[GUIDE] Buying Parts For Your First Custom Build

[Confucius]

Hello, today I am going to write a little guide that will hopefully help you chose the right parts for you at a great deal when building your first custom desktop. I know when I built my first I had many questions and I was lucky enough to have a friend who helped me out the entire way, but if you don't have a friend like that hopefully this guide can be your new friend!


Choosing the right site

For Research

First things first you are going to need a good site to get your information from. Even if you are not buying from this site you still want to have a site where you can find the product you want, read the reviews, and see what their price is for this. I personally recommend newegg.com, I have bought from them many times and they also always have great reviews by customers. If for some reason you can't find what you're looking for from them then you could also try out tigerdirect.com.


Please remember that these are just two sites that I personally use and have had great experiences with! There are many others and you should always remember to look around at many sites before choosing one you are going to buy from, however we will cover the buying part later in this guide; for now these are two sites that you can use for great helpful reviews and information about the product you are thinking about buying!


Also remember you don't just have to use sites for research, you could go to your local computer shop and ask about parts, or maybe to a friend who has built before. Just remember not to take research lightly, this is your computer you are building and it could end up costing a lot of money; so it's important to research the parts to make sure you are getting the right parts for your needs and also to make sure that these parts are high quality!

For Buying

Once you figure out what parts you want to use and you are sure on what you want your computer to be it's now time to choose where you are going to buy these parts from. This is not a decision to be taking lightly, always remember to look around for the best deals while also making sure that it is a site with good reputation to buy from.


You don't have to buy all your parts at once shop, while it could make it a lot easier for tracking your order and for paying it off always remember to consider buying from multiple places if you find the same product for cheaper some place else. Also look for sites that bundle your products like newegg, for example if you are buying a motherboard and a cpu at the same time there may be a bundle happening where if you buy both together you get a nice discount! While we're on the topic of bundles also remember to consider buying another product if it is in a bundle with another product you want to buy, but remember to research this product first to make sure it is right for you.


For some ideas of where to buy from I recommend searching newegg.com, tigerdirect.com, and amazon.com as your three main sites for deals; however please remember there are always many other shops to buy from that may offer even better deals. Google's shop search feature is a great feature for you to be able to easily see shops that sell what you're looking for with their prices all lined up, along with a rating for that site. Also remember you don't always have to buy online! You may find better deals at your local computer shop or office store, so always remember to phone them or go check it out yourself before placing the order online.


Choosing the right pieces

Decide what type of machine you need

This is probably the most important step to building a new computer, deciding what type of machine fits your needs. If you are a heavy gamer then the graphics card will be one of your most important features; however if you are more into video rendering you are going to need some nice ram to get the job done. Maybe you just want a computer to browse the web and play the occasional game but you want to save money on it, well then you aren't going to need extreme specs for your needs.


The first thing you are going to need to look at is what companies you are going to want to buy from, there are many different companies that sell similar products and it's up to you to decide which one you want to get. Probably the most important product to look at first is your motherboard, this will decide what other products you are able to buy in order to build your computer. Even though when people brag about their computer they don't include this detail, it is still a very, very important part of the PC and you have to decide which company you are going to go with. For this I recommend going on the site you are using for research and just sorting the motherboard category with best ratings along with filters for what you are looking for. I personally use gigabyte for my mobo, but the choice is up to you and I am not going to post any suggestions here because it's you building your new desktop and so it should ultimately be up to you to decide what you think is best!


Now that you have chosen a motherboard you are going to need to decide on your cpu, ram, and gfx card, among other things. The most important thing to remember here is to get products within the same range, for example you don't want to have the newest fastest greatest cpu but then only have 2gb ram to power it! The same thing goes for all the other parts, if you are not sure about what range products are in you could look for examples of custom builds people have posted, this will usually give you a good idea. Also if you are using a site like newegg when you go to check out they may have a bundle of two products, these two products normally are in the same range.

Cost to power ratio

Another very important thing to consider is your cost to power ratio, these means don't blow 300 dollars more on a gfx card that may only increase your in game fps by four frames. If you are wondering if the cheaper product has a better power to cost then the higher priced one look around at other products in the same price range and read the reviews. You could also look at benchmark results, and remember the price to power ratio is however you deem it. For example you may thing that four fps more is worth one hundred dollars more while the other person may thing differently; it's your machine and you decide what you are going to put into it, which is one of the great thing about building your own desktop.


Another thing to keep in mind while looking at the price to power ratio is that while the more expensive product may be better for future games you have to remember you can always upgrade your custom build! And chances are by the time you have to upgrade the higher costing product will have lowered in price. Also if you are not sure if you need 8gb ram or 12gb ram, or two gfx cards or one I always recommend buying the lower costing solution first and then if you find out you aren't getting all the power you need you can buy the extra ram or gfx card later down the road, instead of buying the higher priced solution and finding out that you have a machine way over powered for your needs.


Putting it all together


This part isn't about putting the actual machine together but about putting together the words said above. Remember that the machine you are building is your own and in the end all decisions come down to you and your price range. Remember to always look around for the best deals and to make reasonable decisions on your machine. Also remember to buy all the parts you are going to need and not to buy parts you aren't going to need! For example you won't need a wireless card if you aren't going to be using wireless internet! And you may not need a disc drive if you never ever even use discs. Also remember that your casing will need to be able to cool and provide enough room for all your parts and not to buy a mid tower case if you are going to have tons of stuff inside of it that gets hot.


I hope this guide helped you somewhat in deciding what parts you are going to buy and how to go about buying them.