A CUSTOM BUILT DESKTOP COMPUTER

There are 2 major reasons why I like a custom personal computer:

1) The most obvious is you have near complete control over what goes into it.

I say "near complete" because you are limited to a certain extent, by what the component manufacturers put out there on the market of course.

2) You will not spend hours deleting the free offer crap from your pre-installed, store bought PC.

There is nothing better to start with than a naked (clean) Operating System (OS) in my opinion.

People tend to think that building your own will save you money. That depends. If you plan on simply surfing the net, and checking email, then you should just buy one at your local retailer.

However, if you want a screamin' demon gaming machine, then there's some savings and a lot of satisfaction to be had in going the build your own route.

Even if you want to get into archiving and editing your own home movies and making DVD's to share with family and friends, building your own can be the way to go. I find that a gaming machine design with a few tweaks makes easy work of video editing and rendering.

I will strongly caution you that there are some prerequisites here, in terms of ability or capability on your part. There is a progression that leads up to taking this step of building your own.

This progression starts with having knowledge of key components within a computer, and what their function is.

Also, one should feel comfortable performing some simple upgrades before attempting to build your own. If you've put in your own video cards, extra RAM, or hard drive, then you're probably getting ready to take it to the next level.

This is what I did. I started off getting comfortable with PC's in general. I performed several upgrades on several store bought systems. And I dabble in gaming once and a while. Also my own video editing. So I wanted to take it to the next level.

This subject of custom building PC's comes with a lot of experts. And therefore, a lot of opinions. There are many ways to skin this cat. So as another disclaimer, this is the way I do it, and not the ONLY way it can be done.

I will outline steps on the menu bar chronologically through 3 major phases:

1) Pre-Build thought and design, i.e. "wargaming."

2) Building

3) Fire up and install software

I will use my latest and greatest build for this example, as it uses fairly recent technology. In all honesty, the technology moves so rapidly it's not practical to build cutting edge. It's better to build a generation behind for good price performance ratio.