Technocrat

Look Mom, No Hands!

Behind the screens

Caution:Engineers at Work

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Table of Contents 03

Contributor pages

04

Letter From the Editor

05

Look Mom, No Hands!

10

Engineers Throughout The ages

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Behind the Screens

16

Women in Stem

18

Caution, Engineers at Work

22

Beginner’s Guide to Buying Computer Parts

Photo Credits: Flickr, Pexels.com

LOOK MOM, NO HANDS!

05

Behind The Screens

12

Caution: Engineers At Work

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About the Contributors Raavi got into engineering in seventh grade, when she accidently took a robotics course and found that she really enjoyed it. When Raavi gets older, she wants to be an electrical engineer.

When not in school or robotics, she spends her time reading books, playing piano, and binge watching shows on Netflix. Raavi also enjoys eating junk food and climbing trees. The only problem is that she tends to get stuck in them.

She spends most of her time in Ezine trying to stop Ricky from throwing things at her.

Ricky got involved in technology through his father, who is a software engineer. He enjoys doing math, playing the violin, and sleeping, and when not in school, he can be found napping with his cat, Oscar, or stomping on daisies, also with his cat. He is also a member of Science Olympiad at his school, where he mainly does math and physics related events. He has a serious obsession with hats, and is currently undergoing treatment for this condition. Other interests include exotic fruits and serial killers.

Alec is very passionate about engineering. He especially enjoys mechanical engineering, and aspires to be a mechanical engineer when he gets older. He spends his free time working on projects in Science Olympiad, and obsessing over new and interesting technology. Alec also enjoys watching action movies, playing guitar, and hiking with his family. He is currently the only sane contributor to this magazine, and spends most of his time in Ezine lamenting about the fate of humanity.

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Letter From the Editor From the editor that made it all possible...

Dear Reader, The three of us started off the semester with no knowledge of graphic design or journalistic writing, and knowing little more about each other than our names.

The only thing we knew for certain that we shared was a common interest: Technology. Over the course of the semester, we learned more about each other and how to work together as a cohesive unit, in spite of our very different personalities.

I have had the pleasure of being the editor for Technocrat, and have watched all of our abilities grow, both as writers and as graphic designers.

We have all worked very hard to put this magazine together, from late nights writing to stress-filled lunchtimes hunched in front of a computer. (Though admittedly, we would have been significantly less stressed during the end stretch of our time in Ezine if we hadn’t goofed off so much in the beginning.)

Thank you for taking the time to read our magazine; we hope you find it both informational and entertaining.

Sincerely, Raavi Chokhawala

Look, Mom! No Hands!

By Raavi Chokhawala

In 2013, an estimated 32,850 people died in the

United States alone as a result of car accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Many people believe that autonomous vehicles offer the perfect solution.

They are preprogrammed to keep a certain distance from the cars around them, they can predict the terrain of the path they will be driving, and they almost completely eradicate the possibility of human error. t turns out it’s not that simple.

Everyone has heard of self-driving cars. Many major manufacturers, including Google, Toyota, and Honda are working on creating them. But even

though autonomous vehicles, or, more accurately, “Intelligent Human-Centered Driver Assistance Systems,” have received a lot of attention in the past few years, there are still a whole host of challenges associated with them.

“Cars are becoming very intelligent and very similar to science fiction,” Dev Parvatam, the chief mechanic for Honda in Houston said.

Since 1885, when the first car was invented in Germany by Karl Benz, the mechanics of cars have advanced exponentially. Cars have become more autonomous, to the point where they are able to predict the terrain of the road they are on based

One of Google’s autonomous vehicles, which have, in total, clocked over 100,000 hours of driving time.

Photo Crourtesy of Becky Stern via Flikr

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on a satellite connection, and then automatically upshift or downshift the transmission based on that information.

“Driv[ing] in a test area or in structured environment is in some sense a solved problem,” Mohan Trivedi, head of UCSD’s Jacobs Robotics Laboratory said.

In fact, the Jacobs Robotics Laboratory, of the University of California, San Diego, stopped conducting research on autonomous vehicles almost ten years ago.

“One single wire communicates with all the components,” Parvatam said.

That single wire sends signals to the many individual wires connecting each component of the car to the master wire, Parvatam said. Every single thing has a wire attached to it, and its own motor, from the windows to the steering wheel. This may seem complicated, but it’s necessary in order for cars to function as well as they do.

“They evolved from basic internal combustion

engines to computerized everything,” Parvatam said.

