Build The Ultimate Custom PC (2005)
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Chapter 8 — Choosing Video Adaptors and Monitors 119
The price range can be incredible — from a few tens of dollars to hundreds of dollars. You can buy a budget card for about $30, while a good midrange card will cost less than $100. For high-end gaming, you might want to spend upwards of $300 just on the video adaptor.
FIGURE 8-7: GPU hidden beneath heatsink unit. This is the processor at the heart of the video adaptor!
Memory
Video adaptor expansion cards come equipped with RAM memory modules built onto the card itself (see Figure 8-8). This gives the card a place to hold data for fast access by the GPU. The more memory that’s installed, the higher the performance of the card in question.
You’ll need to equip your general home/gaming PC with a card that comes with at least 128 MB on installed RAM.
As with GPU speed, the more memory installed on a video adaptor, the more the card will cost.
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FIGURE 8-8: Memory modules on a video adaptor.
Multi-Monitor Support
You will find that some video adaptors offer you the ability to connect up to two monitors to a single PC. This will allow you to have greater on-screen work area, which can be very useful if you find yourself needing to work with a number of documents at once without the hassles of swapping between documents.
With a video adaptor that has multi-monitor support, all you have to do is connect two monitors to the ports and use the software to activate the second one.
There is another more complicated way of getting multi-monitor support of your PC and that’s to fit it with two video adaptors. To do this, you will need two expansion cards:
An AGP card (this arrangement doesn’t work with PCI Express)
A PCI card
Chapter 8 — Choosing Video Adaptors and Monitors 121
The main monitor will be fitted onto the AGP expansion card, while the second monitor is hooked up to the PCI-based video adaptor card.
There are some points to bear in mind when attempting this:
Complexity! It can be tricky to get multi-monitor support to work on some systems. If you are not prepared to experiment then buying a specific card with multi-monitor support is a lot easier.
Compatibility. Not all card combinations work. You’ll have to carry out some research on the web to find suitable cards.
Operating system support. For this to work you will need to be running the Microsoft Windows XP (or higher) operating system.
DVI
DVI is a connections standard for hooking up flat panel screens and digital projectors to a PC. DVI stands for Digital Visual Interface, and it was developed by the DDWG (Digital Display Work Group).
DVI connectors come in two formats:
24 pins that carry digital video signals only, called DVI-D
29 pins that carry both digital and analog video, called DVI-I
Different systems need different connectors, and it’s important that if you buy a flat panel that you get one with a compatible connector. This is getting easier nowadays because many come with both DVI and standard DB-15 connectors. You get a better image when using DVI connector over DB-15, but some monitors are incompatible with certain DVI connectors.
TV/S-Video Out and Other Features
Some video adaptor cards have support for TV and S-Video out to allow you to connect your PC to the TV or to other video devices (such as a DVD player, video recorder or camcorder), as shown in Figure 8-9. Other video adaptors come with a built-in TV tuner card, allowing you to view TV channels on your PC. All these features cost extra and generally only appear on higher-end video adaptor cards.
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FIGURE 8-9: Video out connectors.
That’s the video adaptors covered, let’s now move on to monitors.
Monitor Choices
After you’ve chosen your video adaptor, it’s time to choose what you are going to connect to the video adaptor — the monitor.
There are two types of monitor you can choose from:
Traditional tube-based CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors
Flat-screen panels
Chapter 8 — Choosing Video Adaptors and Monitors 123
Opinions vary as to which is best. As with most things, the best guide to quality is cost and the higher the price, the better the quality of the display and overall quality of the monitor will be. However, there are some basic considerations to keep in mind when choosing a monitor:
Flat-screen panels take up far less desk space than CRT monitors. This means that you can have more desk space for other things.
CRT monitors are incredibly heavy and need a much stronger desk to support them than a flat-screen panel.
Flat-screen panels consume far less power than CRT monitors, meaning that if you use your PC a lot (or have a number of PCs running) you can reduce your electricity bills by choosing flat-panels.
One other important decision to make when buying a monitor is to choose a screen size suitable to your needs and your budget. Screens are traditionally measured diagonally across the screen and displayed in inches. Table 8-1 lists the most popular monitor sizes.
