There are some things that I would love to do at some point in my life, like build a car completely from scratch. Unfortunately that costs far more than buying one made in a factory, and it requires an absurd amount of knowledge that I do not have. The engineer in me gets to have a little fun every once in a while when I decide to build a computer. If you want to build your own laptop, then you will have to look elsewhere because those take too much time for it to be worthwhile to build. A desktop on the other hand I can build in 30 minutes and save $500 off the retail price if I shop in the right place.
If you don’t want to build your own computer, you could always have me configure one to meet your needs from a major brands (HP, Toshiba, Apple, etc.) I do this service free of charge on my Custom Configured PC page.
You don’t need to be technically inclined, you don’t even need to know how to turn a computer on in order to build one. The only part that you can mess up that will cause any damage is if you were to forget to add thermal grease between your processor and heat sink (very simple process, don’t worry). If you are worried about your abilities then just open your current desktop, everything is pretty simple to remove. Just take everything out and then put it all back together, or even better do this on some old computer sitting in your basement. Making your own computer is a great pet project that will save you a lot of money and makes a great conversation piece.
Computer Components List
These are all of the things you will need to build your own computer – the dedicated video card is technically optional but I would never waste my time building a computer without a dedicated GPU. One of the main reasons for building your own computer is to save money, and Newegg consistently provides the best selection and prices on hardware. Talk to any tech out there, and they will probably tell you that they shop exclusively at Newegg.
Here is an important note, rather than picking each component individually you can also get a DIY kit from Newegg, which takes advantage of sales for buying multiple items. You can get a very nice combo pack with minimal effort, that you know all the components will be compatible with each other: DIY PC Combos
- Motherboard
- Chassis/Case
- Power Supply
- CD/DVD drive (Might want to go with Blu-ray, that is where technology is headed)
- Hard Drive(s)
- Sound card (I’m usually fine with the one on the motherboard)
- Video card – Do yourself a favor, if you are a gamer, don’t cheap out.
- RAM – The more the better, I would personally use 16 gigs at the time of this writing.
- CPU (Processor)
- CPU Heat sink
- Thermal compound
- Keyboard/Mouse
- Monitor
- Speakers
- Operating system
Chassis/Computer Case
This is what everybody will see when they look at your beautiful new custom made computer. It is more important than people will give it credit for, it serves three main purposes: Protect the inner parts from dust/damage, allow ventilation to keep the CPU and GPU cool, and provide an interface (IE: USB ports).
What to look for: Built-in fans, pre-installed power supply (Recommended), motherboard compatibility (form factor), matching number of card slots on motherboard. Physical specs, you don’t want something that is monstrous.
Special note: Save yourself the effort, buy a case with a power supply pre-installed. Check the reviews on Newegg to see if they like/don’t like the built in power supply. If you don’t want one built in for whatever reason (such as multiple graphics cards), then buy one to go with the case.
Motherboard
This is the backbone of your computer, all of your components will get plugged into this. Each one is designed with a specific CPU in mind, so shop for your processor while you are shopping for a motherboard. They will clearly advertise which CPU’s they support. You are looking for a matching socket (interface between motherboard & CPU) on the motherboard and CPU you select. At least on Newegg the technical specs will clearly show this. If you want an nVidia (GeForce) graphics card you will want an SLI motherboard. If you want an ATI (Radeon) graphics card you will want a Crossfire motherboard. Both video card brands will work on either, but each is optimized for one of those two brands.
CD/DVD Drive
Here I would definitely pick something that is CD/DVD RW, possible with blu-ray capability; inevitably all games and install discs will be going to blu-ray as well. Depending on how tight your budget is I would recommend you get blu-ray capability while you are at it, you can get a good one for about $100.
