Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Quality Systems Versus Black and Gold Brand





Being a professional system builder I sometimes get the ‘quality cheap’ system request, whereby a customer request’s a high performance, high quality system at a budget price.

Of course there is no such thing. There are cheap computer systems which are generally built with generic ‘cheap' computer components and then there are ‘custom’ quality systems which are built with handpicked quality components.

So the terms High Performance and Cheap, really are mutually exclusive.

So in this post I am going to outline what makes a Cheap Black and Gold Generic system and what makes up a High Quality, High Performance system.


Computer Enclosure:

High quality computer enclosures come with a high quality power supply of a high power rating. The high power rating will ensure you have plenty of power for future add-ons like extra hard drives, add in cards, USB devices and Memory and CPU upgrades.

Also such power supplies that come with good quality cases usually come with hardware to better protect your motherboard, ram and CPU from power surges and spikes. Or little rug rats that turn the system off the wrong way, such power surges can damage or at least shorten the life of your computer components.

Good quality enclosures have large high quality fans which keep components cool once again extending their life and prevent the system from overheating.

Vibration insulation grommets, these grommets insulate your hardrive from the rest of your enclosure and prevent vibration and reverberation which can shorten the life of your hard drive and sometimes make your computer excessively loud.


High quality system box, huge rear fan for excellent cooling and extremely quiet.
Comes with a high quality 500watt power supply, also features transverse mounted hard drive cradle with hard drive vibration grommets and it even looks good!







Motherboard,

Quality motherboards really are the foundation for any quality system and it really pays not to skimp here. Among many other things quality motherboards have extremely high data throughput (data flow) to support the latest processors.

Some systems I have seen simply cannot cater for the data flow requirements of the processor they are built with, and sometimes the motherboard itself ‘throttles’ the CPU speed down by as much as 30%. In effect you are buying a CPU and not using 30% of its full power.

Also quality motherboards are built with high quality components which last much longer than black and gold specials. Quality motherboard also have additional circuitry to protect components against power spikes and surges as well as having dual crash proof bios systems and as a bonus have many innovative features.


Memory


Quality memory as a general rule has very short latency, which is the space of time between one write process in memory and the next as well has having much higher operating frequencies while generating much less heat. This results in a much more responsive and reliable system.













Here you have cheap memory and here you have quality G Skill ram.



Video Card,

Much like motherboards top video cards are made with quality components and are made from superior design specs than the standard design template supplied from ATI or Nvidia. As such a quality video cards perform better and are more reliable and generally have much better cooling solutions than Black and Gold Brands.


Hard drive,

There is only one hard drive make that you should be concerned with and that is Western Digital. But always ask for the Green model as they represent very good performance and reliability and reasonable price. Also look for capacity anomalies which have a higher amount of cache.

Overall when you you purchase a quality system, you can be pretty sure that all the components in your system are 'performance matched'. What I mean by this is that each component is specifically selected to match and complement the rest of your computer components.

Many off the shelf systems today have very powerful Processors but not the quality or quantity of ram or motherboard to properly support the full performance potential of the processor.

It's kind of like putting a Porsche engine in a old Morris Minor.

Well I hoped I have cleared things up, you really cannot compare off the shelf computer systems to custom built systems on point of price.

Your either after Quality or you want a Cheap Computer.

Blue Fox Computers

16 comments:

  1. Computer quality maser thing at the time of computer purchase but it is electronic machine it has any type of problem at any time and any kind like software problems hard ware problems operating system problems, now a day so many computer support company provide help to troubleshoot your PC at your home

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  2. Thank you for the information. That's really helpful.
    ____________________
    Suman
    http://theain.blogspot.com

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  3. Very well written information although I do have one comment. I was surprised you didn't speak more about cooling be it top end CPU fans or full water cooling systems. It seems like your pretty knowledgeable and I would have been interested to hear your views.

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  4. This blog is very useful especially talking about quality of computer system. However good installation quality is essential also.

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  5. A quality system consist of all good parts in it. If one component is much faster than the rest, it won't be able to perform up to its full potential. The rest of the components down and act as a bottleneck. Its requires a professional help of a technical engineer.

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  6. There are really a lot to consider in building up a better and effective system that is in quality to have its performance at its best. Quality system must meet the paramount speed, reliability and quality of the used specs. Your article is very much helpful for all computer related people who are consciously hooking up themselves for the best of computer system performance. Thanks for your fruitful information!

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  7. A computer system that works at its best is eventually those with best support system and utilities. I just have to agree that if one fails to meet the quality performance of the rest of the components the overall performance of the computer system would still be less.

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  8. Very well written up. I found your post very interesting. Thanks for this useful info.

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  9. I think you did a great job writing this...John..
    Thanks.
    - Small Business IT Support

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  10. Lindsay
    Rosenwald
    : Dr. Lindsay Rosenwald – The Most Prolific Leader

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  11. very good information i actually agree with your comments...

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  12. You are an excellent blogger. This article is lucid and well composed.
    However I disagree with you on the point that "So the terms High Performance and Cheap, really are mutually exclusive." The market study has proved that the price of hardware comes down as times passes. So the high quality hardware which is costly today, will be available at throwaway prices in the future.

    Thanks and regards

    Sam

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  13. Quality hardware computer components and peripherals ensures that computer users experience less computer problems. That's why people should buy high quality computers and not settle for less.

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  14. Yep, memory is a big deal! I never really understood "quality memory," until I realized that the cheap, inexpensive memory really did perform worse!

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