Cases & books

I went to Micro Center, ie Disneyland. Had a good time. I think after looking at some cases, I want to get the Cooler Master Centurion. Yeah, its not the most expensive case @ $65, but it meets my needs and is quite roomy.

On another note, it is named Centurion. We couldn't help but find that funny. For the uninitiated, Centurion is the name of both Roman Soldiers (who serves in centuries) and the name of the lower ranked Cylon soldiers in Battlestar Galactica.

I thought it would be cool to incude a klaxon of some sort. Though they are traditionally red, I want the lights in my box to be bue. I like blue in my electronics. I may even switch out the LEDs in the case for blue ones. So I might see if I can build a drive insert with a klaxon that be changed between blue and red. or maybe many colors, depending on my mood!

I went to the library later and got a book on building a PC. I started reading and realized despite its good reviews, is woefully outdated. I turned to look @ the date when the 3rd edition was published: 2002. Oh Good God.

Despite being a library book, I have been shamelessly commenting in pencil. For one thing, it states that power supplies are often included in cases. Not from what I've seen! anyone else wanna witness for or against my assertion, feel free to comment.

Unrelated but amusing: the publisher is located at 2600 10th Street. Heh.

Happy Earth Day y'all!

Hello Mudder!

I was planning to hit the library today and look for some awesome pc building books but was distracted by the copy of Stargate that awaited me. So I left the library with Stargate and am now at home reading websites again.

To start things off, I have no idea where to begin. What should I pick out first? The motherboard (hereafter called mobo) might be important due to sizing issues. I need to learn what that might entail. So MOBO 101 for me!

Motherboards do the heavy lifting in things like Computers. Imagine that! It is also known as the mainboard, sytem board, and in Apples, the logic board (don't ask me why Steve Jobs named it that. I don't know). Mobos as we know them really came about in the late 80's. Things were moved from the backplane onto the mobo. For instance, the Leading Edge we got in 1987 had everything separated. There was a graphics card, sound card, memory, etc. Nowadays, mobos are intergrated unless you want something smoking like graphics so Gears of War 2 can look awesome!

Modern mobos include, at a minimum:

• sockets (or slots) in which one or more microprocessors are installed
• slots into which the system's main memory is installed (typically in the form of DIMM modules containing DRAM chips)
• a chipset which forms an interface between the CPU's front-side bus, main memory, and peripheral buses
• non-volatile memory chips (usually Flash ROM in modern mobos) containing the system's firmware or BIOS
• a clock generator which produces the system clock signal to synchronize the various components
• slots for expansion cards (these interface to the system via the buses supported by the chipset)
• power connectors flickers, which receive electrical power from the computer power supply and distribute it to the CPU, chipset, main memory, and expansion cards.

Nowadays, there's likely to be heat sinks which look like fins sticking up. They disipate some of the heat so your mobo doesn't fry like bacon.

Form Factors size, shape and format of computer mobos, power supplies, cases, and add-on cards. ATX is the most popular one. Created by Intel in 1995. Typical size is 9.6x12" although some companies extend that to 10x12".

There's also the micro ATX (abbreviated mATX) . Its roughly 25% smaller and has lower power supply and expansion slots. Slots are nice especially when you want to set up a nice dual video rig.

I've decided to settle on ATX. It offers me the most flexibility in the long run. This means i can look for ATX cases. Not a shocker. But I wanted this step written down. So I can come back and go "Why the fuck am I getting this ATX thing?"

Next, I'll ruminate on the cases themselves!

The decision to build a box

I decided a few months ago that I was going to make my own desktop. I have one already that I call my Dino: Dell in name only. It is a Dell case but with most of the parts cannibalized from other computers. The laptop I have while pretty & functional, isn't everything.

I want an awesome desktop DC and I'm gonna make one. I've just really never built one from scratch. As much as I know about computers, its not enough to build one from scratch.

So instead of bugging my brother and depleting him of his 1337 Devil magic skillz, I'm going to do my research and bounce ideas off of him.

It will be the fall before I will build my tower of glory which is fine. I want the time to read, research, make some choices and plan. It also gives me time to move, buy a new computer desk and set up a new home network. I'm more excited about the new home network because my mother and I (yes, my MOTHER!) want to set up a wireless home audio system. I'm planning on turning the aforementioned Dino into a home audio server.

So here goes!!!