professorjrod@gmail.com

What if the real cause of your random reboots isn’t the GPU at all—but the power plan behind it? We take you end to end through a stability-first build, starting with the underrated hero of every system: clean, properly sized power. You’ll learn how to calculate wattage with 25–30% headroom, navigate 80 Plus efficiency tiers, and safely adopt ATX 3.0 with the 12VHPWR connector—no sharp bends, modular cable sanity, and the UPS/surge stack that prevents nasty surprises when the lights flicker.

From there, we shift into storage strategy that balances speed and safety. HDD, SATA SSD, and NVMe each earn their place, and we break down RAID 0/1/5/6/10 in plain language so you can pick the right array for your workload. We underline a hard truth: RAID protects against disk failure, not human error, so versioned offsite backups remain non-negotiable. Real-world stories—including a painful RAID 5 rebuild gone wrong—highlight why RAID 6 and RAID 10 matter for bigger or busier systems.

Memory and CPU round out the backbone. We simplify DDR4 vs DDR5, explain how frequency and CAS affect real latency, and show why matched pairs and dual channel deliver the performance you paid for. You’ll get quick wins like enabling XMP/EXPO, when ECC is worth it, and how to troubleshoot training hiccups. Then we open the CPU: cores, threads, cache, sockets, chipsets, and why firmware comes before hardware when upgrades fail to post. Cooling decisions—air, AIO, or custom—tie directly to performance ceilings, along with safe overclock/undervolt practices and thermal targets under sustained load.

By the end, you’ll have a practical checklist to build smarter, troubleshoot faster, and feel ready for the CompTIA A+ exam: power headroom, cable stewardship, airflow planning, RAID with backups, memory matching, BIOS compatibility, and validation testing. If this guide helps you ship a rock-solid PC, share it with a friend, leave a quick review, and hit follow so you never miss the next masterclass.

Support the show

If you want to help me with my research please e-mail me.
Professorjrod@gmail.com

If you want to join my question/answer zoom class e-mail me at
Professorjrod@gmail.com

Art By Sarah/Desmond
Music by Joakim Karud
Little chacha Productions

Juan Rodriguez can be reached at
TikTok @ProfessorJrod
ProfessorJRod@gmail.com
@Prof_JRod
Instagram ProfessorJRod