Blu-Ray Readers with CD/DVD R/RW capability
Hard Drives
This is an interesting time for hard drives, because with the advent of SSD (solid state disks), it makes your purchasing decision a bit tougher. If you want performance, there is no doubt that a SSD is better than a magnetic disk. The issue is that they are still much more expensive and over time there is a burnout issue on each sector, so for my money I would go with a high RPM magnetic disk. Since they are so cheap right now I would also go for space and grab a 1TB drive at a bare minimum, for myself I would get a 1.5 or 2TB. I would also recommend you get a Western Digital drive, since they have an amazing reputation and I have consistently seen other drives fail at a higher rate. They have maintained their quality despite plunging prices. Since you are taking the time to build your own computer I would go with a good hard drive, the price difference to quality ratio can be great.
Video Card
This is the most important part of your computer if you plan to do intensive gaming or you plan to watch high definition movies. If you are a gamer this is where most of your budget should go. I would highly recommend getting a card that also had HDMI outputs, because even if you don’t have a HD monitor or TV you will eventually. I’ll leave it up to you whether you go with nVidia or ATI, I have always been an ATI fan but lately I have been seeing better hardware coming out of nVidia so I would probably go with an nVidia card for now (waits for hate mail).
The GPU (Graphics processing unit) is basically another CPU that is dedicated to floating point operations, it also consists of far more cores than a conventional processing unit. The beautiful GeForce GTX 260 that I am looking at has 216 cores. The more cores, the faster it will render your graphics and therefore the better your frame rates will be. You want a large cache, many cores, GDDR3 memory type, and a fast clock speed (don’t expect them to be as fast as a CPU, there are far too many cores for that). Make sure that the required power matches your power supply!!! Tech specs are your friend.
Sound Card
If you are an audiophile you might want to get an independent sound card, I just got a pair of Bose Companion 2 speakers so I would probably get a decent sound card to go along with them. The bright side is that the best of sound cards will only run you about $100, anything beyond that point will give you diminishing returns. I would go with Creative if you have the money to spend, you know that you will be getting a high quality product. While you are at it pick up a pair of Bose speaker (If you haven’t listened to Bose speakers at some point in your life you are missing out).
Memory – RAM
If you have read my PC Optimization Guide you would know how important random access memory is to the functioning of your computer. The amount of RAM in your computer is directly correlated to the speed of your computer. For instance lets say you play WoW (World of Warcraft), the game itself takes up well over 15 gigs of HD space, so even if you had 16 gigs of RAM you still wouldn’t hit the speedup ceiling due to OS overhead. I cannot stress this enough, there is no such thing as too much RAM if you are a gamer. If you aren’t, 8 gigs should be your ceiling. If you are a gamer, spend as much as you can afford. I would also like to mention that as we shift into DDR3, the price of DDR2 is highly unstable so prices could actually increase for DDR2 as people search for compatible memory. If you are building your own computer, make sure to get high speed DDR3 memory (and make sure your motherboard supports it). Having bought memory from many companies – these are my brand recommendations: OCZ Reaper, Patriot, G.Skill, and Corsair.
Central Processing Unit (CPU)
This is the heart of your computer, your beloved processor chip. This one is important and I am going to debunk a number that everybody is obsessed with. The processors originally never listed the Gigahertz (Ghz) rating, because the number is determined by an arbitrary test. This was added as a marketing technique, for my money the most important statistic is the size of the L2 and L3 caches. Based on Amdahl’s law the bottle neck doesn’t lie within a processors ability to crunch numbers, it is getting data in fast enough for it to crunch. The L2 and L3 caches are chip based caches that perform the same function as RAM but they are far faster and far smaller and far more expensive. Right now a top of the line i7 processor has a monstrous 8MB L3 cache, and that processor will fly. Before ordering the parts for your DIY computer make sure that the CPU fits into your motherboard’s CPU socket, and make sure to account for the power consumption of a chip such as an i7.
Average consumers can get away with a simple Intel Core2 Duo without any issues.
