:

Pros

• Good Capacity
• Very fast for SSD installed software
• Allows duplication of important files

Cons

• Expensive
• Speed for HDD installed software is still low

Other solutions not mentioned are RAID, and Intel SRT

Guide: Choosing a CPU

1) CPU features

When you look at CPU's the primary features you will look at are going to be

• Clock speed: This is how many operations each core can complete per second.
• Core count: This is how many physical cores the CPU has. AMD generally has more cores at any given price point than Intel.
• Core efficiency (aka IPC): This isn't a listed stat on CPU's. Some CPU cores are more efficient at processing compared to alternatives with the same speed. It's important to check benchmarks relevant to you for this reason, but it's generally safe to assume that at any price point Intel will have better core efficiency while AMD will have higher core counts.
• TDP: this is how much wattage is needed to support the CPU at it's default speeds. It's generally safe to assume Intel will have lower wattage than an AMD equivalent.
• Integrated GPU: Some CPU's will have integrated graphics built in, this will be weaker than any decent dedicated card, but may be adequate for less demanding games. Almost all modern Intel chips have integrated graphics. AMD AM3+ CPU's do not have integrated graphics whatsoever, while AMD APUs have very powerful integrated graphics that tend to be much stronger than Intel's offerings.

2) Pros and Cons

2a) Intel

Pros

• Fast single-threaded performance makes most Intel CPU's ideal for gaming
• Generally power efficient
• Performs very consistently across a large variety of tasks

Cons

• Weaker integrated graphics than AMD APUs
• May loose out to AMD at multi-threaded performance at any given price point

2b) AMD AM3+

Pros

• Strong multi-threaded performance makes most AMD CPU's ideal for streaming and certain professional work
• AMD doesn't change sockets often, making upgrading in the future more efficient

Cons

• Low power efficiency
• No integrated graphics unless present on the motherboard
• Lower single-threaded performance leads to varied performance in games and single threaded applications

2c) AMD APU

Pros

• Integrated graphics are very powerful relative to intel's offerings at the same price ranges
• Higher end models such as the A8's and A10's offer 4 acceptably fast cores and great GPU performance for lower demand games such as League of Legends and Team Fortress 2 while remaining affordable

Cons

• Single threaded performance is still low relative to Intel
• The premium spent to get good integrated graphics is somewhat wasted if you ever decide to add a dedicated video card
• FM2 socket used by current APUs limits upgrade potential

Guide: Choosing a Motherboard

Because your choice of motherboard is going to be greatly effected by your choice of CPU, you should read the CPU guide before reading this guide.

1) CPU compatibility.

First thing you will do is narrow down your motherboard choices depending on your selected CPU, if you chose an AM3+ CPU, you will need an AM3+ board, etc

2) Selecting your form factor

Extended ATX: These are the largest class of motherboard and only fit in ATX full tower cases, Advantages of this form factor are the stronger support for 3~4 Video cards and support for large quantities of drives. Disadvantages of this form factor is the size severely limits your case choices, and these boards tend to be much more expensive. Unless you think you are going to use the advantages it is best to avoid this format as it will just be an unnecessary expense

ATX:  These boards fit in ATX full tower and ATX mid tower cases. This is the most common type of board used, as long as the board itself supports it is is large enough to accommodate multiple video cards, will usually have 4 RAM slots, and plenty of SATA ports.

MicroATX: These boards are smaller and will fit into any case MicroATX sized and larger. These are the second most common size of board used. While these boards can support multiple video cards they often do not as it will consume all available expansion slots in the case as most cards need 2 slots of room. These boards are often marginally cheaper than their ATX counterparts and often only support 2 modules of RAM, but many still support the full 4. Note that AM3+ CPU's do not have many good overclocking options on microATX. If you intended to overclock you will need ATX or to switch CPU type

Mini ITX: these boards are incredibly small and can fit in the very small ITX cases. Because of how small these boards are they can only support one video card, and are slightly more expensive than it's larger counterparts. These boards are more ideal for very compact computers and aren't ideal in any other scenario. There is no AM3+ support for mini ITX, if you want mini ITX you will need to choose a FM2/FM1 socket board or choose Intel

3) Selecting your chipset

The chipset of a motherboard determines most of the features that it will have and give you an idea of what it's purpose is.

3a) Intel Chipsets

LGA 1155

• H61: This is an older budget chipset that may have compatibility issues with newer CPUS
• Z68: This is an older performance chipset that may have compatibility issues with newer CPUS
• B75: Newer chipset designed for the newest gen of LGA 1155 CPU's, this board is aimed and small businesses and common consumers. Generally features at least 1 SATA 3 port and multiple SATA 3.0 gbps ports. This is a budget friendly chipset that is adequate for basic gaming computers that will not be overclocking and will only run a single video card.
• H77: Same features as B75 with the addition of an extra SATA 3 port, Intel SRT support, and larger support for multiple video cards. This along with B75 are good chipsets for those who do not intend to overclock
• Z77: Same features as H77, with overclocking support. These will often have more features than the H77 but not necessarily. This chipset is more ideal for high end gaming computers and enthusiasts.

LGA 1150

• This is the new socket type employed by Intel's Haswell chips, B85 H85 and Z87 are roughly equivalent to their B75 H75 and Z77 counterparts.

3b) AMD chipsets

AM3+

• 760G: Basic budget chipset, may not be compatible with all CPU's check compatibilities first. generally lacks support for SATA 3.
• 880G: Similar to 760G, more support for SATA 3
• 970: Midrange chipset with support for crossfire and overclocking (depending on the quality of the board, some 970 chipset boards may be poor at overclocking). Generally has 2-6 SATA 3 ports
• 990FX: Similar to 970 but with much better overclocking support and with added support for SLI. generally has higher end features.
• Others: Some aren't listed as they are not common or are out of production

FM1/FM2

• A55: Budget chipset generally lacking SATA 3 and USB 3.0
• A85: Adds basic overclocking, SATA 3, crossfire, and USB 3.0 support
• A95X: High end board with good overclocking support

4) Other features

Just because a chipset supports certain features does not mean the board using it will. Some features to look at are

• Number of SATA 3 and SATA 2 ports
• Crossfire and SLI support
• RAM Capacity
• VRM phase count / quality (this primarily applies to overclocking boards, this determines max power delivery and power stability)
• Onboard audio (All modern broads will have onboard audio, some just have better onboard audio)
• USB 3.0 support / Presence of USB 3.0 front panel header

Guide: Choosing RAM

Choosing RAM is probably going to be one of the fastest choices you will make in your build as beyond amount and speed, there isn't much else to examine when determining your choice

1) Compatability

Ensure whatever RAM you choose is compatible with your motherboard and CPU. All modern CPU's and motherboards will use DDR3. If you are using an Intel CPU you may have to ensure that the RAM does not have a voltage greater than 1.5v

2) Amount

In general 8GB of RAM is more than adequate for heavy gaming and most tasks, greater amounts are only needed in certain professional applications such as video editing and rendering

3) Speed and Timings

Performance gains for ram faster than 1600 MHz is negligible in most systems. The exception is with AMD APU's as faster RAM pairs well with the integrated graphics.

Timings are generally close enough between manufacturers that you can safely ignore them so long as you are buying from a reputable brand and don't care about the very small performance differences.

4) Part suggestions

Corsair Vengance Blue 8GB Kit

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB Kit