Cars used to be gas-guzzling behemoths, prone to breaking down frequently. Now, they are energyefficient feats of engineering.

“In the last five to ten years, many other things which are related to the compute power, some of the algorithmic things, some of the sensor processing things have matured so well that people are able to drive these cars relatively safely for most of the time,” Trivedi said.

According to the Tri-Level Study of the Causes of Traffic Accidents an estimated 90 percent of accidents occur as a result of human error.

“If it does not do things perfectly correctly in every environment, how are we going to deal with that?”

Trivedi said.

Google’s intelligent vehicle crashed in April of 2014 while driving through Los Angeles, raising concern about the safety of autonomous vehicles.

“Driving is a pretty complex activity where we are constantly working on the margins of safety,”

Trivedi said.

Driving is difficult; while driving, there are a whole host of distractions: Sleepiness, receiving a phone call, and many other things.

“Nobody can really ascertain the complete reliability of the system,” Trivedi said.

Then again, nobody can ascertain the complete reliability of any system. Even the human one. In 2012, 30,800 fatal car accidents occurred in the US alone. The majority of those -Mohan Trivedi accidents occurred as a result of human error.

“People can get into a difficult situation when you have got an intelligent car who’s got its own mind and an intelligent driver who’s got his own mind,” Trivedi said. “If that is the situation, then we’ve got an intelligent car as well as an intelligent driver,

“Nobody can ascertain the complete reliability of the system.”

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“We really call the vehicles that we develop intelligent human centered driver assistance systems, so the driver is always involved, and the car is responsive to the human’s command,” Trivedi said.

Most states have not yet enacted any legislation pertaining to self-driving cars. However, the states of Nevada, Florida, California and Michigan, as well as the District of Columbia, have enacted laws legislating autonomous vehicles.

“House Bill 933, introduced in January 2015, would allow for a self-driving car operator designation on a resident’s drivers license.” Robert Norris, a senior analyst for the State of Texas Legislature, said.

A bill similar bill was introduced in 2013, but was not voted on for unspecified reasons. However, there are many complicated problems when discussing legislation of self-driving cars. For example, the question comes up of who will be punished when an autonomous vehicle fails; the driver or the manufacturer.

Stanford’s prototyped autonomous vehicle, developed in partnership with the Volkswagjen company

“The bill would keep car manufacturers from being sued if the car’s owner tried to convert a regular car into a self-driving car,” Norris said.

That may seem strange, and it is. Converting a non-autonomous vehicle to an autonomous vehicle would be next to impossible. This is because the individual components of an autonomous vehicle communicate with each other differently than a regular car, and changing the function of the

Photo Credit: Wikipedia and how do they interact without running into arguments or conflicts is a research problem.”

Many people enjoy driving, Trivedi says, and having a completely autonomous vehicle would infringe on their privacy, rights, and enjoyment.

“We believe that acceptance of these technologies would be much better for humanity if they get a sense that the robots are really those which assist you,” Trivedi said, “Rather than you having to really be adapting your behavior, or your preferences based upon some of these artificially intelligent systems.”

This is something that many car manufacturers are taking into account. For example, Google’s autonomous vehicle has a driver-operated option, and BMW’s car is not self-driving, it is only selfparking.

Nissan’s autonomous vehicle prototype, first unveiled at the Geneva Automobile Convention.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

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The interior of the Colorado legislative building. Colorado is one of the states that has brought up but failed to pass legislation concerning autonomous vehicles.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia components or finding components that would work with a previously non-autonomous car would be incredibly difficult.

“One issue to watch is whether and how states and the US government experiment with changes to roadways to accommodate self-driving cars,” Robert Norris said.

Toyota’s autonomous car prototype, unveiled at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV

Photo Courtesy of:David Berkowitz via Flikr

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And we will be watching. As legislators and engineers attempt to work together in order to optimize the autonomous car experience, it will no doubt cause much interesting debate about these vehicles.

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s r e e Engin t u o h g u o r h t s e g A the chultz

By: Alec S

1 Thomas Edison 1847-1931

A Few Achievements

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Thomas Edison is most known for the invention that made hime famous; the Electric Lightbulb. The first lightbulb that was built by Edison lasted 40 hours, quite an achievement for any electrical equipment at the time.

His second lightbulb lasted for the astounding time of 225 hours. Talk about improvement! Interestingly, Edison was the first inventor to have an invention labrotory.