Table 8-1 Monitor Sizes |
|
Size (inches) |
General Usage |
15 |
Low-end PC. Suitable only for word processing, web, etc. |
17 |
Midrange. Suitable for a variety of applications. |
19 |
Extra viewing area makes work and leisure applications easier and more |
|
enjoyable. |
21+ |
High-end, high-priced screen. |
For a midrange PC, we recommend a screen of no less than 17 inches. Overall, the more you use your PC, the more vital the screen becomes. If you use a PC a lot you don’t want to be squinting at a 15-inch screen.
The bigger the screen viewing area, the more expensive it is going to be. CRT monitors 17 inches and bigger are very big (in terms of depth, because the bigger the tube, the longer it has to be too) and also they get progressively heavy and unwieldy.
CRT monitors are very heavy, but you also have to be careful when lifting them because the weight is unevenly distributed (the majority of the weight is at the front of the screen). Always lift CRT monitors with the screen facing toward you.
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Summary
In this chapter, we’ve looked at video adaptors and monitors for your new PC. We’ve looked at different video adaptor port technology (including on-board video adaptors built onto the motherboard) and looked at some of the more important aspects of video cards, such as GPU speed, memory, and additional features.
We also looked at monitors and toured some of the important pros and cons of flat-screen panels and CRT monitors as well as looked at different screen sizes and suitable applications.
In the next chapter, you will find out how to get good sound from your PC.
Take Action
Before you move on to the next chapter, be sure that you’re prepared:
■Consider your video needs. Are you building a basic office PC or will your PC be used for gaming? Do you use your PC for long periods?
■Check whether your motherboard supports AGP or PCI Express.
■Is upgradeability to Windows Vista important?
■Draw up a short list of possible cards that suit your needs.
Choosing Sound
Capability
Like a CD or DVD drive, having a sound-capable system (which used to be referred to as a “multimedia” system) was optional and generally reserved for gaming systems. Nowadays however, games aren’t the only
source of sound on a PC — you have the web, music, messaging programs, and a whole lot more. Without having sound output, a big part of the PC experience is lost. Having the capability to output audio has moved from being optional to being essential.
In this chapter, we’re going to look at what you need to add stereo sound output to your PC and how the choices you make at the build stage can affect the overall quality of your audio experience.
What You Need for Sound
To get audio output from a PC you need two things:
Audio output facility (provided by an expansion card or facility built onto the motherboard)
Speakers and cables to connect them to the PC
What You Get by Adding Sound Capability
When you add sound capability to a PC, you get a number of different capabilities all from one system.
Speaker output. This is the most obvious capability. Generally, you get stereo output from a sound card via a 3.5 mm stereo jack plug connector, as shown in Figures 9-1 and 9-2.
chapter
in this chapter
˛Sound capability
˛“On-board” sound
˛PCI-based sound card
˛USB speakers
˛Front-mounted audio controls
˛Speakers
126 Part I — Choosing Components for Your PC
FIGURE 9-1: Speaker output.
FIGURE 9-2: A 3.5-mm jack connector.
Chapter 9 — Choosing Sound Capability 127
Sound input. This is for audio input into the PC from other devices, such as TV cards, again making use of a 3.5 mm stereo jack plug connector.
Microphone input. A sound card will give you a separate input for a microphone. This again makes use of a 3.5 mm stereo jack plug connector.
FIGURE 9-3: Microphone input.
Joystick port. This might seem like an odd thing to find provided by a system designed to output sound, but this betrays the origins of the sound card being based in gaming. The joystick port is a 15-pin connector but nowadays this isn’t used as often because many joysticks are USB devices.
Audio Output Facility
To be able to output sound, you need a way to be able to hook up speakers to the PC. This is done by using an audio output device on the PC. The device outputs sound when instructed to do so by software on the PC.
A PC has three ways to output audio:
Through an on-board sound system built onto the motherboard
Through a sound card that is fitted to an expansion slot
By using a USB speaker system
Let’s take a closer look at these three options.
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“On-board” Sound
Many motherboards now come with sound capability “on-board” the motherboard (see Figure 9-4). This means that a system with on-board sound capability doesn’t need any additional cards or attachments in order to output sound (apart from speakers).
FIGURE 9-4: On-board audio connectors.
On-board sound has a couple of advantages:
Price. Because the sound system is built onto the board, it is cheaper than a separate sound card because fewer fittings are required. (Generally it involves little more than adding a chip to the board and output connectors at the back.) There is also a hidden advantage to PC builders — they need to have fewer items in stock and assemble fewer parts together to make a working PC!
Convenience. No need to bother to buy and fit a separate component to the PC.