Have you ever wanted to build yourself a gaming computer but weren’t sure on how to do it? In this article I will tell you some of the basic thing’s you need to know about building your own computer, whether you decide to build a gaming computer, office, or just a basic at home computer this article will tell you what you need to know.

A lot of people will tell you that you need to buy certain products first before buying others e.g (cpu, psu, etc) to me that is helpful but I find that first deciding which motherboard you want first is always the best because you may want different things that only particular motherboard may offer to you for example dual video cards, ddr3 memory vs. ddr2 memory etc. ultimately you can start with which ever item you want to first since it’s your money (I hate when people try to tell me what to do J) but for this article we will just go in this order and explain a little bit about each part, what they do for your computer and some very well known name brands. 1.motherboard 2.cpu 3.memory 4.gpu 5.hard drive 6. psu 7. computer case, plus we will be talking about more these are just some of the important things needed for the computer to work.

The motherboard in my opinion is the most important component on the computer. This is sometimes called by many people the brain of the computer. Some of the best motherboard maker’s include EVGA,GIGABYTE, ASUS, FOXCONN, AND BIOSTAR. Finding the right motherboard to suits your needs is very important, not all motherboard’s have the same cpu socket type so want to make you find one that is compatible with the type of cpu that you want. Like I said early to make sure that your motherboard accepts the type of memory that you are wanting to run (ddr2 or ddr3) because that can be a big issue also you may want one that has dual PCI Express 2.0 x16 so that you can use more than one video card if that’s what your looking for also make sure it has at least 2 PCI Express x1 slots for your PCI adapter cards (wifi, capture cards, sound cards). And the last thing on the motherboard is to also find out if the have onboard video or onboard audio as you may or may not want this. Onboard audio and video basicly means that you will not have to install any additional video or audio hardware if you don’t want to.

The cpu also known as the central processing unit, is responsible for processing all the main functions of the computer. The two biggest supplier’s of the parts are intel and amd. Both amd and intel are very good products and run a close competition between them, the main is to decide which socket type you will be using and if you want duel core, quad core, etc. always make sure that your new cpu is compatible with your motherboard. While you might save some money buying a cheaper cpu, I would recommend if you plan to do any type of gaming or high performance that you get a quad core cpu with at least 2.5ghz or better and if you get the right processor and know what your doing that should easily over clock to 3.0 ghz or more. I do not recommend anyone overclock there system without proper knowledge. Seriously you damage your computer.

Now the memory is kind of where you computer store’s short term information that gets passed along while doing things. There are plenty of company’s out there that make good memory but one of my favorite’s is corsair, Some other’s include patriot, ocz, and Kingston just to name a few. Generally there are two basic things to look at in memory which is the speed and size. Generally about 2gb’s of memory or RAM is good for any basic machine but if you want a gaming machine I would go with at least 4gb’s of memory 2 sticks at 2gb a piece (running dual channel memory). As for the speed of the memory some basic speed’s are 5-5-5-18, 8-8-8-24, 4-4-4-12 the lower the number’s the faster the memory will be generally.

Gpu are also called graphic cards or video cards are were you get your video from if you do not have on board video already on your motherboard. Some well known video cards include bfg technologies, visiontek, and xfx. They may have different chipsets depending on which one you decide to get some are nvidia or ati, all of these are good it just depends on what you want and how much money you are willing to spend. Most everyday people will probably want just standard onboard video or maybe a basic graphic card but for the high performance gamer you should probably go with high performance card’s and run them dual.

Hard drive’s are where your computer puts a program that is installed and all other information that is saved. The two biggest hard drive manufacture’s are western digital and Seagate. Western digital offer’s a raptor hard drive that runs at 10,000 rpm’s were as the basic hard drives run at around 7,500 rpm’s. having the faster hard drive does not allow to transfer files faster it simply lets your computer find and access the information you are looking for faster. Also the size of the hard drives differ from about 10gb to at least 1tb. If you are doing basic computing I would go with a western digital or Seagate 300gb hard drive.

The psu or the power supply unit is what powers your whole computer system, Some good psu maker’s are abs labs, coolermaster, and thermaltake. The wattage is the most important thing about you psu as you want to make sure your new psu has enough wattage to power your machine. Most high performance gaming machine’s have anywhere from 800 to 1300 watt psu’s depending on the type of hardware. There are several programs you can find on the internet that will list the specific wattage amount if you list every part on your machine. A basic at home computer usually calls for about 500 to 600 watts of power, also if your wanting to conserve space inside your case you might want to go with a psu that is modular so only use the wires you need.

Now you are going to need something to store all of your new computer parts and that is where the computer case comes in. rosewill, raidmax, apevia, and personally my favorite cooler master all make some of the best computer cases. They come in different sizes depending on how many hard drives, dvd or cd drives, etc you have, they come in ATX full towers, ATX mid tower, and ATX mini tower just to name a few and can vary depending on which model you have. Full tower’s are good for people who have multiple pieces of hardware and are worried about running out of space, but for the average computer guy a mid tower will be fine. Be careful with the mini towers because a lot of times you may only have room for a hard drive and floppy depending on which model you have and you often room out of room very quick.

Now if you want to add multiple dvd-cd drives, floppy etc. there are plenty of good accessories you can put into your new computer. You might be interested in experimenting with lightscribing if you have never done so a lot of the new dvd drives have the capability to burn the label on the flip side of the dvd instead of writing it on there oldschool with a sharpie or pen. There are also some good fan controller’s that mount in the disk drive bays of the computer case. These are just some of the basic things that the computer needs to function properly and hopefully after reading this article it will give you an idea of how to build you own computer.