Edison also invented the device that keeps so many of our gadgets alive: the rechargeable battery. This battery was made of nickel and iron and widely used in high risk environments due to its ability to resist vibration and high temperatures. The nickle iron battery is still used today, but to a lesser degree due to its high manufacturing cost and dense mass, making it unsuitable for use in many portable devices.

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Nikola Tesla was the main inventor of the AC, or alternating current, a type of electric current. Tesla developed this while working for his newly founded Tesla electric company.

The AC current was and is revolutionary because it was much safer and more reliable than DC current technology. The AC current system is the world wide standard today, and the system that powers all of our gadgets. The competing system at the time of invention was the DC or direct current, which was designed by Thomas Edison.

Tesla was a pioneer in X-ray and radio technology, conductig research that is still referred to today. Tesla also conducted lots of electrical research, which included his invention of the Tesla coil. The Tesla coil was a means for global free electricity and communications. It was this idea that drove Tesla into seclusion by the end of his life, as he worked feverishly on his device. Due to this, Tesla was greatly in debt near the end of his life.

A Few Achievements

Nikola Tesla 1856-1943

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always re have e h t , e rded tim ering out reco en furth able m o w d Through an recogniz e n e h t m f t o a w e about. been gr are a fe ws a lot . These y o g n k lo o e n n h tec everyo hat not names t

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1 Henry Ford 1863-1947

A Few Achievements

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2

Henry Ford was the first person to widely use the assembly line in order to allow mass production for lower prices. This allowed middle class Americans to have lower cost access to certain products.

The assembly line concepts that were designed by Ford still have large impacts on the industry.

Although originally used for cars, the concepts have been expanded to much of the consumer industry, in anything from t-shirts to toys.

During World War I, Ford helped produce different items for the army. Ford also helped design and manufacture tractors that were cost efficient and greatly increased food yield in Britain, helping with the food storages. Ford also designed and produced the Ford AT trimotor, which was used by the army for reconnaissance. In his later years, Ford decided to become a pacifist, and stopped supporting the army by ceasing production of military related infrastructure.

All Information from: Wikipedia, Biography.com and ASME.org

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Wernher Von Braun was a prominent German rocket scientist during World War II. He was the designer of the V2 and was touted as the Father of modern rocket science. After the war, Von Braun was saved by the US from execution by the German SS, who did not want his information in other hands.

Although Von Braun’s job under the Nazis was weapons design, he was not in support of weapons development, and wanted to use his skills to advance space exploration. Von Braun was the Designer of the Mercury Rockets of the United states space program.

Wernher Von Braun was the lead engineer of the Saturn V rockets, which took the US astronauts to the moon, winning the space race against the soviet Union. He also had plans for manned Mars missions, using the Saturn V systems and exploration systems under development at the time.

Soon after, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, which at the time was terminal due to limits in medicine. Wernher Von Braun went on to promote the National space institute, which became the National Space Society.

A Few Achievements

Wernher Von Braun 1912-1977

Behind the Screens By: Ricky Zhou

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Dressed in a plain, grey T-shirt, worn out jeans, and old tennis shoes, Jeoffery Leonard leaves home for work everyday at 9:35 a.m. in his Mercedes Benz.

Like the 700,000 others in the America, Leonard enjoys his casual job as a software engineer relishing his lenient attire regulations, tolerant work hours, and lofty paycheck.

About 1 in every 200 workers in nation are software engineers, and with each passing year this number is increasing. In an era ruled by computers and smart phones, it would only make sense that the number of people needed to produce and upgrade these devices would increase. Cities with copious amounts of software companies are associated with silicon due to the high amounts of the element found in computer chips. Austin, also known as the Silicon Hills, is densely populated with software engineers, each motivated by a different reason to choose this lifestyle.

Jeoffery Leonard, a software engineer working at Synopsys. Inc., has been coding ever since he graduated high school. His interest in the subject prompted him to start make a living out of his hobby as a software engineer. Besides earning a decent salary as well as having many more freedoms than other jobs, Leonard has other reasons for becoming a software engineer.

“Just as everyone who drives an automobile does not need to be a mechanic, not everyone who uses a computer needs to know how to program,” Leonard said. “However for those of us genuinely interested in the mechanics inside the computer, learning how to program is a must.”

Admittedly, only 32 percent of Americans can correctly describe what a program is. From this select group, only one percent are capable of writing them.

Finally only half of the people of this population are software engineers. It’s impossible for one to become a software engineer without the knowledge of what programming actually is.

“Coding (or programming) is the discipline of analyzing a problem, formulating a well-defined and wellorganized solution, and implementing that solution using a programming language for execution by a computer,” Leonard said. “Many people get the misconception that it’s just a random sequence of ones

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and zeroes , but it’s much more complicated than that.”

