Almost Assembly Time!

     This week, some of the parts already came in and more parts are coming in later this week. It's reassuring that we are ahead of schedule. Last week, we decided upon a keyboard, mouse, and monitor for the computer. I mentioned that we would also need speakers, but it was determined that they weren't really needed because the monitor came with speakers attached. If the speakers on the monitor aren't good ( which is likely), Ivan already has speakers at home that we can use. This is the final parts list and shows when everything is supposed to come in.

     The total came out to be $944.72 dollars, which was under our limit of 1000 dollars. We originally thought it would be less because we had not factored in the tax (Whoops!). The second thing we had not factored in was the wireless adapter needed for connecting to the internet. As laptop users, we had completely forgot about this because laptops usually have built-in wireless. Computers need either an ethernet cord or a wireless adapter to connect to the internet. Because Ivan's computer is two rooms away from his router, the ethernet cord solution does not seem viable. Therefore, we looked into some wireless adapters. We found a wireless adapter for 20 dollars, resulting in a total of $964.72 spent.
     Now that the parts are in, we needed a schedule for assembling the computer. The schedule we came up with is right here:

    I talked to Ivan and Josh and we agreed that we would work on it Sunday, November 2nd because Ivan had to finish his questbridge application on Saturday and I had orchestral obligations on Saturday. We chose the time 12-5 PM on Sunday because Josh had church in the morning and Ivan needed to leave for work at 5 PM. We will probably want some people who are good with computers there as well to make sure we don't break anything.

First Purchase

     This week, a lot of progress was made. Instead of following our old schedule which limited us to researching and deciding one part each weekend, we spent a lot of time looking at many core computer parts. We put this build on a Google doc and had our friends Albert, Sida, Fayaz, and Jack look at it. They revised it and told us what changes they would make and we finally came up with  and came up with a build that included everything except for an operating system, mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, and other peripherals. It only cost 730 dollars in total so we have plenty of money left to spend on these peripheral parts. Here is the build on pcpartpickers.com

     We decided to compile a build on pcpartpicker.com because we realized that stores would start jacking up prices before black friday and that would be bad for us. Also, some deals are hard to come by and it would be best to claim them as they come. The deal Albert showed us this week was a Radeon R9 290 graphics card shown here:

We decided to order this immediately because it was too good to be true. It gave us a really good graphics card, with 20 dollars mail-in rebate, a 100 dollar headset, and an AMD game card that came with 3 free games on newegg.com.
     Overall, we got a lot of work done this week. We realized that it was probably best to start ordering parts now instead of waiting till black friday and have finalized a basic computer build. Also, we have split up the peripherals and are each doing research on one thing at a time. For instance, I am looking at keyboards while Josh is looking at monitors and Ivan is browsing monitors. We also need to find speakers. This project is finally coming together.

Storage Devices and Divine Intervention

     This week was a very busy week for us. Not only did we research storage devices this week and come up with our selections, we revised the previous parts we had as well. A lot of Major changes were made this week to the parts we found. Basically, we were not spending the right amount of money on each of the parts according to some of our friends. They were dissatisfied with the way our computer project was coming along and decided to give us advice (Thanks Sida, Albert, Fayaz, and Jack).As a result, we re-organized our budget and decided how much money we were going to spend on each part. Even though it was kind of frustrating realizing that the parts we decided on weren't the best, it was a good learning experience that put us back on the right track. Our new budget chart is shown below. 

     Originally, we were going to go with the AMD FX-4350. But, our friends convinced us that we were not spending enough money on the processor and recommended processors like the i5, i7, and AMD FX-8350. We decided to go with the AMD FX-8350 because AMD processors are better than intel processors for gaming. Also, two very cool things I learned while re-researching processors were that there are 1024 bytes in a gigabyte(and not 1000 as I had thought. Mind blown) and that the speed of the processor in ghz can only be compared to the speed of a processor in the same family of processors. Therefore, an AMD FX-4350's processor speed can only be compared to another AMD FX processor and not any intel processors or other brands of processors. Here is a comparison chart of the AMD FX-4350, which we originally were going with, and the AMD FX-8350, the new processor we decided on.

     All of that was fixing past research; now onto this week's research! This week we researched storage devices, which come either in the form of a hard drive or an SSD (Solid State Drives). SSD's are much more expensive than hard drives but are much faster than hard drives. We decided to go with both a smaller SSD and a bigger hard drive. We would be able to put programs which are frequently used onto the SSD and keep programs which are not often used on the hard drive. Here are the two storage devices I found which we decided to go with.

     Overall, we cleared up a bunch of our past research with our friends' help. We are also faced with a dilemma: whether to buy the computer parts now or wait till black Friday. We did some research and realized that many shops jack up prices right before black Friday so that it would appear that they are giving out "good deals" when they are actually not. It might actually be a good idea to buy sometime soon before they start cranking up prices. We will see. 

Processor Picked

     According to the schedule we developed, we researched processors this week. The processor of a computer determines how fast a computer can run programs. Processors are manufactured by two main companies: Intel and AMD. Generally, AMD processors are cheaper and less versatile than Intel processors. Processors also need to be compatible with the motherboard and some processors come with their own integrated graphics. However, the integrated graphics that come with a processor are usually low-quality so we will have to buy a graphics card anyways. Therefore, we are not taking into consideration whether or not the processor has integrated graphics while researching.
     Because we decided to go with the ASRock-970 motherboard, we had to choose an AMD processor which narrowed down our search significantly. Afterwards, we all separately went on the site pcpartpicker.com and looked at all of the compatible processors while taking into account price, quality/features, and speed.
     After researching quite a bit, I favored the AMD FX-4350 while Ivan favored the AMD FX-4300 processor. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two processors on pcpartpicker.

     After some debating on Saturday afternoon, Josh pointed out that the AMD FX-4350 was only 11 dollars more expensive but was actually 4 x .4 ghz = 1.6 ghz faster. Also, I did a little bit of research on the L3 Cache since the AMD FX-4300 had a 4 mb cache while the AMD FX-4350. While researching, I came upon a bunch of complicated stuff. However, the general idea was that every bit of space the L3 cache brought would give the processor a little bit of performance boost. After taking into account all of these factors, we agreed that the extra 11 dollars was worth, and  we decided to go along with the AMD FX-4350 processor. However, we will use the AMD FX-4300 processor as a backup in case something comes up and our budget isn't enough.