Building your own computer

Hello and Welcome to my first Hub of many to come.

Today we will take a look into how to build your own computer, The benefits and the disadvantages that could happen when building your own computer.

Advantages.

There are many advantages to building your own computer, You can save yourself 100's of Dollars, weeks of waiting and the usual hassle of choosing parts from a drop-down list.

Save Money : Companies Will charge through the roof just to build your computer regardless of what's inside; you could be paying $300 for someone to put a computer together, And why? because people think they're difficult to navigate around with complex pins and so on. This is completely Incorrect, To assemble a computer when you have all the parts will take one to two hours tops.

Waiting times : Why wait For Dell or another company to build your standard computer for 2 weeks when you've already paid? As soon as you pay you should receive your item within 2-3 working days, there's no need for it at all.

Choosing computer parts : It's easy, Back in the 1990's you would have had compatibility difficulties with most parts due to narrow minded Companies after all your money, now they're after whatever they can get on the most part.

Upgrading : If you build your own computer then you're going to better understand the computer, you will begin to understand what each part is used for and in times to come you will be able to upgrade part by part to keep up with the technological world.

Disadvantages.

If I'm completely honest there aren't many disadvantages at all, The worst that could happen is you give a component a static shock and you have to take it back for a replacement part.

How to choose your parts

First of all you need to consider why you're building your own computer, What's this computers purpose? If it's for general web browsing then you're not going to pay out more than maybe $300-400, whereas if you're wanting this computer for multi-threading, graphics design or video editing you'll want better performance parts to handle all the Data on the computer.

Now the basic needs for a computer are as follows :

CPU : AMD or Intel

Motherboard : Dependant on your CPU

RAM : The more RAM the better

Hard-Drive : How much space do you need for your folders

DVD Drive : Needed to Install an operating system.

PSU (power supply unit) : your computer needs POWER.

Now all of that may have sounded a bit fast, but sometimes you need to run before you can walk. Now CPUs are the main component of a computer, This processes all the data in a matter of milliseconds, The first thing you will want to ask yourself is cost effective or posh label? AMD are known for their well priced CPUs which are of brilliant build quality, Some of the best bangs for the buck and overall a good CPU. Saying this Intel have always been the leader of the CPU race and always deliver outstanding parts, but sometimes your paying a lot more than you're getting due to their well known name. Depending on your choice of CPU will determine your motherboard, AMD and Intel CPUs will support only one type of motherboard each.Now when choosing a CPU to go with a motherboard you only really need to look out for one thing, Socket type, eg. A CPU with a socket AM2 will only work on a AM2 board. but it will always tell you in the description on both products.

Ram Is fairly easy to choose, Once you know what RAM your motherboard supports (this will be noted on the packaging) you simply go for the cheap one that does its job, Or you go for a fancy brand name to shave a millisecond off load times, There really isn't much to consider at all. Note : the standard RAM at the moment is DDR2 800MHz

Hard drive, Easy, Choose the amount of disk space you want, for general web browsing perhaps a 120GB HDD, ranging up to a multimedia editing computer you may want 2 x 1TB HDD.

And that's basically it, Power supply units are pretty easy to work out, I suggest a 500W Psu, DVD drivers are easy to work, choose the one that you like the most.

­ Buying.

Now you should have an Idea of what you wish to purchase, Now to order them/buy them:

• Mail order on the Internet- There are so many E-Tailors selling computer parts that I could write a hub just for them, but instead ill note the good ones. Visit a place like Newegg.ca/Newegg.com to compare prices. Don't forget about EBay When looking for good bargains
• A big national chain- Places like Tiger Direct, Fry's, and CompUSA  Have a number of stores all over USA/Canada and offer well priced Parts, As well as this they usually have staff Willing to help you if you Forget anything. 
• local parts retailer- Most Big city's will have a number of Small computer shops, I myself live in Saskatoon and Know of 8 Small computer shops that offer amazing computer parts as well as some great bargains, Again with any small shop they will usually help you choose parts, and give you some handy hints and tips.

Now that you have your parts, it is time to build. This is the fun part.

Ground yourself.

With the risk of giving your computer parts a static shock i always recommend you Ground yourself, A grounding bracelet is a handy took to have when working on computers. 

As for the building of the comuter, Theres a manual with every parts and its easy to follow.

Installing Your operating system.

Once you know the computer powers up you will want to install an Operating system, For this part of the guide I'll describe Windows Vista installation.

Insert the Windows Vista installation DVD into your drive and restart, select DVD drive as your first bootable device from bios. It will ask you to press any key to boot from DVD or CD just press any key and start installation.
From here on its pretty simple, Select instal now, Then it will ask what hard drive you want to put vista on, If you only have 1 HD then its a simple choice, If more than one i recomend placing it on the smallest driver. Your computer will restart several times during this process, and its a long task, but you cant have a computer without one.
Its easy and done.

Complete?

Now you have just built yourself a computer in 3 hours or so and saved yourself $200-300, How does it feel?

Just remember that everyone wants to cut back on spending in these hard economic times, and this is just one way you can get that new PC and save yourself a pretty penny.