A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

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A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer - Part I

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Jul. 30, 2007

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The Drives and Expansion Cards

Optical drives and hard drives are both used to store information. They use the same power and data cables. Optical drives are slow and hold a small amount of information, but use portable media: CDs and DVDs. Hard drives are fast and store orders of magnitude more data, but can't be swapped out like CDs.

A hard drive is the heavy black and silver box inside the computer that is a little bigger than a hand. They are sometimes called "HDDs" or "hard disk drives", because they house metal disks (or platters) that are read by tiny electromagnets (heads). You should always be careful to keep magnets away from hard drives and never try to open them, because dust can destroy the platters and heads. Since all files, saved games, photos, and everything else is stored in the hard drive, it pays to be careful with it.

There are slots on the motherboard that match up with slots along the back of the case, called "expansion slots" where you can install expansion cards.

Expansion cards allow you to add better or different features to your computer. The motherboard can already do things like control sound, but you can buy cards that will do it better. Some cards add capabilities to the computer that the motherboard doesn't have at all, like wireless Internet connectivity or the ability to watch and record TV.

So even though most motherboards have their own video and sound capabilities, these are bare-minimum parts that usually aren't enough to play games or watch movies well. To add insult to injury, this on-board hardware requires the processor to do most of the heavy lifting, so the processor has to multi-task and you lose performance. By using an expansion card, you improve a computer's performance in two ways: you get the benefits from the card and decrease the processor's workload.

There are dozens of kinds of expansion cards, such as video cards that make games and movies run better, high-definition sound cards, cards that provide extra USB or hard drive connections, even exotic cards that do physics modeling.

Video cards (also called graphics cards) deserve extra attention. They vary in performance (and price) from "well at least it's not onboard video" to "wow he must be compensating for something."

Video cards are complex and often nuanced, and their names rarely betray what they do and how well they do it. Each one is like a small computer by itself, with its own graphics processing unit (or GPU), heatsink, and RAM, all on one board. High-end video cards often require extra power and need to be plugged into the power supply.

Video cards work closely with the processor, so they use special slots on the motherboard. These slots are universal and can be used with any number of expansion cards, but are mostly used for video cards. It's uncommon for motherboards to have more than one.

Because video cards are complicated, it's tempting to just buy one in your price range, but this is a great way to end up with over-priced and out-of-date hardware that the store just wants to move. There's enough to learn about video cards that they merit an article by themselves.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Inside the Computer
Page 3: The Drives and Expansion Cards
Page 4: Conclusion

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1 User Comment

1 - Posted by PsychoSnowMan on October 3, 2007 - 12:35 pm

Just noticed this article, it's an excellent introduction to computer hardware.
It might be a good idea to mention that there are differences in in interface compatibilities. PCI/PCIE, SCSI/IDE/SATA1.5GB/SATA3.0GB, AMD/Intel, Processor Sockets/Interfaces, etc.
For someone thinking about making their first computer this is definitely something to ask about, either from a friend, or a forum.

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