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Building a balanced system

Building a system is not all about buying faster components to get a fast machine. A few fast components do not make a fast machine. Without a decent amount of balance your machine could seem like it’s far slower than it should be. A short but wise saying about computers is “Your computer is only as fast as its slowest component”

When you think about it that’s absolutely true. If a system has a bottleneck its going to affect the entire system’s performance. Building a balanced system is not that easy though. Most people will not know if there system has a bottleneck. In fact without proper benchmarking software, the most trained people will have a hard time diagnosing it. So what can you go on to keep your system balanced?

Price

Price is a good start to finding components that are around the same speed.

Admittedly some component types are going to cost more than others, but that’s not what I meant here. What you should be looking at is buying components that are all at the same price position as the others. For example If you have bought a brand spanking new CPU and it’s the most expensive one around and then you went to get a Graphics card. To do the CPU any justice you will have to a graphics card that is also at the top of its price range.

Of course sometimes this price is misleading so we have to look at more than one factor to decide.

Release Date

Finding out when a product is released can also tell you how good a product is. That may sound a little stupid and sometimes it may be, but on the hole companies will not release anything that is less powerful than the year before. Magazines and websites can say things such as meets year 2005 specifications or something similar. What they mean is that the computer is capable of handling anything in the year 2005 and before. Getting components made in the same year will help keep it balanced. Looking at this as well as the price will certainly help.

But what if I’m on a budget?

This is all the more reason not to waste your money on one fast component. Your Athlon X2 4400+ and your onboard graphics card are not going to work very well now are they? Just the same as your wonderful graphics card and your 14” monitor that can only display 640x480 pixels.

Spreading your money around the whole system can seem like cutting your system specs down. After all you could tell all your friends you have a 3Ghz machine and they will go “nice one” and be really jealous. You will of course leave out that you have got an onboard sound card, no modem or printer, cheap speakers and only 128Mb of RAM. The truth would be that a 2Ghz AthlonXP would run faster with better components.

So a balanced machine is better than a Fast machine

After reading this again It sounds a little as if that is what I am saying but that’s not true. You can never beat a machine with the best of everything in it (providing they work well together). But you can save yourself a lot of money by going for balance.

The main point again which I am trying to get across is one fast component does not make a fast machine.

But Why?

In brief terms data is sent all around your PC at a phenomenal rate. Your CPU processes the bulk of the data so it’s important that that is up to scratch. However if your graphics card for example is too slow for your CPU then the CPU will be idle until the Graphics card catches up. Because of this the CPU is not using its full processing power. Not a great deal you say but wouldn’t you be better saving a bit of money on a slower processor and let everything run together? Think of your PC as a team of components. If the team works together the job will be accomplished if some of the team leave the rest behind they have to sit and wait wasting valuable time.


 
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