Many people like Leonard who have an interest for programing may find it easy to find a job in the field.

Unlike many other professions, becoming a software engineer doesn’t require many prerequisites. The essentials include having logical reasoning and the ability to program.

almost stopped buying any books on programming.

The information on the subject is abundant and freely available.”

Jerry Chen, an electrical engineering major working at International Business Machines (IBM) was motivated to become a software engineer just because of how easy it is to find a job as one.

“Though the process of learning how to code may be a bit tedious, it is actually rather easy to find a software engineering job as there are ample job opportunities.” Chen said.

“The act of programming is virtually the same as solving a mathematical problem requiring multiple steps, Leonard said. “One can start learning as early as fifth or sixth grade if the student shows early aptitude.”

“The act of programming is virtually the same as solving a mathematical problem requiring multiple Contrary to the belief that having a computer science degree is steps.” necessary to become

In addition, the cost for learning how to program is low. Most households already have the necessary equipment needed for programming.

“Once you have access to an Internet-connected computer, learning to code is not expensive. The Internet has vast resources available from which to learn how to program,” Leonard said. “In fact, I have

A row of cubicles, a workspace that is both portable and efficient.

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a software engineer, only 40 percent of all software engineers in the US have them. Chen became a software engineer with a degree in electrical engineering even though his field mainly focused on hardware.

“There are many people with other degrees in subjects in math, physics, etc. However, the vast majority of software engineers have science, tech-

-Jeoffrey Leonard

Photo Credit: Flickr

A software engineer writing coding in C++, one of the many programming languages.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia nology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees,” Jerry Chen, an electrical engineering major “If I had not learned about coding in high school, I working at International Business Machines (IBM) may have not even selected it to be the basis of my career,” Peng said. “Things said. “Being good at math would have been different if or physics can help you I had not taken that class.” with programming as you

are basically implementing With the influence of proideas you’ve learned from gramming spreading far them into making your and wide, software engiprogram.” neers will only increase. De spite this, not everyone is With the introduction of suitable for this kind of job. many software companies, Chen believe that “I don’t see coding as necwhile many manufacturing -Peng Peng essary for everyone. As jobs will become obsolete technology evolves, comdue to the gradual replacement of human workers puters become easier to use and provide more soluby machines, the demand of software engineers will tions to problems in our lives. Not everyone has to only increase. implement those solutions, but almost everyone can “With the advance of computer technologies, people benefit from them,” said Leonard. “The actual act of automate more and more tasks to improve produc- writing a program is only useful if you plan on using tivity,” Chen said. “Sooner or later the only jobs left a computer to solve a problem. However, it is from this, software engineers obtain the ability to analyze will be those who command those automations.”

Peng Peng, a software engineer working at Freescale a problem and break it down into a series of achievSemiconductor Inc., was inspired to become a soft- able tasks. It is an extremely important skill for alware engineer after taking some computer science most any area of life. This kind of problem solving is classes in high school. Although at the time it was at the heart of programming, but it is not specific to only taught as a mere elective at his school, Peng programming.”

“Sooner or later the only jobs left will be those who command those automations.”

found great interest in the topic and decided to major in computer science in college.

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Women in STEM

By Raavi Chokhawala

Women have always been underrepresented in technology and technological fields. In 1970, women made up only 9% of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) workforce. While this number has increased significantly in the past forty years, that increase was highest from 1970-1980 and has tapered off since then.

Esther Takeuchi: Takeuchi is a distinguished professor at the chemistry department at Stony Brook University. AT 148 patents, she has more registered patents than any other woman in the United States.

Marie Curie: Curie conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She won the Nobel Prize in the fields of both physics and chemistry.

She was the first person and only woman to win twice, and the only person to win in multiple sciences.

Cleopatra VII: The most famous Cleopatra was not actually the seductress she is often presented as. Instead, Cleopatra was a brilliant mathematician and scientist, whose many accomplishments include inventing a tool to analyze liquids.

Ada Lovelace: Lovelace was an English writer and mathematician in the 1800s who is credited with making the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. http://1.usa.gov/1OC7Vfk http://bit.ly/1tINAeg http://bit.ly/1CigILo

http://bit.ly/1dT1VSg http://bit.ly/1COMIan http://1.usa.gov/1wdjpRb

33% more

Women in STEM jobs earn on average than women in non STEM fields, and experience a smaller wage gap relative to men.

