This article will talk about the last components you need for your computer. These include, cooling accessories - heatsinks, fans, water cooling etc., monitors, keyboards & mice and speakers.

Cooling is an important consideration when building a PC.This is because all of your components, especially the CPU and GPU generate a lot of heat. This heat needs to be taken out of the case quickly to keep the components running at peak efficiency level. The most common way of dispersing of this heat is heatsinks and fans.

Fans are placed at the front and rear of the case, the front one brings in fresh cool air and the rear fan exhausts hot air. This is the minimum amount of cooling you should have in your PC. The heatsinks are placed over the components which need cooling and thin fins of either aluminium or copper bring the heat from the components to the top of the fins and when air from fans is blown over the fins, the heat is removed.

There are two types of air cooling. These are passive and active. In a passive cooling system, no fans are required over the heatsinks. The heatsinks stand by themselves and often they also use a combination of heatpipes. The advantage is that the system is very quiet. The disadvantage being, if you don't have proper airflow in your case, components can easily overheat. Active cooling involves a fan over the heatsinks to provide airflow over the heatsinks fins. Intel and AMD's boxed processor always comes with an active heatsink as passive heatsinks cost a lot more and need heat pipes and thinner fins to dissipate the heat. If you want a quiet system, it is worth considering buying a third party passive heatsink.

Another more drastic measure and more geared towards the enthusiast is water cooling. This is basically the requirement of a pump and reservoir and lots of pipes. Water flows through pipes into a specially made CPU water block. Water blocks are also available for other components like the GPU, RAM, northbridge and just about any other component in your system. The water passes through the water blocks and take the heat with it. The water is transferred in a loop to a reservoir and the heat in the water is dissipated. This is a very effective cooling solution but it is quite expensive and requires a lot of maintenance. There is also a danger of pipes leaking and your computer being filled with water.

These are the main methods of cooling for your computer.

Choosing the monitor is one of the least complicated parts of the whole computer. Monitors have a huge range of sizes with the most common being 15"-30" monitors. Prices of monitors are always going down. For now the best value monitors seem to be at 22" (or sometimes 21.5"). These monitors can be had for as little as AUD$250 for a fairly decent one. This is the size most people are comfortable with having on their desk as it is not too big but not too small.

One thing to look out for before purchasing monitors is the response time. This is the rate at which the picture refreshes on an LCD screen to show movement. When the response time is too slow, you get motion blur with fast moving objects. If you are planning on using the computer to view movies you need something with a very fast refresh rate. The normal rate is 5ms but monitors with 2ms refresh rate can also be bought. 5ms is usually enough for most people with only gamersneeding anything faster. With 5ms you do not have any noticeable motion blur in movies and other everyday uses.

Another thing to look out for is the contrast ratio. This is the ratio between the whitest white and the blackest black. For example 1:1000 shows the whitest white at 1 and blackest black at 1000. The white will always be at 1 but the black levels vary significantly. If the contrast ratio is low, blacks on the screen will appear a dull grey. A lot of monitors have large numbers for the dynamic contrast ratio such as 1:5,000,000. This is a figure you should disregard. Dynamic contrast is artificially enhancing the picture and actually lowers the overall picture quality so it is never actually practical to use it. A decent ratio for a monitor is something like 1:3000. Currently, OLED TVs have been shown with ratios of 1:1,000,000 but have not become mainstream since they are very expensive to produce. Recently smartphones from Samsung ahve started appearing with AMOLED screens so it is only a matter of time before TVs and monitors take up this technology especially considering its picture quality and low energy consumption.

Resolution plays a key role in your choice of monitor. The higher the resolution, the more screen real estate you ahve but the trade off is that the font sizes are too small. Of course, in Windows 7 there is an easy way to increase the font size so you can still have a high resolution display for watching movies and playing games while not sacrificing the font size you are comfortable with. A good resolution for today with full HD movies and games is 1920x1080. This way you can watch Blu-Ray movies on your PC the way they were meant to be watched. There are higher resolution screens which are good for photographers and designers so you can have heaps of scren real estate to work comfortably. If you find you don't have enough screen real estate, another option to consider would be to buy a second or even third monitor to put side by side so you can extend your desktop over two or three monitors instead of one. Usually, the best way to go is to buy a 22-24 inch monitor with the highest resolution you can.

Due to the high number of monitors on the market today, there are also a few interfaces to connect these monitors to computers. The first one is Video Graphics Array (VGA). VGA is an old format and is analogue so the picture quality is inferior to the newer technologies. Some cheaper monitors still use this and although the picture quality is okay, it is not the best you can get out of your monitor. The newer formats are High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), Digital Video Interface (DVI) and Displayport. Both HDMI and DVI are virtually identical in terms of image quality but the connectors are different. The difference between them both is that HDMI can transmit sound as well as video signals. Many video cards which have DVI will come with an adapter to convert the port into HDMI as many monitors are starting to adopt this format. Displayport is not as common but some monitors still offer it. It is especially popular among Apple monitors which have used the Displayport interface for a long time. Most monitors will have multiple inputs to offer maximum compatibility but in order to maximise quality, it is best to use one of the digital interfaces (DVI, HDMI or Displayport)

These are the main things to put into consideration when shopping for a new monitor.

Keyboards and Mice are solely based on personal preference. You can either buy a cheap combo with a basic mouse and keyboard or an expensive set with a bluetooth mouse, lots of extra buttons and a recharging station. You could also buy an ergonomic keyboard which conforms to your wrists natural resting position or get a gaming mouse and keyboard with an LCD screen and fast response. It is all based on your own needs. If you need lots of extra buttons, then buy a mouse like that. If you want more freedom, buy a cordless mouse and keyboard. This doesn't affect the computers performance, just your comfort when using it.

Speakers can be personalised just as much as the keyboard and mouse. It can be matched with your needs. For example, if you barely listen to music on your computer you can opt for a cheap $15 set of speakers. You can get some nice compact speakers if you are short of space but still want sound quality. Bose sells a small 2.0 speaker set for AUD$499 for those who listen to music constantly or just enjoy having expensive things around them. You could also buy something with a subwoofer or even a full 5.1 surround sound system for watching movies on. There is a lot of choice when it comes to speakers.

Another thing is the sound card. This is where you speakers plug into and the sound is processed and outputted. Usually it is built into the motherboard. One can also be bought separately if you have more advanced needs though. Most motherboards come with 6 channel sound cards which is enough to have a decent surround system if that's what you want. Separate cards come with inbuilt RAM and often have a front bay to allow extra speakers or headphones to be plugged in. For most users the inbuilt sound card is adequate but some gamers prefer a seperate sound card for even better quality sound as well as less computer resources being taken up in sound processing.