In the last two articles in this series, we talked about the components without which computers do not function. But apart from these essential components, there are a few optional components that improve a computer’s functionality and performance. There are many cards that, if installed, could improve the ease of use, performance and even add additional features that your motherboard does not otherwise support. While these components have been around for a couple of years, integrated chipsets of today have most common functionalities, like sound processors and graphics processors, built into the motherboard. This is the reason why your computer produces visual and audio without a dedicated controller.

But there are certain features that are not available on integrated chipsets, and even graphical processing and audio processing is handled much better by a dedicated module. There are a lot of optional components that you can equip your computer with, like debug cards and GPIB cards, but the most commonly used components are graphics cards, sound cards, TV Tuners, Wi-Fi cards and interface cards. In this episode, we will talk about a few of these components and how they can help improve the performance of your computer.

Graphics cards

If the purpose of your build is gaming, video production or even graphic design, I would recommend investing in a dedicated graphics card. I would actually recommend a dedicated graphics card for all builds, but since graphics cards can be quite expensive, you could do without one for general purposes. Currently, there are two companies that produce graphics cards, Nvidia and AMD, but there are other retailers like EVGA and MSI that repackage these graphics cards with performance tweaks and factory overclocking. If you want a card that can help you design graphics, investing in a cheaper graphics cards will work but if you want your computer to perform more intensive tasks like gaming or rendering high-quality videos, you will want to invest in a powerful graphics card: probably the GTX 800 or 900 series cards. These cards, however, don’t come cheap. But since graphics cards have processors that are made solely for visual data processing, your CPU will delegate all of the graphical data to your graphics card making your overall experience more fluid.

Most of the graphics cards in the market fit into the PCIe x16 slot, so make sure your motherboard comes with at least one of these ports. Graphics cards also need a significant amount of power to drive them, so invest in a power-supply that can accommodate the card’s power needs. As mentioned in the previous articles in the series, you can calculate your build’s power usage with online tools.  

Sound cards

We’re so used to plugging all audio devices to the motherboard that we don’t even consider investing in soundcards. While integrated sound processors of motherboards aren’t that bad, you will need to invest in a dedicated soundcard if you want high-fidelity audio or if you’re into audio recording or processing. Many of the recording grade soundcards have in-built recording processors that capture audio exceptionally well. Some of these cards also come with multiple output ports to accommodate home theatre system that support Dolby 5.0 or higher audio devices. These soundcards also produce exceptional audio since they can produce audio frequencies at much higher levels than integrated chips. But also, investing in a soundcard is only beneficial for sound producers and recording studios since these cards produce great quality audio only when paired with high-quality lossless audio files like FLAC, WAV or ALAC file types. Investing in a soundcard and feeding it audio files like MP3, MP4 or AAC would produce similar quality audio that your motherboard produces. My advice would be to invest in a soundcard only if you’re building a computer for professional audio processing or if you’re a big audiophile, else the integrated audio processor is decent enough.

Most of the soundcards available in the market come with a PCIe x1 connector. Make sure that your motherboard comes with this slot, it looks like a traditional PCIe slot but is much smaller. Usually, motherboards that come with PCIe slots come with an additional PCIe X1 slot but just make sure that the slot is a PCIe x1 slot and not any of the other variants like the x4 or x8 slots. The PCIe x1 is the smallest PCIe slot which should make it easier to identify. But not all soundcards support PCIe x1 since you can even find cards that can be plugged into a full-sized PCIe x16 slot. But soundcards aren’t as expensive as graphics cards and go for well under Rs 10,000 for base models.

Connectivity cards

There are a lot of cards that can help you connect to various devices that aren’t supported directly by your motherboard. While most modern motherboards come with built-in Wi-Fi support, older models do not. To connect to the internet, you would either have to use an Ethernet cable or have to invest in a Wi-Fi card. You can also find Firewire connectivity cards, USB-3 or even USB-C connector cards. The main purpose of these cards is to extend the connectivity of your motherboard. Usually, motherboards don’t come with built-in Firewire or Thunderbolt connectors. Figure out what connectors you want to pair with your build and hunt down the cards that you want. For video editing, a Firewire or Thunberbolt connector is essential. A Wi-Fi card is basic if you don’t want to use a lengthy cable to connect to the internet.

Most of these cards plug into the white PCI slot on your motherboard. You don’t need to check for compatibility or availability of these ports since all modern motherboard come with at least one of these PCI slots. They are also easy to identify since they are white while PCIe slots are usually black. Some motherboards also come with an extended PCI-X slots but you don’t need to worry about these slots since the normal PCI slots accept most common cards. But apart from PCI, you can find connectivity cards for the different types of PCIe slots as well.

We’ve talked about different internal components that you need for a complete PC build; so make sure you have all of the components that you want with you and get ready to put it all together in the next iteration in this series. Once you have all the components, putting them together is the best part and should be a much better experience than collecting the components that you need. Keep following this space for information on how to put everything together.