When shopping for a processor these are the biggest factors: Brand (Intel and AMD are close, but I will always trust Intel a little more). L2 and L3 cache size (Extremely important). Heatsink and fan, if it doesn’t come with this you will need to buy them, to go along with this make sure to buy thermal grease. Don’t cheap out on thermal grease, pay the extra $5 to get Arctic Silver, you are probably spending a small fortune on a processor so protect it.
Processor Chips - Heat Sinks/Fans - Thermal Grease
Accessories/Peripherals
This part should be pretty obvious, and most of this you will probably have already. If you are building you own computer you will want to have a mouse, and a keyboard. If you don’t have these already then you can get them extremely cheap online. Anything else you would like to have, such as speakers would go into this category. If you are playing FPS games such as Counter-Strike I would suggest you do not go with a wireless mouse, and you should read a few of the reviews to make sure you won’t get any twitches.
Keyboards & Mice —–Bose Speakers
Monitor
This will depend completely on how much you want to treat yourself, but most of the time if you are building your own PC it is time for a new monitor as well. There are some great prices on LCD monitors out there, and considering the advancements in multi-core processors and RAM capacity you might be working on many things at once. At work I use a dual-monitor setup which is very easy to achieve, you just need a DVI splitter. At home I just connect my LCD TV to my computer via HDMI, but that might be a little over the top for some. A good monitor only costs ~$130 these days and they will most likely outlive the usefulness of your computer. I have found a bunch of great deals that are making me question my TV connection.
Assembling Your Own Computer
Well now that you have all of your parts it is time for you to actually assemble it. I briefly considered writing my own assembly guide but in reality the internet already has 2-3 great guides. Don’t worry though! I have done the research for you and I managed to find a great guide that outlines the process one step at a time (With pictures!). WikiHow – Build a PC
Operating System
Now that you have bought your parts, and assembled your computer, it is time to install an operating system. There aren’t really that many choices, you will probably end up with Linux or Windows or both. I can say that while Linux is free and does many things in a much more intelligent manner than Microsoft, Windows 7 is what you need if you want to play games. Not only for compatibility reasons (most games/software are designed for Windows), but Windows 7 does a great job of utilizing the multiple cores of today’s computers. Windows XP didn’t really do anything with multi-core or multi-threaded processors, and Windows Vista made a valiant effort, but Windows 7 really is a great piece of software. I don’t always like what Microsoft does (especially with their layouts), but this one is gold.
Drivers
Now that you have all this great stuff, a computer and an operating system, it is time to install drivers so that it will all actually work. Some of the items you bought will require drivers, most of which you can easily find online (or on a disk they provide). Notable drivers to make sure you install: Network, chipset, video card, usb, cd/dvd (Hopefully it will be plug and play). Mouse, keyboard, monitor, etc. should all be plug and play. To check if you have everything installed right click on My Computer and hit manage, go to the device manager. Check for any yellow question marks, if you have a question mark then Google it to find the driver and install it.
Done!
Congratulations, you have made it! It looks like a lot more information to digest than it really is. It boils down to the following: Buy parts, wait for parts, unbox parts, put them in the right holes, apply thermal grease to processor/heat sink, plug in cables, turn on computer, insert Windows disk, install drivers, use computer. Google has the answer to any problem you might have, there are millions out there building their own PC’s and encountering small issues, and usually they will post things online to help out others after the fact. The hardest part of building a computer is setting a budget, you can build a true beast of a machine for $1,000 but that doesn’t mean that the temptation won’t exist to spend $1,000 just on dual GPU’s and a physics card.
My parting note is that you will most likely get the best bang for your buck in buying a lot of RAM and a good hard drive. CPU’s see diminishing returns easily since most people do not put their current processor to use as it is. If you are a gamer, please buy a good video card, otherwise you are just wasting your time, effort, and money.
If you found this guide useful then share it with others, if you are lazy like me just press the retweet button on the top of the page to send it out to your followers. Now that you have a great computer you might want to learn a little bit about keeping it nice and fast on my guide on Speeding up your computer.
