Well there are a lot of reasons you should build your own PC, the main reason being Compatibility. If you were to go out and buy a Dell or any other brand name for that matter, you are only able to place that companies components inside of your computer. So if you wanted to upgrade in the future instead of buying a whole new computer you will have to buy all brand name items and well we all know brand name items cost a fortune.

Putting together your own PC is rather easy to accomplish, you just have to know the main components of your PC and understand a little bit about how they work, from there you can decide where to focus your money. Here is a list and a brief description of the main components that every computer has.

The Monitor, which simply displays the information on the screen. Monitors come in all different shapes and sizes and you can even use a TV as a monitor, yes some people do use a 60" TV for their display.

The Keyboad and Mouse, which are pritty basic the keyboard enters information and the mouse clicks on information inside of the monitor. Keyboards come in all different shapes now because research shows if you do not use proper composure at a computer your risk of developing a disorder like tendeitis are increased. The mouse has a couple of cool features but stick with the optical mouse now because it wont stop working when it gets dirty.

The Case, which is used to hold the guts of the computer. You have a tremendous amount of leverage when you pick a case, for instance you can choose different colors, illumenesence, size, shape, and pritty much make it as visually pleasing as you want but keep in mind the standard case shape is ATX.

The Motherboard, the motherboard is the brain of your operations, every other computer component plugs into the motherboard. Some features of a motherboard are a microprocessor, main memory, control circuits, and peripheral's, they are all typically attached via ribbon cables, and power connectors.

The Video Card, which outputs images to a display. your video card basicly has the power to make or break what you see on the screen, for instance a bad video card in your computer is like being half awake and half asleep, you can still make out the shapes around you but you cant read the symbols.

The sound card, which simply takes in noise and outputs noise. An example of a bad sound card is listening to your 90 year old grandma trying to sign in the shower while a good sound card is like watching a finly tuned orchastra.

We then have some various components which are RAM (Random Access Memmory) which is used for multi-processing (The more RAM, the more things you can do at once without the computer slowing down), USB hookups which are like little fiber optic controls used to send information quickly and easily from one component to another without loosing quality, the hard drive which is how much information you can store on your computer, the CD, DVD, and Floppy drives which are used to transfer information from one device to another for instance with a DVD drive you can make movies to watch on your TV, CD drive you can make audio CD's to play in your vehicle, and Floppy drives are pritty much an old technology that no one likes to use anymore ;-)

That pritty much sum's up what it takes to build your own PC and as you can tell the advantages of building your own PC are almost endless, you have total control of every component inside of your computer making it much easier down the road to upgrade rather then buy a new computer, you can make your computer look any way you want, and you can save some money in the process.

Learn more about this author, Adam Losier.
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