• Processor
• Cache
• Memory
• Integrated Graphics
• Hard Drives
• USB and Firewire
• Storage Controller
• Audio and Video Ports
• Getting Online

Hard drives

Following the proliferation of digital media content has been an increase in hard drive size. Only four or five years ago, a 20GB hard drive wasn't unusual, whereas the smallest drive you'll find on a PC sold today is 80GB. For mainstream PCs, the norm is a 80GB or 250GB drive. Power users such as DV editors who need to store large video files can opt for a 300GB or 500GB hard drive (or two). Most desktop drives spin at 7,200rpm (the faster a drive spins, the faster you can access its data), and Western Digital has come out with a 10,000rpm drive.

Most performance systems we've seen recently come with one or more SATA drives. With two or more hard drives, many power users will use a RAID 0 configuration. RAID 0 (redundant array of independent disks), also called data striping, doesn't actually offer any redundancy, but it improves performance by striping data across the drives. The PC sees the drives as one drive and can break apart portions of a file and distribute them to the different drives, which speeds the reading and writing process. A RAID 1 configuration, or disk mirroring, is less popular in desktops. It doesn't offer a performance boost, but it gives you peace of mind by copying your data to both drives simultaneously so that, if one of the drives fails, your work won't be lost.