Women make up

only 26%

Women make up only workforce.

Only

8%

of the STEM workforce.

of the electrical engineering

20%

of full-time, full professors in science and engineering are women.

Women’s representation in computer sciences has since the 1990s.

declined

Among science and engineering graduates, men are employed in a STEM occupation at

twice

the rate of women.

Caution: Engineers at Work By: Alec Schultz Small pieces are flying about. Lots of

United States today is directly affected by engineering from when they are sleeping to all the hours when they are awake,” Rick Lewis, a mechanical engineer said. “I mean, its hard for me to think of a time when you and I are not being directly affected by an engineer’s work.”

This is the robotics classroom of Charlie Applegate, a robotics teacher at Kealing Middle School. The robotics and engineering programs at Kealing are very successful programs, building young engineers from scratch. Applegate is the teacher who guides and organizes these young engineers, inspiring them to continue with their river of ideas in a more functional way.

Eventually, some of them will grow up to change the world with their ideas. However, these engineers, no matter how famous they are, are not the first thing to pop into our minds as we utilize their inventions.

Engineering is something that influences most people in the United States today. So, why should we care? In order to truly understand how our world works, one must understand the different parts of it.

contraptions are popping up everywhere and new structures seem to suddenly have life breathed into them. This Tornado of integrated math and science is controllable, with a little help.

“Pretty much everyone in the

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The Mindstorms NXT by LEGO is one of the main robots built and used by Charlie Applegate’s classes.

Photo Credit: WIkipedia

“I believe that for most math and science people to understand how the world works, understanding engineering has to be a huge part of our lives,” Triantaphyllos Akylas, a professor of engineering at MIT said.

Once society begins to understand how the world works, there seems to still be one large group of people that are left out from the understanding: children.

“I think you need a level of abstraction,” Applegate said.“The level of abstraction that can happen in your brain doesn’t happen [until adolescence] so the scaffolding needs to be there in middle school.”

developments have happened, the kids have limitless creativity but no background or reference for their goals. Here is where the teachers come in.

“Thinking like an engineer means you take a bunch of requirements or constraints and you design a solution that adheres to them all.”

According to Charlie Applegate, as the kids begin to develop higher levels of abstraction, they are opened to new ideas. Once these

“It’s very much like in my robotics class where I think you have to give predesigned engineer objectives first that the kids can be familiar with,” Applegate said. “You can’t just throw a kid into a new world of engineering by saying ‘hey build this’ and expect them to do anything if they haven’t had any background knowledge on any engineering challenges beforehand, so it’s actually really important to give demonstrations of how it goes.”

This very select teaching method is one of the reasons why the engineering pilot programs at Kealing are so successful,

A robotics classroom stands empty waiting for the young engineers to come and express their ideas.

Photo Credit: WIkipedia

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LEGO Bricks, one of the main items used for robotic building in Charlie Applegate’s classroom. according to Applegate. The kids learn to build with lego robotics systems, and are given many fun and exciting goals to strive for. One of these goals is a project based on a Ruth-Goldberg machine, where the students are shown amazing achievements in small scale lego engineering, then taught how to make it themselves.

This adds a whole new drive into the engineering learning process. However, this cannot happen instantly. The kids need to be eased into this new world, and have access to people who have been through the process before. As these demonstrations and exercises continue, the young engineers begin to break up their ideas into section; such as the class made Ruth-Goldberg machine. Everyone has a different method of doing this.

Photo Credit: WIkipedia

big picture to small picture. I am a small picture to big picture kind of engineer. So I break mine into smaller engineering feats and then do it. So I think it can be taught.”

While the young engineers learn to build and develop their engineering process, some don’t yet know how to use this new instrument to their advantage outside of the classroom.

“Engineering is a tool, and so is programming.”

“I think it is kind of logical, you first have to solve small steps,” Applegate said. “Some people are big picture to small picture. I am a small picture

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-Charlie Applegate “Engineering is a

tool, and so is programming,” Applegate said.

“Programming and engineering are ways to showcase your talents. I think that it’s not a separate subject, I think its just a tool to actually show off what you can make, or show off your talents with writing abilities or artistic abilities.”

Applegate believes that engineering is just another tool in the box. It can be used with such a large variety of ideas and used to assist other fields. For example, he uses it to teach young

engineers how to make robots that play soccer, and robots that can lift weights. The engineering tool is most abundant in the real world, where engineers have to understand their problems, and failure can mean more than the bad grade it might mean in a controlled learning environment.

They have to truly understand their task, and think like an engineer.

