Alright, so we all know that all of us here has somewhat a grasp on this thing that's called "Computer"

However, i tried looking up around, but couldn't anything relating about this topic in BleepingComputer.

Anyway, I am going to build a new computer, this August, and am starting to arrange how things are supposed to work, looking around for prices and what hardwares best suits me.

But, while looking around, i find some of the details of some particular hardwares are quite confusing, so, I was wondering if i can get any help on how to build up a computer. I've never built a computer before, so don't mind me asking, but what are the stuffs necessary for a computer to be up and running? And how do you measure the quality of that particular hardware?

Let's say I'm looking around for processors, what are the stuffs that i need to keep a look out for, "How does each detail affects the speed", and "how does cache helps my computer gets faster", you know, those kind of things. If anyone would be kind enough to help me.

And another thing, please correct me if I'm wrong, but, are these specs enough, so that a computer is up and running?

1. Motherboard
2. Processor
3. VGA Card
4. Hard Disk
5. LAN Card, If not integrated with motherboard
6. Audio Card (Is this really necessary? )
7. DVD-RW ROM
8. Casing + Power Supply
9. Cables and stuffs

Take a peek at this webpage....

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200703.ars

There are tons of places to find good "how-to" articles on building your own system.

Interesting, i was doin the same, lookin aorund for parts and stuff..

i will tell u what i look for :
CPU:clock speed, Bus Speed, Cache size
Motherboard:Bus speed, RAM support (amount and version),SLI support,expansion cababilities, LAN support, slots...
VGA:memory size(512 and higher are now recomended)...
LAN card: get the Gigabit LAN
Hard Disk: RPM (7200 and above) ,Gigabit/sec , i guess SATA 3 is now available.
Sound Cards:usually the latest motherboards has some very good built in sound cards wish can be enough for home use u can always go pro by bying an soundcard.
DVD-RW ROM:read/wite speed, support for dual layer...
Casing:cooooooooooooooooooooling
Power supply:u would probably need 650 W at least

thats about it, u could always add extras.

now the specific brands and models u wanna get depend on ur budget nd the purpose of ur computer(gaming,business, dummy applications, high end...)

CPU/motherboard:AMD/Asus or Intel/Intel .. ur choice
VGA: ATI or inno GeForce
Hard Disk:Seagate, western digital....
Audio Card:sound blaster
DVD-RW ROM: i got Samsung and very satisfied but there are many other good ones
casing:Thermatek

thats what crossed my mind till now,
cheers.

You and I don't measure the quality of hardware. We generally do not have the resources to do this. We rely on others to do this. Like hardware review sites and hearsay and statistical compilations.You can't. Only way for us to find out the perfromance of a processor is to benchmark it. Review sites like Anandtech do this. To be able to figure out the performance of of a processors based on the different specs would require you to know every detail about every spec. Only the engineers who designed it does this.Your missing the memory, RAM. Also most motherboard come with integrated audio.All this is largely irrelevant. What you want to know is performance, power usage and heat output. Look for benchmarks on hardware review sites.Yes, the main thing with motherboards is the features, and that it is compatible with everything else you need.No, 128MB will do for basic computer usage and average resolutions (ie 1024x1280). Only if you do something graphics intensive will you need more.Here you will want to look for reliability. Hard drives are one of the most common components to fail. Performance also matters, again benchmarks. The speed of the interface (Gigabits/second) doesn't matter because they all are way faster than hard drives.This part is important. Also looks, noise, and ease of installation. A high-quality 300W power supply is enough for most computers. Look for one of these brands: CoolerMaster, Enermax, Fortron Source (FSP Group), OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, SeaSonic, Silverstone, Sparkle, Tagan, Vantec, Verax, Zalman.

My favorite Hardware site is Tomshardware.com.. I haven't been there in awhile I'm on here most of the time.. I heard they were bought by someone.. Anywho same site same good info

Looking at the comparison now =D I didn't know there's such thing

U also asked how cache memory works and how it helps speeding ur computer.

U know that when u run an application , it loads into ur memory(RAM).So to process that application the CPU needs to access the RAM, since the RAM is slower than the CPU the RAM speed limits the CPU speed.
So Cache is a small amout of fast memory that sits between the CPU and the RAM.Cache contains a copy of portions of RAM. Because of the phenomen of locality of reference , when a word is fetshed by the CPU from RAM it is very likely that the next word to be fetshed is right after it or in the same block , so that whole block is fetshed from memory and copied in Cache the CPU accesses the Cache several times in a row instead of accessing the RAM each time he needs a word.btw "word" is the smallest unit of data addressable by the proccessor , it could be many bytes.
so the way it works, when the CPU needs a word it look for it in the cache ,if found it processes it and if not found it fetshes the word and the whole block of following words into the cache because as we said it is very likely that the following words he will need will be in that same block so instead of accessing the RAM each time, it accesses the cache wish makes processig much faster.

cache size:

generally ppl say that the more cache, the more the computer goes faster, but what most ppl dont know is that cache is effective untill a cretain size,because the larger the cache is, the more gates there is, the more gates there is the slower the cache gets and we dont want it slow, but also we cant make it very small so that the CPU accesses the RAM a lot so we must be in between.
Technicly we want our cache size to be small enough so that the overall cost per bit is close to that of main memory alone and large enough so that the overall access time is close to that of the cache alone.

there are still many details about how cache works, if u need more just let me know.

cheers.

So, I did my homework, and here's what i got from my research.

any comments would be deeply appreciated.

CPU : Core 2 Duo E4400

Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard

Case : XION Solaris XON-403 Black with Green LED Light Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

PSU : Broadway Com Corp P4-OKIA-550-RB ATX 550W Power Supply 115/230 V FCC, CE, CSA

RAM : Corsair XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400)

VGA : XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card

Hard Drive : Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology)
320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Optical Drive : Sony NEC Optiarc Black 2MB Cache E-IDE / ATAPI DVD Burner

Monitor : Acer AL1706Ab Black 17" 8ms LCD Monitor 270 cd/m2 500:1

Keyboard : Logitech 967738-0403 Black 104 Normal Keys USB Standard Deluxe 250 Keyboard

Mouse : Microsoft N71-00007S Black 3 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Wheel Mouse

Speakers : Logitech X-230 32 Watts 2.1 Black Speakers


Prices are from newegg.com , and it all supposed to sum up to 950 USD

That power supply isn't a good idea. You could make do with a 300W power supply. Also make sure you get one from a high-quality maker like CoolerMaster, Enermax, Fortron Source (FSP Group), OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, SeaSonic, Silverstone, Sparkle, Tagan, Vantec, Verax or Zalman. Some good reading: The Truth about PSU power ratings

How bout this?

FSP Group (Fortron Source) ATX350-PA, version 2.2 RoHS, SATA, 350W Power Supply - OEM (And for the same price too )

I saw some PSU has fans on top of it. If the fan's on top of the PSU itself, how do you install it?