Building a PC is one of those things that sounds difficult, intimidating and impressive to those who have never done it, but is actually shockingly simple in practice. If you can plug in a home theatre system, there is a good chance you can build your own PC. As with a home theatre system, most of the sockets are different shapes, so it’s unlikely you’d plug anything into the wrong place without forcing it.
This school holidays, if you’ve got a teenager who’s really into gaming, video editing, or anything digital that requires more power than an iPad, then building a PC together will provide an excellent bonding and educational afternoon, while saving you money in the long run.
With everything clearly labelled and designed to click together, PC building is a lot easier than you might think.
The reason you’d build a PC is pretty similar to why you’d bake your own cake, though less delicious. Buying a cake is much easier than making your own and it’s probably going to be a more attractive cake, because someone who works with icing (or cables) all the time will be able to do a neater job. But the cake you make will taste better because you know the exact balance of flavours you enjoy. You know what size you need, and it will be much cheaper even if it’s more labour intensive. Where this metaphor falls apart is that the PC you build is also going to be cheaper in future because you’ll feel more confident replacing parts rather than just upgrading the whole thing in a couple of years when you need a more powerful graphics processor or more memory.
The first step of building a PC is working out how powerful you need it to be now, and then going at least one step above that to account for the future.
Here's all the components you'll need, along with the exact parts I chose recently to build my gaming PC. You may not need a machine this powerful, but you do need to make sure the processor, graphics card and memory you choose are compatible with your motherboard, and that the whole thing can be accommodated by your chosen case. If in doubt, ask; the folks at your local computer parts store are usually happy to help.
- Processor (CPU): Intel Core i7-8700K RRP $525
- CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i cooler RRP $179
- Graphics card (GPU): Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070Ti Founders Edition RRP $759
- Motherboard: MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC RRP $299
- Memory: 2x 8GB HyperX Predator DDR4 RAM RRP $279
- And 2x 4GB HyperX Fury DDR4 RAM RRP $119
- Storage: Intel 512GB m.2 SSD RRP $229
- And Seagate FireCuda 2TB Hybrid Internal Drive RRP $149
- Power supply: Corsair RM750x RRP $175
- Case: Corsair 570X crystal black RRP $259
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64bit RRP $225
This all makes for a total RRP (excluding monitors, keyboard and mouse) of $3197
A comparable ready-built PC is the HP Omen desktop 880-189a, which retails for $3999. It has less RAM but a slightly better GPU.
The main note about my setup is that you shouldn’t mix and match RAM sticks because it might not work. However, if you happen to have extra parts in a drawer as I did, sometimes it’s worth giving it a go.
The other thing is that it’s pretty rare to pay full RRP on anything that’s been out a couple of months, so you’ll probably be able to buy your components more cheaply (all up around $2680) if you go to a store rather than online. I threw the kitchen sink at this build. I was going for as much speed and power as I could afford, which should be the goal of every PC builder. If your budget is more modest, you can still build a capable gaming PC for around $1250.
Funnily enough, after all that build-up, the two things that will take the longest in your PC build are picking the parts and the time your nerves add, because the whole thing is pretty straightforward and should only take a couple of hours.
The finished product.
The first and most important step of building the PC is to read the manual that comes with the motherboard. It will be extremely boring but, since every custom PC setup is different, there’s unlikely to be an ideal tutorial online and that manual is going to save you headaches.
Here’s a rough overview of what you need to do from there:
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