Building a Custom Computer

Building a Custom Computer: Introduction

Welcome to the At IT Bytes series on building a custom computer. Each of these segments will aid you I the building of your new desktop computer. At the end I will offer this entire tutorial in a PDF format for download. I will also put together a video tutorial to go with this. At any time you can text or message me for questions and comments. Please keep all comments and criticisms respectful. My spelling and grammar will not be perfect so please keep those comments to yourself.
If the topic line has caught your attention, then chances are good that you are already considering building your own computer. There are many good reasons to build your own; and you don’t have to be that “techno” savvy to do it. You will, need to do some homework but really that is for comparison. You can control the cost of a build by shopping around and planning ahead a bit. If you use this tutorial as a guideline you can build a box that can easily be expanded to meet newer technologies.
“My first build cost around $1700 dollars but I could update it for pennies compared to buying a new computer. Now I can renew a computer with the latest features for around $200. Warranties and extended warranties benefit the manufacturer and not you. You are betting that product will fail in the warranty period but the manufacturer pretty much knows how long a product will last. Besides chances are that the technology will be obsolete before he warranty runs out.”
Technically speaking an UPGRADE only refers to memory or ram, meaning that the manufacturer left you an open memory slot. Beyond that it is nearly impossible to UPDATE a store bought desktop or laptop. I can put several more hard drives in my desktop, a lot more ram, a 6 core processor and number of other things. Try that with a notebook. I do like the portability of a laptop but for power the desktop is a must. Besides, I just take a flash drive and my cell phone for most service calls.
So now that the decision to build has been made, now it is time to decide what to build. This decision is solely on you. What do you want to do with it? A gamer will want power and looks. If you just do Facebook and a few “flash” games; then you will not need a lot of power. Need can be deceptive though, because if you crunch a lot of numbers or render a lot of digital video or photos, you will need some power as well.