PROCESSOR Also called the CPU (central processing unit), the processor is essentially the "brains" of the computer system. In recent years multi-core processors have emerged & dominated the market as single core processors have rapidly reached the physical limits of possible complexity and speed. We sell multi-core processor systems exclusively now because of their unbelievable speed in multi-tasking, gaming and audio/video editing. This will be your first major decision when configuring your new system. Do you go with Intel or AMD? Currently most power users are opting for intel, and more budget minded customers are going with AMD. With the release of Intel's new 1155 chipset, Intel has combined budget pricing with extreme power making the choice of platform much simpler. We highly recommend the 1155 platform for gaming & trading systems. The choice is entirely yours, both companies have a great product line.
MOTHERBOARD If you've ever peered inside a computer, you've seen the one piece of equipment that ties everything together -- the motherboard. A motherboard allows all the parts of your computer to receive power and communicate with one another. The motherboard makes sure all the different components that are hooked together (video card, processor, sound card, etc...) communicate properly and play nicely with each other. Today, motherboards typically boast a wide variety of built-in features and they directly affect a computer's capabilities and potential for upgrades. Some built-in motherboard features are - onboard audio, onboard video, LAN ports(s), SATA II ports, USB ports, legacy keyboard & mouse ports, parallel port, serial port, onboard chipset, PCI Express ports, memory slots & firewire ports. There are literally hundreds of different brands & models of motherboards on the market at any given time. Our job is to sift through and test the best boards on the market - we ONLY offer the highest quality motherboards with the newest most advanced chipsets available. This is what separates us from other builders. If you look at any of our system customization forms you will see we offer a large selection of motherboards. As with any component, your selection is dependent on cost. The more expensive boards will have a few extra features, such as an extra LAN port or more USB & Firewire ports. We are so confident in our selection of motherboards we believe our customers will be 100% satisfied with all of the boards we offer.
MEMORY Also called RAM or SDRAM. Think of your system memory as an information buffer between the CPU and the hard drive. If your computer's CPU had to constantly access the hard drive to retrieve every piece of data it needs, it would operate very slowly. When the information is kept in memory, the CPU can access it much more quickly. The more memory your computer has the more "space" is available to store information for the processor to have fast access to. So how much memory do you need? Generally speaking, the more system memory your computer has the better off you'll be. Besides the actual amount of memory, you must also consider the speed of the memory. We currently recommend either DDR3 1333 or DDR3 1600 speed memory.
Video Card A video card, also known as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card, is a separate expansion card whose function is to generate and output images to a display. A video card will contain one or more GPUs. A GPU is an onboard dedicated processor specifically optimized for accelerating graphics. This special processor is designed specifically to perform floating-point calculations which are fundamental to 3D graphics rendering in games. Currently the video card market is dominated almost entirely by ATI and Nvidia, with their Radeon and Geforce lines respectively, taking around 90% of the independent graphics card market between them.
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