What to read about computer hardware?

Question

Iron

My field is IT, separate parts of mathematics and a little more management. Specialization, of course, drives and beeps, but as a minus, there is an almost complete lack of understanding of the work of iron. For me, it's more of an abstraction.

But it's time to upgrade your home desktop. Basically it is a powerful home development machine, a host machine for home network virtual servers and sometimes I like to play something on it. OSU with the release will be ubunta 10.10. Yes, there are still calculations, parallel algorithms and the topic of CUDA attracts more and more.

It seems that you need a powerful processor, a video card (or maybe two?), fast memory and a mother suitable for this.

The problem is that, in my opinion, many characteristics of modern components were written by marketing lags, and pricing for them generally remains a mystery behind seven seals. How to choose the appropriate configuration, optimal in terms of price / quality for my tasks, is now a mystery to me. And I don't think anyone would do it for me.

Is there something that tells about the architecture of a modern computer in a language accessible to a beginner?

Answer 1

ixbt.com
3dnews.ru
overclokers.ru
thg.ru
Read articles on these sites and try to build a complete picture.

Answer 2

Very intelligible reviews - here:
www.fcenter.ru/online.shtml?articles/hardware/choose

Answer 3

Mikhail Guk "IBM PC Hardware"