Computers have turned into an essential part of our daily lives: we work, play games and consume content on computers but rarely do we think about the inner workings that make these activities possible. Various components within a computer work together to provide a seamless digital experience for users and it is the coming together of these different computer peripherals that make up the digital computer experience. Today, we think of computers as a complete unit since we’re habituated to buying pre-built units but the experience and effort spent on building a PC from scratch is an enthralling experience on its own.

There is a certain sense of accomplishment that comes with building your own PC, and during the building process a lot of the engineering of computers can be easily understood through experience. Building a PC is not simple but it’s not rocket science either. If you have a basic understanding of the different types of internal components, you should do fine; building a PC is not just a personal experiment but also offers some tangible advantages.

When building a PC, you have the ability to customise each and every aspect of the computer—from the outer casing to the internal processors and graphics cards. Also, since you’re buying independent components, you can easily lower the cost of your computer by hunting down better deals. You don’t even need to pay a technician for assembling your computer since you’ll be doing that yourself; but that being said, you will need to spend a considerable amount of time finding components and putting them all together. Ample amount of time will also be needed to be spent on the initial research phase, so make sure you’re invested enough to actually spend time on your project.

In this multipart series, we’ll guide you through the PC building process so as to make it easier for you and provide, to some extent, the background information needed to undertake a PC build. This article in the series will focus on some of the different components that go into your build and how you can select and implement these components in the over-all build of your desktop PC.

Motherboard

The motherboard is your base: This is where you plug in all of your components—from processors to graphics cards. The motherboard does not affect the speed of your computer but plays a major role in the upgradability of your build—since the ports that a motherboard has will drive how upgradeable your build is. A motherboard consists of a processor socket, RAM slots, PCI slots and PCI-e slots. It will also feature SATA ports for your hard drives and optical drives. So it’s just a circuit board that helps all the different components work well with each other. But not all motherboards are the same: There are different types of motherboards that vary in the overall size of the board. These variations come in the form of ATX, mini-ITX and BTX boards, among others. These are primarily different in dimensions but are also different in the ports they offer and the power they demand from the power supply unit. Decide what type of PC you want to build and invest on an appropriate motherboard. Maybe you want dual PCI-e ports for SLI support or maybe you want to build a PC with a smaller footprint—there are motherboards that meet all of these specifications that we will look into in detail in a later part of this series.

Power supply

The power supply is the small box that controls all the division of power inside your computer. Since all of the internal components require a separate power supply, this unit draws      power from a single input source and disseminates the power throughout your computer build. They come with a variation of 16-pin connectors, 4-pin connectors, Molex connectors, 6-Pin Aux cables and SATA power cables. All of these cables are needed to supply power to all of your internals. The more components you want to install in your build, the higher powered power supply you will need. Power Supplies come in a variety of wattages, from 550W to 1000W. There are compressive online tools that will help you calculate the total power usage of all of your internals; figure out the total power needed for your build and buy one with a slightly higher power output. This margin will be used when you overclock your components or upgrade in the future.

Processor

The processor is the brains in your computer, without a processor your computer can’t process any data at all. Picking out a processor is relatively simple since we’re quite familiar with Intel i3, i5 and i7 processors. The branding for these processors have also been simplified since the higher you go on the numerical scale the better performance you can get out of that processor. Apart from Intel, AMD also manufactures high-performing processors but you will need a separate motherboard for AMD processors. Even different kinds of Intel processors will not work with all motherboards since the sockets that they use vary from generation to generation. So you will need to decide on a processor first and find a motherboard only after you figure out what kind of a socket it works with. We will go through the performance and socket-types for Intel and AMD processors in detail later in the series.

Keep in mind that you need an in-depth plan on the different components that you want to build your PC with and see if they work well together because not all components are compatible with each other. You will need to draw out a plan beforehand and work accordingly. There are other components that make up a PC. The Motherboard, Power Supply and Processor aren’t the only components that make up a PC. We’ll cover the other components in the next article. Keep following this space for more information on how to build your PC.

If your technological devices are giving you a hard time or if you’re just curious about certain technological questions, please drop us an email at [email protected] and we’ll try to answer your questions as best as we can.

You need an in-depth plan on the different components that you want to build your PC with and see if they work well together because not all components are compatible with each other