On a more serious note, I am Matthias, a BA student at Budapest, and you are reading EZ-Tec. This blog will mostly be about two things: IT support for total beginners (As we know, if something can go wrong, it will, and if we can solve a problem ourselves, why nag others?), and reviews of Budapest PC stores. These two will preferably alternate weekly, but as it would be ridiculous to have one post per week, I'll post more tips and tricks during weekdays. The blog will be mostly PC-orientated, that means we're gonna deal with a lot less Apple Macintosh stuff (however, there will be a post on when to buy one and when not to).
For starters, I think it would be appropriate to take a look at the numerous factors we need to take into consideration when buying a new PC. What are those fancy terms used to describe the parameters of a computer? How much do I need to spend on a decent machine? What is a decent machine, anyway? Let's find out, but first of all, we should have a look at the parts of a computer so these terms and abbreviations will not cause a headache later. Also, these parts will have the most influence on the effectiveness and the price of our future computer.
- CPU (Central Processing Unit): Commonly called "the processor", the CPU serves as the brain of the computer, doing millions of calculations under a fraction of a second. The faster it is, the faster our PC will be (that's not always true, but more on that later). The speed of the processor is measured in its clock rate (frequency), which is given in Gigahertz (1 GHz = 1000 Megahertz). A high clock rate processor is faster, consumes more power and generates more heat than its low clock rate counterparts. There are various types of processors with multiple cores and what not, but this will be a concern for later. Currently, there are two major CPU manufacturers, Intel and AMD, with Intel generally having more customers.
- RAM (Random Access Memory): As the name suggests, this serves as the memory of our PC, but it only stores stuff that are currently in use. For example if we open Microsoft Word to run a letter, the program gets stored in the RAM, but the letter we wrote yesterday won't be. Generally, the more RAM a computer has, the merrier. RAM has a frequency as well, but that is not as much of a concern to us, as usually only the highest frequency versions are shipped with a PC. Good RAM manufacturers include Kingston, Corsair, Samsung, Mushkin and OCZ among a few other ones. The amount of RAM is measured in the basic units of information.
Usually, a single RAM module has a capacity of 1 Gigabyte. 1 Gigabyte (GB) equals 1024 Megabytes (MB), 1 MB equals 1024 Kilobytes (KB), and 1 KB equals 1024 bytes. 1 byte equals 8 bits. A "bit" is the smallest unit of information, it can be either 1 or 0, so we can easily conduct how much data can a byte, kilobyte, etc. contain. A typewritten page, for example, is approximately 2 kilobytes large.
- HDD (Hard Disk Drive): This is the storage of a computer, all data is kept on these disks. The more data we have to deal with and store, the bigger HDD we need. However, we can put as many of these in our PC as we want to (until we have enough space), unless we're planning to buy a laptop. The HDD, also called winchester (since from the inside, it looked like the gun) works in a kind of an old-fashioned way as it contains disks with heads reading and writing them, similar to a record player. The capacity of the HDD is measured in the units discussed above, most HDDs sell between 320-1000 gigabytes (1000 GB = 1 Terabyte). Another important factor of the HDD is its literal speed, e.g. how fast it spins. A HDD as fast as 7200 RPM (Rounds / minute) will drastically increase the speed of a system, for example (However, it may be noisier). Seagate and Hitachi are very reliable manufacturers of HDDs. Western Digital and Maxtor (after being bought by the former) are mostly considered risky and faulty by most people. However, I use a WD hard drive personally, and I had no problems with it.
- VGA card (Video Graphics Array) / GPU (Graphic Processing Unit): This part is responsible for the visuals, e.g. how fast will the PC display animations, how sharp will text be, and overall, how good will stuff look like on the screen (that of course being another factor when talking about visuals). We should only be worrying about the type of VGA if we plan to watch very high quality movies, play 3D games or use 3D designer programs; Otherwise, having a good screen or monitor ensures visual pleasure. An important feature of a VGA card is its size of RAM, as it has its own supply of it. Opinions vary about good VGA card manufacturers, however, there are two main types, ATi and Nvidia, but there are dozens of manufacturers for each type. A rule of thumb should be that even if we want the minimum amount of 3D performance, we should never choose from the bottom of the price range.
- Motherboard: This affects desktop computers (= not laptops) only, as a motherboard is the piece of "board" where the CPU, RAM, VGA Card, HDD and basically everything goes in. In a laptop, there is a motherboard as well, but it is more irrelevant there as a brand laptop has a motherboard of the same brand, and we usually can not take things out from a laptop to replace them with other stuff as easily as we would do with a desktop computer. A good motherboard should have enough slots, so we can add extra stuff to our PC. A slot is a place where a card goes in. A card is a necessary or additional part of a PC, for example, the video card (VGA card) takes up a slot, a network card (for cable internet access) may take up a slot, etc. Also, the stability of the motherboard is the most important for the whole system as a faliure can lead to severe damage to the other parts of the PC. Good motherboard manufacturers include Asus, Abit, Gigabyte and Foxconn (I had motherboards made by the first three, without any problems).
- Power Supply: Again, this is a PC only concern, as laptops have their own chargers. This is only important in a sense that as anything running on electricity, a PC consumes power as well, so we need a big enough power supply to handle that. Otherwise, mysterious errors and problems might arise. Basically, we are good to go with anything supplying at least 400 W.
Stay tuned!
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