“How To Build Your First Ever PC”

Ever wanted to build your own PC? Ever wondered how PCs are made and assembled? Don’t you worry because we’ve got you all covered up. Might be wondering what kind of magic is required to build your first ever PC. Well, all you’d need is.… nothing. Of course, you’d need to find the right compatible parts for your PC. What about building you say?? Oh, don’t you worry about that. It’s all just a LEGO game.

In this guide, we’re going to share the full method through which you can easily make a list of compatible PC parts and build your first gaming PC quickly, and by the time you finish reading this post, you will know how to build a gaming PC. Alright, let’s get to it!! But..

The first question you might have “Why build my own PC?”

Good question I say. The pros of a custom-built PC are many and not building are none, unless you’re too lazy and love to slouch. Anyways, it’s a good idea to make sure it’s just perfect for you. You don’t want to get in too deep and regret your decision later getting a Pre-build one. One of the biggest advantages of building your own PC is that it’s always much cheaper than what you get in pre-builds already. Don’t have to worry about the warranty as every part has got their own manufacture one. And, if you’re a guy like me who’s looking for much more power and specs (suppose a gaming PC or a workstation) you’ve got no reason ever to not build your own one. Personally, the reason I love doing it, and the reason most enthusiasts swear by it, is that there’s a damn lot of satisfaction in personally selecting and handling each individual part that goes into your computer. It’s fun (for people like me, anyway) in the same way that working on your own car is fun. And, since you don’t need years of practice to do it, it’s a whole lot easier. And if you’d follow this guide, you’ll get by just fine.

First thing you need to do is find the right parts for you and your needs. Don’t worry, we’ll be guiding you according to your needs: - Case—the PC case is what holds all the internal components together in a structure. Also known as a chassis.

• Motherboard—the connective nerve tissues of your PC build. Every other component will be attached to or plugged into the motherboard in some unique fashion of slots.
• Processor (or CPU)—the central processing unit, which acts as the “brain” of your PC. This will broadly determine the speed of your computer. You’ll have to choose a CPU and a motherboard that are compatible with each other, both in terms of manufacturer (Intel or AMD) and the CPU socket itself.
• Memory (or RAM)—RAM stands for random access memory. This is a crucial component of your computer’s operation. You need to choose RAM that’s compatible with your motherboard’s RAM slots.
• Storage—your hard drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD), the part of the computer that holds the operating system and all your digital files. SSDs are much faster than hard drives, and are highly recommended these days, though HDDs are generally larger and cheaper.
• Power Supply (or PSU)—a heavy little box that regulates the electricity going into your computer and provides power to the individual components. The power supply will directly connect to the motherboard, CPU (through the motherboard and a dedicated socket), storage, and other add-on components as necessary.
• Graphics card (optional)—most CPUs come with on-board graphics that will run daily tasks just fine. But if you plan on playing high-end PC games or running intense media applications, you’ll want a separate graphics card that plugs into one of the PCI-Express ports on the motherboard.

Also, for the assembly of the PC and installing OS (whatever you desire Windows, Linux?!), you’ll need:

• A screwdriver
• A USB drive with at least 8GB of space
• Access to another working Windows computer (a public library PC should work fine or you could borrow one from your friend) Which Parts Should I Chose?

Disclaimer: - Here’s what people actually go nuts about, how powerful does a full-sized desktop need to be? Should you buy an Intel processor or an AMD one? Do you need a graphics card, or will the CPU’s on-board graphics be okay? How many watts do you need in a power supply? Let’s break it down to you... Understand that you generally want components that have been released in the last year or two (unless you’re ok with getting ripped off), because going back further tends to trade price for efficiency and future-proofing. And generally speaking, the more expensive a part is, the more powerful it will be.

Processor

Let’s start with the one of the important parts of your PC. The “brain”, team red or blue (AMD or Intel). It totally depends about the type of your work load and the price point. Generally speaking, Intel processors fare better in gaming and high-end media applications due to their raw power and popularity, but if you’re on a budget, AMD’s general price advantage may be worth choosing the less popular option while the high-end ones can take up the sky fall loads of heavy resource hungry applications and has better multi-tasking. One of the most specialty of AMD is that it offers special silicon chips called APUs. These APUs have powerful integrated graphics designed for handling light 3D gaming, whereas Intel’s integrated graphics aren’t generally enough to hack it.

