GIGABYTE PC DIY Guidebook March, 2015 | Page 9

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 6