If you want the most upgradable, personal, strongest PC, the only one way is to build it by yourself. With the constant dropping of the price, now its the right time to have one.
I have built PC for myself few times, and I have to say I got lot of satisfaction from it. Good thing about building a PC is that you can save money. When I was still in school all the friends from my class were always asking me to find the right components and build pc for them, I really enjoyed that.
If you go to store and buy finished build, you get good quality but sometimes for the same price you can custom build yours and its going to be a lot better and more powerful then one from the store. There have been situations where customers were cheated. People that are beginners in this field go and simply buy a PC. They just say they want a good gaming PC and never open the build to see what parts are exactly inside. This also happens a lot when parents are buying computers for their kids. The best way to properly do it, is go around different shopping centers and see where is the lowest price for component you need. First, take a look at this simple infographic below to see which parts for building a PC you need, and then I’ll explain everything in detail based on my personal experience:
When you are starting to build your PC you gotta ask yourself for what purpose it will be. If using for home, work or office, its gonna be different from lets say gaming PC. But anyway regardless of what type of PC, every build needs same basic components.
One of key things when building is to find a good CPU that suits you. This is the brain of PC. Don’t forget to check out how much power CPU is using and does it has cooling. Make a good research and know your limit, you don’t want to spend half of your budget on CPU and then buy the rest of the components at pretty low quality, you have to balance. For example Intel company has I3, I5 and I7 processors. It all depends how much cores CPU has.
Next step is to get a motherboard that fits. The motherboard connects all your parts inside your PC. Buying motherboard depends a lot of your CPU version. Most common motherboards are branded ATX, which is normal size version of it. You got to make sure that all your other components are supported by your motherboard. If you plan to have a lot of RAM, then make sure it can hold at least 4 sockets. My top choice would be Deluxe X99 from Asus company.
Lets move on to RAM’s. Which means random access memory. If you plan to do much work at once, like listening to music, use Photoshop, playing games, surfing on web or editing videos you have to get a lot of memory. In todays industry 16 GB is enough for all your needs. If you dont have enough rams your programs and PC will run much slower. RAM sticks usually come into pairs of 2, they should have the same speed and come from same brand. I think the best company which makes RAM’s is Corsair, their’s Dominator Platinum Series is Top class. Also, good brand is Ripjaws.
Of course, you should get hard disk which has enough space you can save or store all your data on it. Hard disks became more cheaper through years. I own external hard drive from Western Digital company. Its great brand and they produce one of best external and internal hard disks. You could also buy SSD, which is super fast disk, this can be used for system disk. You install all your programs and Windows on that and it runs and boots super quick. My top choice would be Black version of Western Digital, its perfect for everything.
And now, my favorite part of entire build. Yes, you probably guessed it. A graphic card. There’s so many versions to choose. But, there are only few who take the medal. Graphic cards are essential thing especially for playing video games. I own PlayStation 4 and honestly its just a middle range PC inside when you take parts out. There are graphics cards that are so expensive that it’s ridiculous, but most of cards in that range of price are not even needed to play the latest games or watch HD videos. These high end cards alone cost more then entire PlayStation 4 console! ( just for comparison ). A good graphic card can last for about 5 years, which means its possible to play all the upcoming games in that age period, later you can just sell it and with extra adding money buy a new one. There are 2 main players in producing cards. One company is ATI and second Nvidia. For years I’ve been ATI fan but not anymore, Nvidia is producing better quality graphic cards. My top pick would be Nvidia’s GTX 980 model or GTX Titan X, but the second one is high priced, something around 1000$.
Also, you should pick a good case for build! This is for me really important, because it holds all your components. I want it to look sexy and sleeky, but not like some mini space ship. So I’ve found a perfect match for me, its coming from Fractal Design company, you should check it out! They make really high quality cases for good price.
And lastly, don’t forget to choose the right power supply. Make sure it can handle all your components power. Some of the PC cases already come with installed supplies. If you dont receive yours with it, dont just make a quick decision over it, because if you pick the wrong one or too weak, it can damage all your other components. My choice would be Corsair AX version. You can choose from various percentage of watts.
Building a PC step by step
Now, after you researched everything on internet and magazines, its time for building a PC. First what you’re going to do is open your case from back, or side, wear gloves because you can cut yourself on sharp metals inside. After that, first connect your power supply, after you installed this, put motherboard inside the case. Then take the package from your processor and take a good look at the missing pins in the CPU so you can know how to match them with motherboard, install the processor.
Don’t forget to apply good thermal paste to CPU, not too much because it can slow heat transfer. Next step is installing RAM. You should open the latches on motherboard and properly insert them, be careful because if you do it wrong you can burn up your motherboard. After you’ve done this, you should carefully secure motherboard. Plug in all the remaining cables and case connectors. Install your graphic card. You would probably need to remove few plates so card can fit in properly, when installed you should secure card also in the back of your case. Insert optical drives. Just remove the front panels on case easy, slide your hard drive inside in 3,5” bay inside case. These are final steps, adjust all the wires and connect wires for graphic cards and hard drives. Of course don’t forget to install fans so your system can cool nicely. Put the case together, and boot up the system, if everything is good, you should be welcomed with the launching screen.
So there you have it, at first building a PC looks intimidating, but its actually quite easy, especially if you’re into this tech stuff. Enjoy your new PC, and the rush of excitement when you press the power button for the first time, and you hear all the beep sounds and clicks along with the system booting up and monitor turning on for the first time!