Now which model?? In general, the intel and AMD series are lined up as Core-i3, i5, i7, i9 and Ryzen 3, 5, 7, Thread ripper respectively. The core i3s and Ryzen 3s have 2 Cores and come with hyperthreading, so 4 threads in general. (Unlike the latest Gens that have 4 Cores and 4 threads or more) If you are just a daily user, the one who watches movies, browse the internet and just edit doc files. This section is clearly yours. Then we have the i5s and the Ryzen 5 that usually have 4 cores and 8 threads generally. For a programmer, mid-level gamer and people who’d like to do multitasking, editing and stuff you’d need a minimum of this. Then come the higher end one’s like the i7s and Ryzen 7 which pack powerful specs like 8 cores and 16 threads. These are pretty expensive but, Oh~ Lordy lord!! They are powerful. The i9s and Thread rippers give you out-of-the-world performance. They are generally used in high-end gaming, workstations and performance servers. These come with up to 32 cores or even more. The sweet spot for AMD is in Ryzen 5, either the 4- ore 6-core chips variants. Your CPU also depends on the base/boost Frequency and Clock speeds.

Remember that any AMD Ryzen that is a “G” series (has a “G” at the end of it), it has integrated graphics (inbuilt) and for the intel ones if it’s a “F” series CPU it doesn’t have any integrated graphics in it, you will need a Dedicated GPU (external GPU) for that. If you really want to know which processor is faster in a direct comparison, you’ll need to go look at some benchmarks.

Motherboard

Next, it’s time to select a motherboard, the piece that all your other pieces will plug into. It’s easier than it sounds, though. All you need to figure out is the size of the motherboard, what kind of features you’d want (like inbuilt Wi-fi, Bluetooth etc.) and the compatible socket for your processor. Both Intel and AMD have developed multiple CPU socket designs for different classes of processors. So, can quickly narrow down your selection here by looking for motherboards that are compatible with your processor choice. Check the socket on your chosen CPU—for example, Intel’s LGA 1151 socket—and then narrow down your web search to motherboards that contain that socket. Similarly, the motherboard you choose needs to be compatible with the case you’re using. We’ll talk about this a bit more in the case section below, but the basics are: ATX are standard size tower computers, microATX boards are for slightly smaller towers, and Mini-ITX boards are for more compact builds.

Lastly, the motherboard’s cable inputs for power need to match the cables on the power supply, for both the main power connector on the side and the CPU power connector on top. You can check these values in “pins”. If your power supply has a 12-pin rail and your motherboard has a 12-pin connector, they’re compatible. Depending on the CPU socket, the CPU’s power connector may have four, six, or eight pins, so make sure your power supply has one of these rails available.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

Memory is one important asset that determines the speed of a PC: it’s the easiest way to turn a slow computer into a fast one. Make sure you get enough. How much would be enough? Well, the minimum we recommend as per today’s standards and usability is 8 GB. For basic modern computing, I suggest at least 8GB. Gamers, media creators, and virtual machine users will want more—the next efficient step up is to 16GB. The highest?? Well, if you’d really like me to say, I’d say max it out. If you’re building a massive system that will do multitasking all day long and handle gigantic games at 4K visual quality, you want every last bit of RAM you can possibly cram into your case (which is usually 32GB or 64GB on today’s high-end motherboards.)

Which Type? You need to check your motherboard to see which generation of RAM it supports: DDR3 and DDR4 are the two existing standards right now, and RAM is not backwards compatible. So, you’d have to look after it. Speed/Frequency?? You’ll also need to choose a RAM speed, which doesn’t really produce noticeable performance differences in most builds. But you might as well buy RAM modules that are as fast as your motherboard can handle.

Storage

It’s finally time to yeet out all the Hard drives, isn’t it?? Well, since you are getting a new PC don’t even think about Hard drives. No seriously, get an SSD instead. Get an M.2 SSD that goes into your motherboard (need to check if you have an M.2 port but all of the most recent ones do) because they are much faster. You’d experience speed like never before. SSDs are a little bit expensive but are really worth every penny. Averagely, they are 36x faster than a Hard Disk. Boots Windows in 8-10 sec comparatively 40-60 secs to a Hard disk. They sacrifice size for speed but trust me, most of us even struggle to use 500 GB of your available space. A 512GB SSD is what all you need.

But still, pretty much every new motherboard and power supply will be compatible with current hard drives, solid state drives, and DVD drives. They all use the same SATA cables and data ports. As long as you don’t have more drives than you do SATA ports, you’re fine. They also use SATA power rails from the power supply, which should include enough plugs for at least two drives.

