What is a Server?

If you spend any amount of time on the internet, you’ve heard of the word server. Not the server or waiter from a restaurant but as a computer term. If you’ve ever visited a website and encountered an error it may have mentioned this word, as in “server error” or “server is overcapacity.” At work or in the office you may have heard of a shared files server, or an email server. But what is a server, and what does it do?

If you close your eyes and imagine a server you’re probably thinking of a room filled with stacks of computer equipment. It is loud, and tall as computers are arranged in racks. This is indeed what many companies use in their server rooms.

Let’s get technical about the meaning of the word server, as this term is used widely in the area of information technology. A server is both a computer program that is capable of receiving and handling requests from other computers and programs, and it is also the computer hardware that is running that software.

There are many servers that we may or may not be familiar with: file servers, email servers, web servers, database servers, print servers, etc. You can even turn your old computer into a server for your home! Why would you want to do this? Let’s look at an example.

You got a new laptop. You also have a printer. You want to be able to use this printer wirelessly from all of the computers on your network, but this printer doesn’t have an Ethernet port or wireless capabilities. You may think you’re SOL but you’re not. If you connect a computer to this printer and share the printer on your network, you’ve created a print server! Now any computer on your home network can connect to the computer hooked up to the printer and send it things to print. This computer accepts the requests from the others and send the documents to the printer.

What else could you do? Well for starters you could share some (or all) of the folders on this computer so that you’ll be able to access that data from anywhere in your home. Now you’ve got a file server! If you install a small program to share media over a protocol called DLNA compliant Upnp you’ve got a media server that’ll allow you to access photos, music and videos from your home theater devices, like smart TVs, blu-ray players, Xboxes and PlayStations!

Most of the servers at work are just beefed up versions of this example. They use dedicated and specialized hardware instead of old computers, and they have special pieces of software that do things like host databases, or provide email. It’s usually best to have dedicated servers for each application, but sometimes that isn’t feasibly. The workaround is creating virtual machines – emulations of individual computers inside of the physical computers. One physical server can host many VMs. This separates the servers and allows you to track down problems.

Rugged Laptops

Laptops are inherently portable. In today’s modern world many of the technologies we use as consumers move with us. The most notable example is smartphones – we take them everywhere. Laptops are now outselling desktops, and have been for over five years. It’s no surprise, then that most people have a laptop. Many of us have had the misfortune of dropping our smartphones. There is an instant twinge of regret and anticipation as we pick it up and assess the damage. If we’re lucky there is no damage at all. Otherwise we’re looking to replace the glass screen, and as a worst-case scenario the whole phone.

Laptops are similarly prone to damage, but not as much because we don’t carry them around as often as a phone. Laptops are designed to be easy to carry, around the office or home, around campus or around town, and even on airplanes and across the world! This opens them up to serious damage. Laptops also provide serious computing power where you couldn’t take a desktop or where a tablet isn’t enough. Imagine scientific expeditions or heavy industrial and construction job sites.

Today we demand computing power wherever we are and wherever work needs to be done. Sometimes these environments can be dangerous, like a battlefield, or present other kinds of risk like a factory floor or a construction site. For places like these we have rugged laptops. They are generally shock proof, water proof, crush proof, and dust-proof computers.

For a long time, the rugged laptop market was dominated by the Panasonic Toughbook. It is still widely considered as the industry benchmark. The Toughbook was engineered to meet the highest military standards and can withstand drops, shocks, slams, and intense vibrations. It is impervious to high winds and pelting rain. They are commonly used in many industries, such as government, law enforcement, telecom, oil & gas, construction, defense and emergency services.

Getac is another company that makes these tough computers. Their laptops are as tough as they get and have been created to withstand use in dangerous areas with hazardous particles and gasses. It also has a waterproof case, but I wouldn’t want to try using it underwater.

All of these computer pack the latest processors, hard drives, RAM and other components so you’re not sacrificing power or capability for durability. However they are not cheap. Expect to pay at least $1500 for a new rugged laptop with the latest components. Units with top-of-the line components can cost upwards of $5000. Rugged portable servers can be $10k or more!

Choosing a Monitor for Your Custom PC

 

Every PC needs a monitor. Laptops have one built in, but you’ll need to buy one for your desktop. Unless you buy a bundled kit, most desktop computers don’t come with a monitor. When you’re building a custom PC you could easily include a monitor when you’re purchasing the parts. If you’re buying a pre-built computer you’ll often be able to buy a display too. Sometimes, though, the computer manufacturers you’re buying from don’t have the best selection of monitors to choose from.

