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Being an 18-year-old college student that's watched Star Trek from birth, is majoring in Astronomy, built his own high-end computer from scratch, and has done everything else remotely associated with being a geek/nerd/social outcast, I can tell you first-hand that there are endless advantages to building your own computer. Below is a list of reasons I've encountered since building my own over a year ago.

* Complete Control of Features and Price: When you build your own computer, you get to choose everything that goes into it. You're not limited to the myopic list of corporately-sponsored options of limited variation you might find on a website like Dell, HP, or Toshiba. If you want to make a Pentium 1 computer with Windows 95 and no abilities beyond word processing, you can! If you want to build a machine like the one I made with a high-end motherboard, a 4.0ghz processor, surround sound, and tons of memory, you can! If what you want to make will cost you more than you're comfortable spending, chances are you can either find a wholesale or used part for less, or you can get a cheaper model of a certain expensive piece until you can replace it with a better one.

* Control Over Your Operating System: Not only can you pick out your own OS (Windows, Linux, etc.), you also have the ability to buy it cheap and WITHOUT UNNEEDED SOFTWARE! Many PC companies these days put a suite of completely unnecessary software into their computers, much of which cannot be removed. My HP laptop, for instance, absolutely insists on opening a monitoring program every time I boot the computer that has pretty pictures of batteries and whatnot and basically tells me what I already know. With custom computers, you can buy the OEM version of your favorite operating system and be done with it.

* Better Virus Protection: In my experience, custom-built computers are more resilient to virus, spyware, and hackers than mass-produced computers. This may be partially because those who build their own computers are in general more protective of them, but there also seems to be a correlation between the actual effectiveness of anti-bad-stuff programs and who the computer was made by. My desktop previous to my custom one was an E-Machines computer and I had to re-install Windows on it 5 times in 3 years, each time losing everything I had stored. With my custom computer that has only one security suite, I have never even had a virus penetrate the system, let alone has anything happened to my computer.

* Knowledge and Pride: I can't tell you how much I learned by building my own computer. Granted, my fingers are wider than normal (ring finger size = 12), and I had to get my mom to do quite a bit of the finer work within the computer case, but I gained a much deeper appreciation of the workings of a computer and simply how amazing they are. I'm still incredibly proud of my computer and I've never had a single problem with it. In fact, the singular experience of building my desktop gave me enough knowledge to repeat the process 11 months later when I re-built my old desktop back to working order from a pile of parts.

If you're new to the custom computer scene, track down a friend of yours that knows a thing or two about computers and he/she will be able to point you in the right direction. As far as the actual building of the computer goes, if you don't feel comfortable doing it, PLEASE ask someone for help. wiring something wrong can really exacerbate things if you're not careful. You could fry a chipset, spark a fire, or electrocute yourself.

But most of all, enjoy your new creation!

Learn more about this author, Alex Kleinschmidt.
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