Build Your Own PC
By Richard Lerner

If you have ever been shopping for a new computer at a retail store, then you know how expensive it can be. Well, we are going to give you an in-depth introduction on how to save 30% on your next new PC. Now keep in mind that this is ONLY and introduction and we must insist that you read this for educational purposes only. If you decide to undertake a project such as this, you do so at your own risk. Of course, you can always call us and we will do it for you. This article is going to look at the basics of how to build your own PC from scratch and show you how to save yourself a lot of money. First, we will look at the parts necessary to build a PC, then we will assemble it, and lastly test it. So here are the parts we are going to use (click on any picture anywhere in this article on any page to enlarge it):

In the picture at left, we see the following items (from back to front): 1 Tsunami Dream Thermaltake ATX case, 1 Enermax 420 watt power supply, 1 Mitsumi standard floppy drive, 1 Asus N6600 PCI-Express graphics adapter, 1 blue led light kit, 1 Sony DRU-530A DVD±RW drive, 1 Creative Labs Audigy2 Platium sound card, 1 Intel Pentium 4 550 Processor (@3.4GHz, 800MHz Bus), 1 Intel D915PBL motherboard, and 2 Hitachi Deskstar 250GB hard drives (SATA). Omitted in this picture is the RAM, since it did not have any packaging and a Sony CD burner we had lying around which we also installing. We used 2 512MB Wintec DIMMs. The total retail cost of all of this equipment is well over $1,500USD. We got all of it for about $1,100, we ordered everything from the Internet. Except for the sound card and DVD burner, which we salvaged from an older computer, bringing the cost of all new parts to around $875.

The first step when buying parts is knowing what is compatible with what. This is where experience comes in. We started with the processor we wanted and worked from there. We decided to buy the 3rd fastest processor Intel offered at the time and the bought a motherboard that we wanted. We stuck with Intel for the motherboard to ensure compatibility. Since we did this, we also got a package price which furthers our savings. Once we had a processor and motherboard, we selected our RAM. We chose the Wintec for three reasons, price, compatibility and performance. On Intel's web site, they have a utility which lets you look up RAM that both they and an outside independant lab have tested and they will should you what RAM they have certified to be compatible with their boards. Our RAM is one of these certified models. Doing it this way can make the RAM cost a little more since you are looking for very specific RAM, however its worth it since there is no need to worry about performance or compatibility. Next, we chose the Asus N6600 because it uses the 2nd best chipset and GPU that Nvidia currently has out and we got a great deal on it. The audio card, the DVD-Burner, and the CD burner we already had. The floppy drive is just a standard piece of hardware that you can find in almost every computer, which cost us $17USD and the hard drives we chose for size, price and quality. The Deskstar series of hard drives used to be made by IBM, however now Hitachi makes them. These hard drives are, in our opinion, some of the best in the industry, so we them for all of our PCs. These hard drives also support the Serial ATA (SATA) standard, making them very fast. Keep in mind, the motherboard we bought has to support all of these devices, so our motherboard supports x16 PCI-Express video cards, can hold up to 4GB of RAM, has 3 PCI slots, and has a built SATA controller for our hard drives, as well as 1 IDE controller for our DVD and CD burners. The power supply also has to give off enough power to power all of this, and the Enermax we bought, with 420 watts of power, has more than enough. The light kit is just a standard kit which runs off the standard 4-pin power connectors which we bought at the same time with our case. Now that we have all of our parts picked out and ready to go, we can get ready to start building.