Building a PC: not as hard as it sounds

Thanks to my gaming laptop going haywire lately and overheating (and, consequently, shutting down) when I'm gaming and, troublingly so, even when I'm not, I've decided to start building a new gaming PC. This may seem like rocket science to people who've never built a PC but, trust me, it's the way to go. It's slightly more complicated than choosing a ready made PC or laptop and marginally more complicated than buying a plug-and-play console (heck, even I was tempted to get an X-Box 360 instead just yesterday). I find that building a PC boils down to three steps. Let's break it down.

1) Decide what the PC's gonna be for. If it's a gaming PC, it needs a good graphics card and solid components in the other areas. If it's gonna be a work PC, it will need solid components, and depending on the kind of work, maybe raw processing power and loads of memory. If it's going to be an all purpose PC, it will need a bit of everything. Decide what your PC's duties will be. Will it serve as a media PC, a gaming one or a work one? Keep its purpose in mind when building it: it will help you from getting sidetracked when getting the components.


2) Build on a budget: Unless you're filthy rich, you don't have to buy the absolutely newest shiny and expensive components for your PC. This has a lot to do with step one, of course. Set up an original budget and don't go over it unless it's really, really worth it. You can usually scrape some components off your previous computer, assuming it isn't very old, like memory or hard drives, or even paraphernalia such as a monitor or DVD drives. It's important to try and keep yourself within budget at this point, mostly because it's easy to do if you want. And the way this economy's going, it's a shame to spend more when you could spend less. Research the components at different retailers, hunt them down off the internet and don't lose focus of what you need. A $100 graphics card may offer the same framerates as a $1000 one if the processor bottlenecks its performance, and the difference between a $200 processor and a $400 one is insignificant if all you're going to be doing with your computer is surfing the web, listening to music, watching DVDs etc.


3) Ask for help. There's no shame in asking someone for advice or to help you in your search for components (like a asked my brother. Cheers, bro) or asking someone more experienced than you to help you actually build the thing if you have no idea how to do it or haven't built one in years and are insecure about your skills in doing it (like I'm asking Sam from over at Nibble & Byte: check his blog out!). You can always find someone willing to help you, and it may be more troublesome than getting a ready PC, but it's much better. If anything, for the sense of accomplishment.

Oh, and the achievement points. Gz!