Before you buy a monitor you should make sure it’s the right one. First take into consideration your PC and how you’re going to be using it. If you’re going to be using it for work and basic office tasks, like email, web browsing, and spreadsheets, a simple low to medium-grade monitor will suffice. I find that at work I greatly enjoy having multiple monitors so consider purchasing a couple monitors instead of just one big one. If you’re going to be doing video editing or graphics design, consider a higher-end monitor with high refresh rates (Hz). In these scenarios it’s important to get a monitor with adjustable color balance so that you know the colors you see on your display are the same as what will be printed or displayed on other screens.

If you’re going to be gaming on your custom PC, you’re going to want a great monitor. It would be a mistake to blow your budget on awesome high performance parts for your gaming computer, and be left with little to no budget for a monitor. If your gaming rig is capable of playing the latest big games at 4K resolution and high frame rates, but you have a 1080p monitor with a 60Hz refresh rate, all those high-performing components will go to waste – you’ll never see the performance you paid for. When looking at monitors you should consider the trade-offs of resolution vs refresh rate. Of course you can get a monitor with 4K resolution and 144Hz refresh rate, but these are expensive, and most computers – even custom gaming PCs – can’t render video games at 4K and frame rates over 120 FPS.  So decide what you’ll prefer to play games at – 1080p resolution and ultra-high frame rates, or 4K resolution and acceptable frame rates. Then buy a monitor that matches that preference. One of the newest technologies in monitors is nVidia G-SYNC. This allows the monitor and GPU to talk together and allows the monitor to refresh when the GPU has a new frame rendered. It addresses the issue of screen tearing, and also the lag issues caused by previous solutions like v-sync. To take advantage of G-Sync you’ll need an nVidia graphics card and a G-Sync ready monitor. Even some gaming laptops have G-Sync displays.

Lastly, you should consider the hardware in your computer. As I mentioned this is important for games so that their monitor doesn’t limit their gaming performance. This is also important for other users. Make sure that your computer has the right ports to connect to your monitor. Of course you can get adaptors and so on, but this will be a hassle and may decrease visual clarity. If all your computer has is a VGA port, then it’ll be silly to buy a monitor that doesn’t have a VGA input.

Upgrading your Custom Computer

As your computer ages you might find that your hardware can’t keep up with the demands of modern software. If you use your computer for gaming you’ll see this much more clearly because AAA games (i.e. the big-name game releases, such as Fallout, Call of Duty, Bioshock, Battlefield, CS:GO etc.) demand the capabilities of hardcore hardware. Other games may demand as much hardware capability as the AAA games, but often they do not. You’ll find yourself playing games at lower quality settings, at a smaller resolution, or with a slower frame rate than when you were playing games and your computer was new. Or perhaps if you’re not a gamer, you’ll just notice sluggish performance from your computer. So what are you to do?

 

The obvious answer is to upgrade, but before you do that you should do your due diligence and perform some PC maintenance. You should be doing basic computer maintenance continuously, but just in case you haven’t you should start with that before doing any upgrades to your computer. First I recommend a virus and malware scan. There are many free anti-virus programs available like AVG and Avast. Some of the better well-known anti-virus options like Norton and McAfee can cause more harm than good as they take up a lot of resources and will stop working after your subscription is up.

Historically a defragging your computer was recommended, but modern operating systems tend to do this automatically, and in fact this is dangerous for SSDs. Look through your installed software and delete anything you don’t use. Take a look at your task manager and process list to see which applications are taking up a lot of your memory and CPU. See if these are necessary and delete them if not.

If that didn’t do the trick and you’re still getting poor performance from your computer I’d say it’s time to upgrade. The obvious first thing to upgrade is the RAM. As a general guide you should have about 4GB of memory per processor core. This isn’t always possible. Check to see what the maximum amount of RAM your system (motherboard and chipset) will allow. More is always better.

If you’re serious about upgrading your computer and RAM didn’t help much I recommend benchmarking your computer. 3DMark 11 is a free and popular program that will run many separate 3D simulations. Running all of the different simulations and you’ll get scores that will tell you if your system is limited by the CPU or the graphics card.

 

Upgrading the graphics card is easy. Identify what your budget for an upgrade is and buy one from the latest generation from either AMD or Nvidia. I’m not going to get into which one is better (or if any of them are better than the other). Just know that Nvidia has a nasty habit of limiting performance on their older products and inhibiting performance on AMD cards on games that use their software, such as HairWorks. Let’s just say there’s a lot to be read up on the subject. If you are using a liquid cooling system in your computer that includes the graphics card, upgrading this component may be difficult.

