CATEGORIES

How to recreate the Doctor Who theme

Mike Bedford makes use an analogue synthesiser simulator to generate one of TV’s most iconic and recognisable themes.

BUILD A SMART HOME OFFICE

Wiseguy Jonni Bidwell has some tips on making our homes and home offices smarter, with the latest FOSS offerings.

FUNDING THE FREE

Jonni Bidwell delves into the thorny issues surrounding funding open-source projects and urges you to support your favourite free software.

Easy OS 2.4.1

Puppy Linux has a younger sibling, and like Jonni Bidwell it’s completely container-mad and works well on a boat.

Beyond a Steel Sky

Management loves a totalitarian regime and it loves some nostalgia harking back to when magazines and Ian Evenden used to make a profit…

Parallels Desktop 16

Run almost any operating system as a guest on an Intel Mac

Choosing a Processor

The CPU (Central Processing Unit) of your computer is likely to be the most expensive single component, especially if you are trying to future-proof your build as much as possible. When it comes to choosing a processor, faster and newer is almost always better. However, does the average PC builder really need a 4GHz Core i7? Does having a faster CPU always mean having a faster computer overall? What is hyper-threading? Read on to find the answers to these questions and many more.

Motherboards

It might seem that your choice of motherboard is fairly straightforward; Intel or AMD compatible, depending on the CPU you are going to use. However, if you want to get the best out of your new PC, you really need to choose a motherboard based on your main usage aims. A gaming motherboard will offer very different features to one designed for general use or office work. Over the next few pages we will look at the many different motherboard options available to you.

Choosing Linux

There are lots of versions, known as “Distributions”, of Linux available. Each has a different ethos and approach and each will offer the user a different set of features and tools. If you are considering using Linux instead of Windows on your PC, here is a look at the five most popular, and probably the best supported, distributions available and where you can get them.

HDD, SSD or Both?

The storage capacity of your PC will be dictated by what you will be doing with it but even if you don’t think you will need much storage, the cost of storage has come down so much in recent years that it makes sense to choose more than you might need right now. The bigger question with storage these days is whether to go for a HDD, an SSD or perhaps both. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of all these component choices.

Power Connections

Finally, you can now begin to connect the whole system up to the power supply and take an important step towards the first boot. If you followed our advice earlier in the guide for planning your build, you shouldn’t have any surprises when it comes time to connect everything up. If you do find that cables are too short, or missing completely, you can buy extensions and adaptors online easily.

Fitting the Motherboard into the Case

If you have been following the steps of the build so far, you should now be in a position to fit the motherboard, along with the fitted CPU, cooler and RAM, into your prepared case. This not only involves screwing the board into place but also correctly connecting all the case controls like the power switch, HDD LED, front USB ports etc.. Your motherboard will also have been supplied with a back plate.

Cable Management

Although it may seem that taking time to tidy internal cables out of sight is simply down to personal preference, and how pretty you want your PC to look through that windowed side panel, but good cable management is increasingly seen as important for the welfare of your PC. Good airflow from the case fans is essential for keeping temperatures down and as thin as they may be, cables strewn all through the case will disrupt it.

Choosing a Graphics Card (GPU)

If you are building a PC to be able to play games, the graphics card or Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) will probably be one of the most expensive components after the CPU. GPUs seem to be improved and updated at a faster pace than almost any other item you will fit into your computer and keeping up with the latest cutting edge tech can be very expensive. For our build we have chosen a card which offers a good mix of features and at a reasonable price.

Adding the Power Supply Unit

When you think about the important components of a PC build, it is fairly easy to overlook the Power Supply unit or PSU. However, if you do not match the PSU correctly with your other components, especially the graphics card, you may see a whole range of problems occur when you finally get the PC up and running. From simply not having the power to turn on, to intermittent crashes when gaming and random hardware faults, a weak or poor quality PSU is trouble.

SYNTH SPECIAL

It’s a super synth special in this month’s Computer Music and we have a fantastic selection of hands-on features to help you make great synth music and create some great sounds…

Beatskillz RetroVolt £99

BeatSkills deliver a sample player with synth ambitions and a plugin simply drenched in nostalgia

K Multimedia iRig Keys 2 Mini €122

IK Multimedia deliver one of their dinkiest computer music-making keyboards, and it might be just what your mobile production needs

Future classic softsynths

We have six all-time classics on p36. Here are six young pretenders from the last two years vying to steal the crown

Baby Audio Parallel Aggressor

Parallel processing is a great way to capture the flavour of heavy processing and this new plugin wants to make it easier than ever before

Softsynths… of all time!

Time to put our heads on the block as we pick the six best software synths… ever (and still available to buy)

Modulation

In this instalment of our synth series, we look at some common mod sources and how to use them to bring your patches to life

15 Questions With… SHAW & GROSSFELDT

Simian Mobile Disco’s Jas Shaw and Bas Grossfeldt make an album completely inspired by a Yamaha Dysclavier. Why not?

Top Laptops For Digital Creatives

Choose the best laptops for your creative endeavours, using our handy guide to the best options for graphics intensive tasks

LibreOffice 7

Neil Mohr discovers what’s new in this latest release of the office   suite that is one of the crown jewels of the open source world.

EndeavourOS 7.15.2020

Just as HMS Endeavour explored the unknown southern lands, so Jonni Bidwell uses EndeavourOS to explore Arch…

Mailserver

Write to us at Linux Format, Future Publishing, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA or lxf.letters@futurenet.com.

Tropico 6

Management are terrified of the new Linux Format workers’ council, but it’s just Phil Savage playing at communism under a hot sun.

BunsenLabs Lithium

Forever grunge Jonni Bidwell is pleased to find a distribution that’s almost as good as the Nirvana song. Almost…

PRESSURE VESSEL

Jonni Bidwell gets on the video chat to   talk video games and message buses  with D-Bus guru Simon McVittie