Building Your Own Computer (Part 2)

Posted by David | Filed under Hardware

Yesterday, I covered in Building Your Own Computer (Part 1) the beginning plans of building your own computer, including budgeting yourself, choosing the right processor, motherboard and RAM. Today I shall discuss the remaining required components of a computer and some optional ones you may or may not consider getting.

Hard Drives

An internal hard drive is our next important component to purchase, personally I would recommend nothing more than a 500GB hard drive for the average user, but prices are coming down all the time, and if you can budget it you can probably go up to a 1TB or more! It’s also worth considering two smaller hard drives of equal size, you can then back up your work onto the other and all won’t be lost if one of them fails. For the average builder a SATA II 7200RPM device is good enough and are well priced - users who are keen on extreme performance may wish to go for a 10000RPM or even a solid state hard drive, the later of which being incredibly expensive (like twice the entire cost of the average machine expensive!). It’s always a good idea to read other people’s reviews when purchasing anything, but personally I have had good experience with both Samsung SpinPoint and Western Digital drives. When it comes to hard drives you can usually buy an OEM device, to save yourself some money. Don’t forget to get a SATA cable though to connect it to your motherboard!

A hard drive will set you back around £50 for a 500GB model.

Optical Drives

An optical drive is the final obligatory component for your computer, apart from a Power Supply Unit (PSU) and Case which we shall talk about later. Optical drives are pretty cheap these days as well, you can grab yourself a decent SATA DVD/CD Player/Writer Combo for around £20. You may wish to consider getting a Blu-ray player on top of that as well, the cheapest Blu-ray player being around £70 at current, including a HD player and DVD/CD writer combo as well. Blu-ray writers however are significantly more expensive well over the £150 mark in many cases.

Graphics Card (Recommended)

While being optional, I would strongly recommend getting even a cheap graphics card for your system, they can cost as little as £20-30 for the basic no thrills card. For the casual gamer though you should aim for nearer the £100-150 mark. Look for the latest in either the ATI HD 3000 series or high nVidia Geforce 8 series. For the extreme gamer or high graphics user consider something from the latest nVidia Geforce 9 series or the ATI HD 4800 series. It’s quite difficult to recommend a graphics card as it does depend on needs, and by the time you are reading this article there is bound to be something different or better out there, my advice would be to research this and go for the best you can afford.

Sound Card (Recommended)

For improved sound, its worthwhile getting a separate sound card to the on board motherboard sound, especially if you are considering a home entertainment system or THX speakers. Creative are the king when it comes to sound cards and I’d recommend getting the best you can afford, you will notice a difference in the sound.

Other Optional Cards/Devices

There are many other optional cards you can get for your system, Wi-Fi cards if you plan on using your computer on a wireless network, TV cards, physics cards, floppy drives, USB hubs, card readers etc.

Case and PSU

Finally you need to choose an appropriate case and PSU. It is completely up to you which case you choose and which PSU to choose, but make sure that your case can fit your motherboard in, and has enough slots for all the optical drives, floppy drives, card readers you want at the front and enough slots at the back for your extra cards. PSU wise you should only need 400W if you are not getting a graphics card, if you are you must read what your graphics card states is its minimum requirement, this could be 500W-600W+

Some cases will be easier than others, on of my favourite cases is the sleek looking Antec Sonata III. It’s one of the best cases you can get, with ample room for everything and comes included with a mighty 500W PSU which has lots of connections to both SATA components and normal ones as well. It also has a massive 20cm fan in the back and a filter in the front which saves you having to worry about getting these things yourself which you may have to with other cases. The best thing about it is its sleek coolness!

Component Checklist

Make sure you have the following in your shopping cart before hitting the purchase button!

  • Processor (with Heatsink)
  • Motherboard
  • RAM
  • Hard Drive
  • Optical Drive
  • Graphics, Sound and Optonial Devices
  • Case (with PSU)
  • 2x SATA Cables (it’s always good to have spares, but make sure you get some otherwise you won’t be able to connect much up!)
  • Tool Kit! (If you haven’t got a screw driver now is the time to get one!)
  • Thermal Paste (I recommend keeping a tube around just in case)
  • Monitor (you may already have one, but if not you may want to get one, I shall talk about monitors and sound in a later Part)
  • An Operating System! Don’t forget one of these when you purchase!

Tomorrow I shall cover choosing an operating system and assembling your computer.

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