“Thinking like an engineer means you take a bunch of requirements or constraints and you design a solution that adheres to them all,” Rick Lewis said. “This could be market requirements, this could be cost requirements. If I’m designing a product that has to sell at a certain price point, I look at the cost of materials, where it will be made, what tools will be used to make it; these are all requirements and whatever I design has to take into account all of those requirements.”

Now that sounds like a lot of parameters. But according to Lewis, if the parameters are not considered thoroughly, then there can be severe problems. The engineering field is not something that everyone is suited to. So to continue along

A young engineer perfects her robotics project.

this path, many must take steps to understand if they are up to the challenge of thinking like an engineer.

“I think that staying ahead in math and science and school in general is a good idea,” Triantaphyllos Akylas said. “The future engineers would experiment at home, make their own projects, follow their ideas.”

Today we hear engineering as such wide range of fields. Though they all are engineers, and as Applegate says, engineering is just another tool in your tool box. It can be used widely, but it does take skill to use.

“Engineering is such a broad brush, you need to realize that its a lot of work, you need to be good in math and the biggest thing that you can do to help yourself is to be motivated to explore, if you’re interested in computers, write code, take one apart,” Rick Lewis said. “The biggest thing I can think of to do is really spend some time -- maybe go to work with someone of that profession.”

Photo Credit: WIkipedia

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Beginner’s Guide to Buying Computer Parts

By: Ricky Zhou

Processor AMD or Intel: In general AMD’s cost much less than Intel cores however if you’re willing ot spend some money, Intel cores will give you the extra boost your computer needs.

Number of Cores: More cores usually mean better performance through multithreading.

Price will increase with the number of cores though.

RAM Memory: Most applications such as checking emails and searching the web only needs 2GBs of RAM. However 2GBs of RAM won’t be enough for everything, running most programs can be done with 4GBs of RAM. The only time you’ll ever need to use more than 5 GBs of RAM is for hardcore gaming or video editing.

Honestly the difference of performance quality between 4GB and something like 8GB is very minimal, however if you want to have the best performing computer in the world then 8GB is the way to go. As expected, the price will also increase as the amount of GB of RAM does.

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Motherboard General Concepts: Buying a motherboard really depends factors such as form factor, socket type, front-side BUS, chipset, etc. It’s generally a good idea to buy all the other parts before buying the motherboard.

Integrated vs Non-Integrated: Integrated motherboards already come with compenents such as CPU, video cards, etc. Non-integrated motherboards uses installable components. If you want more custatmization it’’s better to go for a non-integrated motherboard

Hard Drive HDD vs SDD In most cases, SDD is superior to HDD. They have better performance, use less energy, bootup faster, produce no noise or vibration, produce little heat, can open files 30% faster than HDDs, and are safe from magnets. However this doesn’t necessarily mean that SDDs are better in every way. If you’re looking for something that has a higher storage capacity and don’t feel like paying more money for a SDD, then HDDs are right for you.

Information Sources: Wikipedia, PC Mag, CNET, PC World

Computers are made up of many components. Here are the eight most commonly known computer parts along with how to find and buy the types you want.

Video Card GPU: The GPU is what determines video capabilities in your computer. A good rule of thumb is that the higher the number in the GPU’s name, the more recent and more powerful it is.

However note that this also means that it will be more expensive.

Things to Keep in Mind: You only really need a really good video card if you’re a hardcore gamer or video edit a lot. Otherwise it’s suggested just to go for a cheap to middle priced one.

Cooling Types of Coolers: There are an exceedingly amount wide range of cooler available nowadays. Pretty much anything that is cold or is capable of cooling something down can be made into a cooler. The most well known coolers include passive cooling, active cooling, water cooling, and heat pipe technology. There’s really no definitive price for any of these cooling mechanisms so it’s really up to your preferences.

Power Supply General Tips: There really is no definitive guide on buying power supplies, however it’s recommended that you buy one from a well known manufacturer. Also usually heavier units are preferable to lightweight models. Power output is really what helps determine what power supply unit you should buy. It’s a good idea to by a power supply that’s output is twice as much as the power needed for the entire system.

External Components Mouse and Keyboard: Unless you want something really something customized, buying a cheap functional mouse or keyboard is good for most jobs.

Monitor: The two things you really need to look for when buying monitor are screen size and display quality. Price is usually goes up as display qualit and screen size increases.

Speakers, Microphone, etc.: The quality of the microphone and speaker really depend on what the user needs. Price does increase dramitically with quality though.

Other parts come as neccessary.

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