Where Do I (re)Begin?

I've been out of the custom rig building scene for a few years too long now and feel like I've lost my edge and understanding of the more recent technology (PCIe what?). Does anyone know where I can go to reacquaint myself with the hows and whatfors in terms of components (What DDR are we on now? Quadcore, whosit?)

I used to work in IT, I've built tons of custom rigs in the past, and been into the more advanced side of PCs for almost 10 years now so I'm not looking for a beginner's guide, just something to catch me up on what's out there now.

Any advice and links would be greatly appreciated!

hmmm... well DDR3 (some still use DDR2) triple channel and dual channel... when I get home I'll try to dig up some of my old links and bookmarks if they aren't posted before

This is the place to learn it. Just ask questions in the appropriate forums.

If you don't know from PCIe you've probably been gone since like socket 478 times.

Basically, changes are as follows:

Everything is more, for cheaper, of course.

Motherboards tend to be much better for overclocking, even at the bottom end

The current FAB process is 45nm. 40nm process exist (ie, ATI 4770 GPU) and 32nm process (ie, some solid state drives)

we were @ 65nm by about 2006

90 around 2004

Intel's current sockets 1366 1156

AMD AM3

ATI is now part of AMD

AMD gives you a higher performance per dollar ratio

we've gone from DDR (where you likely left) to DDR2 (works @ 2x bus speed) and DDR3 (works at 3x bus speed)-- this is, ofcourse, at a setting of 1:1, but I don't want to blab here.

Standard memory config is still dual channel, however intel's 1366 uses 3 channels

current generation chipsets have DONE AWAY WITH A NORTHBRIDGE. This is what's really different, and I still don't get it. I'd research here first if I were you. Memory controllers are now on-die

Pci express has replaced AGP.

standard power consumption has gone way up in the high end.
A super high end SLI machine can require a terrawatt PSU

We use serial ATA. No ribbon cables.
RAID (the striping together in one of many configs of several drives) is now easily handled onboard by any current motherboard and works very well for even faster transfers.

STABLE, reliable 10,000RPM drives are readily available
Even better, solid state drives (which use NAND FLASH instead of moving parts) are coming down in price, and are spectacular.

Theocnoob said:

A super high end SLI machine can require a terrawatt PSU

Click to expand...

I'm assuming you meant this as a joke? You really mean kilowatt (1,000), right? Not 1,000,000,000,000 watts?

ya 1000 watts

Otherwise it'd be using more juice than a flux capacitor- and that's only 1.21 Gigawatts.

Right. We're not trying to do time travel here... At least not ALL of us anyway.

Just checkout threads where people asking to critique their build. Find one of those that fits your budget and follow the guide. You'll have no problem putting it together (cables still only fit one way).

Some changes you might find different:
PCI-e is PCI-express...it's what video cards run off of since AGP doesn't have the bandwidth.
SATA, serial ATA, replaced PATA (parrallel...the annoying thick cables are gone)
Alot of PSU's are modular (you don't have to have 50 extra 4 pin molex cables hanging out)
DDR3 is the current standard, but if you're going for a budget build, DDR2 is the way to go (It's dirt cheap, 30 bucks gets you 4gb)
Onboard sound is almost the defacto standard for audio.
Video cards are HUGE and require up to 2 additional power inputs (called 6 pin connects...stupid IMHO as it's just 12v and ground, but they wanted to get fancy and use 6 wires to do what 2 could...or 12 in some cases, but I digress)
You must get a 64bit operating system to utilize over 3gb of RAM
RAID 0 for Hard drives is very common and there's a thing called "intel matrix RAID" which you need to read about.
windows 7 is shipping already so I recommend building with that.
And LCD's are the hip thing, checkout the display section for specific panel info

Open your mouth and get ready for the firehose!

This is great guys, I feel like things are already falling back into place for me.

Flurp, if you do happen across those bookmarks, let me know; always ready to learn more.