How do I do that? B UILDING A G AMING PC PART 3:

T ODAY ’ S L EARNING T ARGET  Got Fans?  It’s a RAID!  Adding Lights & Gauges

T ODAY ’ S S PONGE  What is Overclocking your video card?  What does a good FPS do for your game?

G OTTA HAVE FANS AND HEATSINKS ! When your PC is built with the fastest components on the planet… Your PC runs faster & hotter!

 These are square boxes that look much like drive cages.  Typically with blades either 80 mm or 120 mm in diameter Y OUR CARD SHOULD PROVIDE AT LEAST 2 FAN CAGES

H OW DO I HOOK IT UP ?  You’ll need standard PC power supply connectors  At least one free internal power cable (or y splitter-that turns owe power connector into 2)

U SE BALL BEARINGS The best fans use ball bearings -Run faster, moving more air through your case -Typically more quiet than cheaper “free- spinning” units -Most fan specs. Include an airflow rating in cubic feet per minute (cpm)

H OW MANY FANS DO I NEED ?!  If your PC has a single, high-end 3-D video card & a gaming processor  Recommendation is 2 case fans  Use 3 fans if you are using 2 or 3 video cards in SLI mode.

Y OU ALSO NEED A HEATSINK  A finned hunk of aluminum or copper that you can add under your fan (or in some cases, in place of a fan)  Recommend buying a combo unit that integrae both a heatsink and a fan.  The heatsink/fan combo is separated from the CPU itself by a special thermal compound

I T ’ S A RAID !  Stands for redundant array of independent disks Huh?  A RAID array is a series of hard drives that work together to provide either faster read/write performance or a “mirror” backup that produces two copies of the same data.  Gamers are far more interested in the faster read/write performance, but it is nice to back up their save game files.

H OW DO I CREATE A “RAID?”  You need at least two hard drives  Most PC owners choose two or more of the same model Consider 10,000 rpm SATA drives Your MOBO’s BIOS settings must support RAID operations

H OW DO I CREATE A “R AID ?”  After installing the drives, you must create the array from the mobo’s BIOS setup screen  Recommendation to install a fresh copy of Windows on a new RAID array  Allows the operating system to automatically recognize the RAID installation and configure itself accordingly.  Vista calls this a “clean install.”