This manual is conceived as three volumes, each self-contained yet continuous with the others, so that a reader may begin where his need is greatest and still find the argument whole. The division follows the natural life of a machine, from the choosing of its parts, through their physical union, to the longer reckoning of living with what one has built. The present volume, the first, concerns the components and the reasoning of their selection. It asks what each organ of the computer actually does, how its performance may honestly be measured, and by what disciplined judgement a builder decides what to buy, treating the processor, the graphics card, memory, storage, the motherboard, and the power supply not as isolated purchases but as parties to a single system. The second volume will carry the reader from selection into assembly: the physical marriage of the parts, the configuration of firmware and the operating system, and the patient diagnosis of the machine that refuses to speak. Where the first volume reasons about what ought to be bought, the second concerns itself with what must be done once the boxes are open on the bench. The third volume will turn to the longer questions that outlast the build: cooling and the management of heat, acoustics and the pursuit of silence, reliability, and the slow economics of ownership, upgrade, and eventual replacement over the years rather than the benchmarks. Together the three volumes attempt a single continuous education, of which this is the foundation.
