I need a resource about building/upgrading?

[TracyBluebird]

At the beginning of the summer, based on what I learned here, I was able to upgrade an HP with a crashed harddrive, and a Dell. Both are now super fast, and quiet and cool, and I am basically happy with what I acccomplished for a few hundred dollars---all in an effort to avoid Vista, which makes me want to frisbee my laptop out the patio door on a regular basis.

My issue is, I basically learned a lot of stuff by trial and error (like the HP's new drive is on the I-Drive); I have a pretty good intuition about things, like I installed some speakers and helped my upgraded Dell find the sound card. I got my friend some new memory, and the person in the store, gave me the wrong type. After I read about the different types, it was OBVIOUS to me the person was an idiot, but I felt like an idiot because I did not know about memory.

I want to know about what you can and can't do when upgrading and building. I don't want to just go stuffing parts in the thing if the processor can't handle it, if it's not worth it, etc.

Here's the issue. I often have no idea what I did to get to where I fixed things. I don't know the "vocabulary," I want it all in once place, what things are, how things work. I don't even know what this kind of instruction would be called. Like in DEVICE MANAGER I want to know what all that crap is and how it works!

I want one place to learn a lot about the guts of the computer.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I just joined as a Premuium member, and know PCMech is a great resource!

TBird

[flanzig1]

First, Google is your friend. And, yes, PCMech is a good source of info for the builder. If your looking for comparisions of hardware then Tom's Hardware site is the place to go. For tweaking Windows, Black Viper's site.