Reddit reviews Upgrading and Repairing PCs (21st Edition)

1200 pages. Get reading.

On a more serious note, just keep reading and learning. If you come across a term you don't know what it means, google it for pictures, and to understand what it does.

One of the best books on the topic. It's been revised year after year. While I can't speak to this current version, I used an earlier version years ago and it had just about everything you could ever want to know on the hardware side of things.

http://www.amazon.com/Upgrading-Repairing-21st-Scott-Mueller/dp/0789750007

Agree. It depends on what you want to know, and how much you're willing to commit to learning. It's a big world. Code is a nice book if you want a very very simple explanation of the basics of bits and bytes and logic gates. It might be a good place to start, though it's intended for a non-technical audience and you may find it a little TOO simple. A proper digital systems book will go in to much more detail about digital logic (AND gates, flip-flops etc.). You might be surprised just how easy to learn the fundamentals are. I learned from Tocci which I found to be excellent, but that was a long time ago and I'm sure there's many other good ones around.

That's pretty low level digit circuits though. If you are really serious about learning computer architecture, I'd highly recommend Patterson and Hennssey . It covers the guts of how processors execute instructions, pipelining, caches, virtual memory and more.

If you're more interested in specific, modern technologies... then obviously Wikipedia, or good tech review sites. Especially reviews that focus on major new architectures. I remember reading lots of good in depth stuff about Intel's Nehalem architecture back when it was new, or nvidia's Fermi. There's a wealth of information out there about CUDA and GPU computing which may give you a sense of how GPUs are so different to CPUs. Also when I first started learning many years ago, I loved my copy of Upgrading and Repairing PCs , great for a less technical, more hobbyist perspective.

Lastly, ask questions! For example, you ask about DDR vs GDDR. Deep inside the memory chips themselves, actually not a great deal of difference. But the interface between the memory and the processor are quite different, they're designed for very different purposes. I'm simplifying here but CPUs have relatively low levels of parallism, they tend to operate on small units of memory (say a single value) at a time, they have quite unpredictable access patterns so low latency is essential, and the cores often work tightly together so coherency has to be maintained. With GPUs, they have a very predictable access pattern, so you can load much larger chunks at a time, latency is less important since you can easily keep your processors busy while memory is streamed in, and the GPUs many many tiny processors for the most part all work on separate words of memory, so coherence usually does not need to be maintained and they have much less need for caches.

The "L" (Level) naming for caches is quite simple. Memory that is closer to the core is faster to access. Generally each core has it's own L1 and L2, with L2 being slightly slower but there's more of it, and all cores share an L3, slower still but way more of it. Memory on the cpu is made out of transistors and is super fast but also takes up alot of space. Look how big the L3 is (here)[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-review-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested] and that's just 20MB. external ram is obviously much slower, but it is made out of capacitors and has much higher densities.

So I thought about writing such a post and I started an outline when I realized that it's going to turn into a textbook which will rapidly become obsolete. And then I remembered that someone already wrote it and I read the thing cover to cover when I was a kid:

http://www.amazon.com/Upgrading-Repairing-PCs-21st-Edition/dp/0789750007/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1E2A3Z3N0Q2WV4MBXA4K

Go to your library or bookstore or whatever and get a copy before you do anything else. Seriously.

On the other hand there's a need for the homelab community to encourage fresh blood so they can get real jobs and contribute something. I was really lucky and had good mentors when I was growing up. I have trouble imagining myself in my current position had they not gently applied the dumbass correction stick now and then.

If you want you can message me privately and I can answer your questions. I'll filter the good ones up to /r/homelab in a writeup.

The bottom line is that part of putting together a homelab necessarily requires dealing with an extremely fast paced industry. A huge part of creating and maintaining a homelab is learning how to learn at the speed of the industry. I think most of us would agree that specing a build without at least a few hours of refreshing current knowledge is nuts. If you're not constantly testing new stuff in your lab then why bother having it?

That being said, I can answer a few of your basic questions:

> explaining the basics of different kinds of servers

They're all basically the same: it's just a computer which is more reliable than a typical PC. This usually means it has ECC memory, redundant disks (RAID), and some kind of out of band management so you don't have to touch it to fix it. Generally you want to get different cheap ones from your local flea market or ebay so you can learn about the nuances between different vendors. Don't blow all your cash on nice stuff, you'll limit your learning opportunities.

Intel wants you to think that Xeon == server but I've got a Celeron J1900 drawing about 20 watts and it's one of the nicest little server boards I've ever owned. Bottom line: go try it for yourself. If it runs your server software then it's a server, period.

> What are RAID controllers

A hardware RAID controller gangs together a bunch of disks so they look like one big one. This allows the operating system to save time by issuing one input or output request to all the disks at the same time. That way if one disk fails the data is still available. Some RAID controllers are "software RAID" because they cheat and only help with the math to write the fault tolerance data. These software controllers are cheaper but slower because the OS has to issue one I/O request per disk. You really should just get a crappy one and some crappy disks and mess around with them to help the concepts stick.

> a list of kind of software people should have to make sure things are secure and will work.

This is going to get expensive real fast. My usual recommendation for broke people is spiceworks, Windows Defender and some kind of netflow analyzer like ntop.

As far as making sure things will work, it hasn't been invented yet. The entire point of the lab is to try things and see if they work together.

> hyper visor, server OS, firewall

I recommend Ubuntu or CentOS and kvm as the hypervisor. (I personally cut my teeth on FreeBSD and still recommend it but the learning curve is really steep.) If you can't deal with Linux then get Hyper-V Server 2012 R2:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2012-r2

You'll need hvremote to configure it, unless you feel like learning about DCOM guts first:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/hyper-v-remote-management-26d127c6

As far as the server OS goes it depends on what you want to run on top of it. Evaluations are free, go try them!

> the amount of RAM you should use based on what your doing.

If apps are slow you probably need more. Really, it's that simple. See, memory is like money: it's a precious resource and it's a waste if you're not at least getting interest on it. Memory is faster than disk, so the OS keeps copies of the stuff on the disk in what would be your free memory. If the cached memory (see the performance tab in task manager on Windows) is less than say 5% of your total amount of memory then you don't have enough.

> what components and software make up a good server.

ECC memory, hardware RAID, and out of band management at a minimum. But don't focus on getting a "good" server. Focus on getting lots of crappy ones and building redundancy. It's cheaper and you get a wider variety of experience. The minor quality differences between the products will become apparent very quickly. Pontificating about which product is "better" is a huge waste of time. Get stuff and try it.

> someone could explain how you can start having more then one box hooked up and getting switches and ether-nets involved

I usually take the house address, divide by 256 and take the remainder (modulo operation). Example: 31337 divided by 256 has remainder 105. Let's call this X. Use these settings:

Network: 192.168.X.0
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway (router): 192.168.X.1
DHCP range: 192.168.X.100-200
Switches (if managed) : 192.168.X.250 + switch number

Just plug everything into switches and connect the switches together. Don't plug any switch into itself and don't plug any switches together with more than one cable. If you want to know more then you'll have to read a book.

http://www.amazon.com/Upgrading-Repairing-21st-Scott-Mueller/dp/0789750007/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409287466&sr=1-1&keywords=upgrading+and+repairing+pcs

This book... trust me on this, you want it, it's more information than you'll ever use...