Cabinet

Cabinet is basically where you shove (ahem) your parts in.

These cabinets and cases come in different shapes and sizes—when you think of a normal desktop PC, you probably think of a mid-tower. But PCs also come as bigger and smaller towers, as cubes, or super compact slim designs for your media cabinet.

You’ll also want to put attention about your motherboard size. Motherboards come in several different sizes, but the main ones for consumer class PCs are the full-sized ATX, the smaller Mini-ATX and Micro-ATX, and the positively tiny Mini-ITX. Larger cases will include mounting options for smaller motherboards; so, an ATX-sized case can fit a Mini-ITX motherboard, but a Mini-ITX case cannot fit an ATX motherboard. In addition to that you may want to take the material of your case into consideration too (steel, plastic, aluminium, acrylic). They may have a simple look or an RGB (LEDs) look for those who’d are obsessed with good looks. Aesthetically, most modern cases are either minimalist—basically looking like a tiny, expensive refrigerator—or “gamer,” with lots of integrated LEDs and side panel windows so you can see the guts of your masterpiece. Other features that you may want to have a look is about the front header cables, management holders and the air flow of your cabinet.

You might also want to take care about the extra space you’d need for the radiator if you’re opting for a liquid cooler. You can have a look at different websites and pick up the one that’s compatible with your build and fits your taste. At the end of the day, what makes a case great isn’t always the features you find on a spec sheet—some cases are just much easier and more enjoyable to build in, while others are difficult and frustrating.

Power Supply

What does a power supply do? Well, it’s pretty much self-explanatory. It supplies sufficient and efficient power to your system. So, you want one powerful enough for your build—and reliable enough for safe, efficient operation. Power supply selection is a lot more important than it seems on the surface. Hence, you don’t want the total electricity used by those components to be more than it can convert. The biggest draws here will be your motherboard, CPU, and graphics card. Other components, like the case fans and the storage drives, use so little electricity that you can usually fit them into the margins of your calculations.

You could easily calculate the total wattage of your system by just summing up the usage of your combined components i.e. max watts required for your CPU + GPU + Motherboard and an extra 50W for safety reasons. For example, the NVIDIA GTX 1080 TI, a very powerful graphics card, requests a power supply of at least 600 watts in its specifications (and both an 8-pin and 6-pin power rail—see the graphics card compatibility section). The GT 950, a much less powerful card, needs only 150 watts.

If you have no idea about the max wattage, you can simply google it up and viola. And if you hate math, you could simply use websites like OuterVision to calculate your total power needs. Again, you’ll still need to make sure that the power supply’s rails match the sockets on your motherboard, graphics card (if you have one), SATA drives, and other components. When you shop for a power supply, you’ll often see a little badge indicating how efficient it is. It’ll usually say something like 80 Plus, 80 Plus Bronze, 80 Plus Silver, 80 Plus Gold, or 80 Plus Platinum. The higher the badge, the more efficient the power supply will be, the less noise it’ll produce, and the less you’ll pay in wasted electricity. Personally get a good PSU as a cheap one can mess up your components during a power surge. A 450W PSU is much more than you need unless you have really high-end parts. At least get an 80 Plus certified one form a branded manufacturer.

Graphics Card

The graphics card plays an important role in your PCs gaming, video editing and heavy graphics rendering tasks. Like processors, discrete graphics cards come in two primary flavours: NVIDIA and AMD. NVIDIA tends to lead in pure technical power and AMD typically competes on value, although they go elbow-to-elbow at times and flow at different times. NVIDIA also has technologies like GameStream that may be worth paying extra to you. But still, AMD is catching up with their Radeon ReLive technology. Selecting a graphic card and getting your hands on it might be a such a pain right now, with all the cryptocurrency and mining situation going on. Good luck with getting your hands onto one. Due to mining, the GPU market has seen a high spike in its pricing and the availability is going low low. But how much power do you exactly need?

• No gaming at all: use the integrated graphics on the motherboard. It’s free!
• Very light gaming, with older titles or 2D titles: it’s still probably okay to use integrated graphics here.
• Simple, 3D games and like World of Warcraft and League of Legends: ₹4000 cards or less.
• Graphic rendering, intermediate games like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2: ₹8000 cards.
• Heavy graphic rendering, new AAA games like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed at up to 1080p resolution and medium settings: around ₹15000 card and above.
• For the quickest rendering for a reasonable price, new AAA games at high settings or resolution higher than 1080p: ₹40000- ₹80000 cards.
• Super-high-end games and rendering at high settings and ultrawide or 4K resolution: ₹1,00,000 and above.

