The Benefits of Building Your Own Computer

There’s a common misconception that building your own computer is expensive, difficult and time-consuming. While there was a precedent for this 10 years ago, it couldn’t be farther from the truth today.

Building your own computer is not only cost effective, it’s straight forward, bespoke and immensely satisfying. Read on to learn more about the benefits of this process.

building your own computer

1. It’s cost effective

Perhaps the biggest benefit to building a computer from the ground up is that you can pay a sum that’s appropriate to the type of machine you want. What does this mean? Well, you don’t have to worry about paying over the odds for an incredibly powerful machine you’re only going to use for browsing the internet and word processing. The same goes for gaming machines; it’s possible to get a lot more out of your machine if you’re the one making the judgement call over the components.

You can also save money in ways that mightn’t have seemed immediately obvious. Why splash out on a new monitor when you already have a 40-inch TV that can serve the same purpose? All you’ll need is the necessary VGA or HDMI cables to connect your display to the PC. Sites like Rapid Online sell both of these; if you choose to go with HDMI, it also mean you don’t have to worry about PC speakers, as audio will come through the TV.

2. It’s straight forward

Notice how we don’t say “it’s easy”. While making a computer isn’t the most difficult thing in the world, it does require a certain level of research and confidence to pull off successfully. If you’re coming at this completely blind, then we’d recommend doing some research online and watching some how-to videos on YouTube – the more up-to-date the better! To complement this research, make sure you read our own how-to that gives essential tips to building a better gaming computer.

Try to keep your first build as simple as possible. Read reviews on the individual components you’ll be buying and gauge whether you really need them. It’s unlikely that you’ll want to invest in liquid cooling, neon lights and complicated CPU heat sinks at this early stage.

3. It’s customizable

Building your own computer means you don’t have to settle for undesirable components and software that come packaged with a commercial build. Don’t like Windows 8? Build your computer from scratch and you can pick an operating system that you do like. Do you require a much larger hard drive to store your files? Incorporate a larger – or faster – one from the massive variety available online.

The same goes for any part of your PC; pick the component that’s as powerful or modestly priced as you need it to be.

4. It’s enjoyable

One of the more underrated benefits of building your own computer is the feeling of satisfaction you receive at the end. The most closely comparable feeling we can think of is woodworking; the process of starting from nothing and seeing it all come together into one personalized, functioning object is incredibly satisfying.

Even if things appear to go wrong, and you have to troubleshoot a few issues, there’s a wealth of information and computer help forums that can assist you.

[Image credit: TigerDirect.com, Flickr]

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