Upgrading the CPU should be your last step. Some say it’s not worth it and you should just consider a new computer at this point. Newer chipsets may have significant advantages of the one you have. First, I would look up the chipset to determine what CPU socket it has and which processors it supports. For example let’s say you have a 4^th generation Intel Core i3 in an LGA 1150 socket. Luckily you can choose to upgrade to an i5 or i7 from the same generation. Upgrading the CPU is tricky, as you’ll have to remove the CPU cooler, remove the CPU from the motherboard, and install a new CPU. 

Cable Managment in Gaming PCs

Cable management is important in all computers,  not just gaming computers. However cable management issues, or cable management fails, often happen in custom gaming PCs that the users build themselves. Why? Because the gamer is so excited about their new rig that they haphazardly plug in cables as they build their computer. They don't care about where the wires go, so long as they are connected to the right things. Poor cable management is even more prevalent in liquid cooled computers that gamers build because they think that the cables won't impact cooling since they are using liquid cooling.

Let's take a minute and discuss why cable management is important. One primary reason is airflow. Computers create heat as they run. The harder you push your PC, the hotter it gets. Gaming PCs are particularly affected because they run complex 3D environments that they render and they are often run at their capacity. If components get too hot they will slow themselves down and then turn off to avoid damage. It would be pretty silly to have your computer start to stutter and then shut down just as you're getting to the good part in your game. Your custom PC needs to cool itself to avoid this. If you look inside any computer today you'll see a multitude of fans. One for the power supply, one for the case, one for the CPU, one for the graphics card, and perhaps more. Even laptops have fans inside! These fans move air so that your components don't get hot. A mess of cables and wires will block the flow of air and cause your CPU and other components to get hotter and hotter.

Another way of cooling your components is to install a liquid cooling loop. This uses liquid instead of air to cool your CPU and maybe other components. Liquid cooling blocks allow the liquid to absorb heat from the components and then this hot liquid is taken to a radiator where it exchanges heat with the air around it, then it returns to the component to absorb more heat. You may think that if you were to get a liquid cooling setup you wouldn't need to worry about airflow, and this cable management. However, most setups only use liquid to cool the CPU, the other components - most importantly the graphics card, still rely on airflow to keep themselves from getting too hot. Even if you have a system with liquid cooling blocks on the CPU and graphics card, other components like the memory chips and the motherboard chipset still get hot and need airflow to keep themselves cool.

If you were to have an awesome liquid cooling system one thing you'd want to do is show it off. Many computer cases today come with windows so you can see the inside of the computer. It would be unfortunate if your incredible liquid cooling system was embarrassed by your poor cable management. Bad cable management can even cause damage to your computer. If a stray cable were to get entangled with a fan, the fan would destroy the cable and maybe even short your computer. Cable management is an important component in building a custom PC.

So how do you manage cables anyway? Basically you would guide the cables around components in an elegant way to where they need to go. You would use wire wraps to bundle cables together instead of dealing with many small wires. Most computer cases designed for games are equipped with cable management cables and access holes. After installing the motherboard you would open the computer case from both sides and guide the cables out behind the motherboard instead of out in front where the graphics card is. This creates a classy custom PC that would be the pride of any computer gamer.

My favorite gaming rigs

Here are some of my favorite customized gaming computers I found around the internet!

 

This is a liquid cooled computer with an Intel i5 4670k and 2 AMD Radeon HD 7990s running in crossfire on a Asrock Z87 motherboard with 32GB of memory. I like how it is simple on the outside and powerful on the inside. Like a sleeper. I wanted to call this build simple, but with a liquid cooled CPU and CrossFire graphics cards it is anything but. The ultimate question is, "Does it run Crysis?"

This computer uses one of my favorite cases, the Thermaltake Chase A71 combined with the Asrock 970 motherboard. This all-AMD build has an FX 8320 processor and a single Radeon R9 290. There's only 8GB of RAM... Perhaps it's time for an upgrade?

This is another gaming pc that looks rad but is crying for an upgrade. An Intel core i5 powers an Nvidia GeForce GTX 670. With only 8GB of RAM I would call this weak, but I'm sure it still plays all the games at decent settings. Maybe not the Witcher 3 with the HairWorks turned on, but who does that, right?