But since, there is a shortage of GPUs you could definitely go for AMDs APU like the new ‘Zen 3’ Ryzen 5000G series which will do you good amounts of gaming and rendering at much faster speeds that most of the basic dedicated GPUs. Since GPUs are one of the most power hungry monsters, you need to make sure that you have enough capacity, power and space to run it.

Lastly, make sure the card you buy can get enough power from your PC. Most mid-range and all high-end graphics cards need a dedicated electrical connection to the power supply, in addition to being mounted on the motherboard. You’ll need to make sure that your power supply has enough rails and the right connection to support it. Check the specifications: most require either a 6-pin rail, an 8-pin rail, or multiples of both. The GPU also draws electrical power at a rate that shouldn’t exceed your power supply’s capacity.

Where do I buy my parts from?

You could look up and search it up at famous E-commerce websites like Amazon, Newegg India etc. Some of the famous websites like mdcomputers.in can help you get through. Personally, sometimes exploring offline helps you a lot. You may come across very low prices compared to online stores if you are lucky. Usually in Hyderabad one of the best places to explore offline stores are at CTC, Park Lane, Secunderabad. You can find everything that you could have imagined. Explore quite some stores to get a price listing about your components and parts.

Some of the suggested brands for your parts: -

• Motherboard: ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI.
• RAM: G-Skill, HyperX, Corsair, and Crucial.
• SSDs/HDDs: Samsung and SanDisk for SSDs, Western Digital, Seagate, and Kingston
• Cases: Ant Esports, Cooler Master, Corsair, NZXT are the branded ones. Totally up to you.
• Power Supply: Corsair, EVGA, Antec and Cooler Master.

Alrighty! That’s what you need to build your own PC. Now that you’ve got everything set up, you can go ahead and start building it.

Putting Together Your PC:

Once you have everything ready to go, it’s time to actually start building. This is the part that many people find intimidating, but once you get started, you’ll see that these components are designed to be put together easily. As long as you’ve done your research and know everything is compatible, it really is like putting together a fancy Lego kit. This video will walk you through the entire process:

Personally, the first time I was building a PC, the toughest part was wiring because--

“Nothing had really prepared me for the difficulty of connecting wires to tiny ports on the motherboard or screwing in the world’s smallest screws on the heatsink, where my hands all but covered everything in view.”

But if we could have done it, what’s stopping you?

Tech Tips Everybody:

Here are quite a few more tips to keep in mind while you get started: -

• Installing RAM: - Installing RAM is pretty straight forward. All you need to do is align the RAM properly at its slot and just push it. Don’t worry, you’ll hear a click sound, that’s just the side tabs closing.
• Installing CPU: - CPU is one of the most sensitive part in a computer. So, make sure not to touch its pins. While installing you can observe a triangle mark at your CPU and the CPU Socket of your motherboard. All you have to do is align it, close the door and push down the bar. You’re done.
• Prepare Your Case: - One of the beginner mistakes is that people often forget to add motherboard standoff screws and place the I/O shield to the case before placing the motherboard. Make sure that you prepare your case first before placing down your components first.

Fire It Up:

Once everything is wired up and looks the way you want it to, it’s time to plug in the power supply, hit that power button, and turn on your new computer. If everything is connected properly, you should see your motherboard’s BIOS screen. The final step is to install your operating system of choice, and start using your new PC!

Error Messages:

If everything didn’t come together on your first try, don’t panic, this happens to the best of us. It’s almost always an easy fix.

Luckily, your computer will often tell you what is wrong, whether in the BIOS menu, or via an error message from your motherboard. This is where research comes in handy, as any error you’re running into will be something someone else has probably encountered and resolved as well. We have put together an official handy guide from Newegg about common PC problems and how to fix them, so take a look at that before you spend too much time researching.

Newegg's Website To Fix Common PC Problems

Congratulations!! 🎉

What a relief it is to see your PC working, whether it’s your very first time or your tenth. Congrats on building your own PC and learning about how to build one. There’s much more to learn but since you’ve come this far, you are pretty much a self-learned DIY master.

POV: - Adding RGB boosts your FPS up to 20%.

If you’ve already read this whole article please comment down “Turtles”. 😆

If you’d want help getting your own PC build or any PC/Laptop purchase guides, we’d be pleased to help you guys out.

Written by:- Masood Ahmed Mohiuddin