i3 i5 i7, what to choose?

There are different type of intel processors. You may have heard i3 i5 i7 and latest i9. What makes them different? which processor to get when buying your computer? Many people are unaware of few facts about processors which could help them make better decision. I want to tell you something about these processors that may help you make better decisions in the future.

 First i want to tell you about what gigahertz means in the processor. Giga means Billion and Hertz means cycle per second. So, if your Processor is 2 gigahertz, it means you processor can calculate 2 billion calculation per second.

You also need to know about Core and Hyper-threading. There was a race with AMD and intel in the field of making the higher gigahertz processors. Until AMD came out with the Dule core version of CPU which have two cores. Which means it had two processors. Only increasing CPU hertz was not making CPU faster. It’s this new feature that has lower clock speed with dule core which out performed higher hertz CPU. So intel started to manufacture Due core.

Hyper threading is a feature in CPU that enable a processor to handle two process simultaneously. It’s like eating with two hands, while your mouth (CPU power) remains the same, your hands (Threads) can pickup more food and eat as soon as you are done. Your operating system shows this as two logical processors.

 In this Snapshot of my PC it shows it has 1 socket 2 cores and 4 logical processors. L1, l2,L3 cache which is also important in CPU that effect processor speed.

Instead of constantly gong to RAM to retrieve data CPU cache (Also Called static RAM) holds data that are frequently needed. There are 3 levels of cache.

Level 1 cache (primary Cache) runs as same speed as processor. Which is inside CPU itself.

Level2 Cache (external Cache) are used to cache recent data that are not caught by level 1 cache.

Level 3 Cache catches data that are not caught by level 2 cache. If its still not found. It will search data form RAM.

So what are the i3, i5,i7 ,i9 different generation for.

i3 have the basic functionality which have 2 core and Hyper-threading. It will have less cache and consumes less power. If your work is to surf internet and use ms office this is good enough for you.

i5 have 2-4 cores with or without hyper-threading. They have improved graphics and Turbo boost. Turbo boost is an ability of CPU to mac performance when needed. If you use Photoshop, some other normal software this is good processor for you.

All core i7 have hyper threading. 2 to 8 Cores 2-8 memory stick. It has better cache, faster turbo boost and better graphics than i5. You have to get this process if your job involves sound rendering, video rending, animation and Some high end gaming.

i9 processor have better of everything, better cache, better turbo boost, overclocking, Graphics. They are the high end processes and in current market that are not in use.

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what is Voltage, Amps and Watts?

I have been trying to understand what the voltage power watts what are the they. Every electronic device has just numbers in them they say voltage watts’ amp. What do those numbers really mean. These are things that I have understood so far.  

Let’s take an analogy of water pipe to understand the concepts of electricity. 

Voltage is like water pressure. (If you have your water tank in top floor you may have noticed that pressure is higher as you go down floors. In electronics pressure is created by flow of electrons form negative to positive terminal). Pressure is created by electrons trying to move form negative to positive terminal. That is why lower violate equipment’s will fry if you plug it into higher voltage line.

Amps is like amount of water a pipe can hold. (if your pipe is thicker more water can come out. So you can fill a 1-liter jar in same amount of time. If you use thicker pipe in top floor where the water pressure is low and using a small pipe in ground floor which has high pressure).

You can vary the amount of water that come out of your tap buy adjusting handle in your tap. Same thing happens with you plug any device in your wall power socket. Resisters used in your electronic device works like handle and let’s pass just enough amount of current needed to your device. One simple example is fan. It uses variable resister which you can turn, which controls flow of current thus controlling speed of the fan. 

Voltage and Amps determine how much current is flowing which is measured in Watts. 

Watts= Voltage X Amps

How to buy a motherboard.

Choosing a motherboard can be just as hard as choosing a girl to get married. There are different types, manufacture, chipsets, functionalities to lookout for.  Only person who can say what motherboard he/she wants is you only.  You have to get motherboard according to your need.  I have written this just to help you with that. 
Or you jest buy a laptop and skip reading. 

there are 4 motherboard size shown in the picture.

 

You can get a motherboard according to work you attend to complete on the system. First determine what kind of work you want to do. If you are doing video editing and sound editing get i7 processor latest gen cpu then buy a motherboard that cpu fits into. 

Getting a product designed for your use case.

For this I’m going to demonstrate 2 motherboards and compare it. 

Shown in the picture is motherboard generally used for server. It has two CPU socket eight RAM slots which can support up to 64 GB DDR4. It has 4 LAN port + one remote LAN port for remote management.

You can also see the CPU sockets are different form normal ones because they are designed for high end AMD Threadripper processors which can cost up to $900. They are useful for high threading workload.

If you are planning to buy your system for home or work use this motherboard would be not practical because all features of this motherboard will not be fully used and features, you need for home or office use are not present in it with enhanced user experience

 here is a board you will likely use

It’s ASUS Prime Z390-A designed for higher gaming performance.  It has LGA1151 which supports i7 8^th and 9^th generation CPU. It also has over clocking feature. Over clocking is CPU ability to process in higher frequency if required. Over clockable cpu like that will need more power simililar kind of head sink, power supply which can supply higher power and motherboard which is compatible with it. 

Chipset

Chipsets are sets of chips which control communication between different components like CPU, RAM, Hard disk, Keyboard mouse etc. There are two main sets of chip which control their function. They are called Northbridge and Southbridge. Northbridge controls communication between CPU, RAM, Graphics card. They are also called front side bus, when referring to board speed they refer to the speed of front side bus. New motherboard Northbridge function are controlled by CPU itself.

Southbridge is located in lower part of motherboard. It controls PCI slots, I/O chips, hard disk,USB and audio. It communicates and sends data to northbridge.  

There are mainly two types of chipset manufactures that are used to build a motherboard. AMD and Intel. They have been constant rival in PC business for many years. AMD CPU are compatible with AMD chipsets motherboard and Intel CPU are compatible with intel chipset motherboard.