provide up to four PCI Express slots
so that two, three or a maximum
of four graphics cards can be
installed simultaneously using
either SLI (NVIDIA™) or CrossFireX
(AMD™) technology, further
boosting 3D graphics rendering
performance.
Most modern graphics cards offer a
choice of VGA, DVI, HDMI or
Display Port options which can
connect up to three or even four
displays in a choice of extended or
clone desktop configu rations.
High-performance graphics cards
also require substantially more
power, with many modern cards
requiring a combination two 6-pin
and/or 8 eight pin power connectors drawing anywhere up to 200
watts or more. Adding a discrete
graphics card will almost certainly
impact the overall power draw of
the PC and the power supply used.
Hard Disk Drives
Hard disk drives are the
most commonly used
storage medium in
today’s modern
PCs although
enthusiast users
may prefer to also
use a Solid State Drive to
improve overall system performance
(see below).
For the majority of users however, the hard drive is
commonly where the Operating System and
Applications are installed as well as the storage of
general user data which today includes videos,
photographs, music and other media. Desktop
hard drives are sold in the 3.5” inch form factor, as
seen here in this image.
In recent years, hard drive capacities have simply
exploded, with many of today’s hard drives being
described in TBs or Terabytes (n.b. 1TB = 1000GB).
Most hard drives now use the SATA (Serial ATA) bus
interface to connect to the motherboard, and
although there are different speeds on the market,
the majority of hard drives sold today use a
7200rpm spindle accompanied by up to 64MB of
cache memory. Remember that PC motherboards
usually offer several SATA ports, allowing you to
connect and install several hard drives in one PC, so
it’s not surprising that additional hard drives
represent one of the most common upgrades for
DIY PC builders looking to expand the storage
capacity of their PC.
How to Build Your Own PC
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