The Ultimate PC Building Handbook

The PC market is unique in computing. You can keep your consoles and ready-made Macs, frankly: where they stay static and dull, PCs are fluid, every one individual, special, and imbued with the love and attention of its owner. The best PCs are hand-made, custom built to a budget or a dream, buffed and boosted to transform every possible unit of amperage into lurid pixels beyond the imagination of the PS4 and Xbox One. If your console isn’t up to scratch, you can’t exactly open it up and give it more pep. But a PC can give you more every month, if your budget allows. Upgrading can be incredibly addictive, as my bank manager will be all to quick to inform you. This guide represents a hive mind of extensive…

Over the last few decades the mass market has made us a little bit lazy. Prior to just buying whatever we needed, we would build it – a world of engineers, builders and grafters forging things with our bare hands. But nowadays, you know there’s someone sat somewhere in a factory on the other side of the world, churning out everything you could ever want, so you don’t have to. But doing it yourself has become more and more popular in recent years, and plenty of people are having a good at doing it themselves, whether it’s assembling a bicycle from scratch, turning a tree into a dining room table, and even – the reason why we’re here – building a PC. Making your own PC consists of buying the…

If you’re not sure what you need to start your PC build, we’ve covered off all the essentials you’ll ever need, so now all you need is the parts and you can start putting it all together. ✓ Magnet-on-a-stick If you’ve ever worked on a car engine before, you’ll know that dropping a screw into the engine and not hearing it fall on the floor is every person’s worst nightmare. It’s not quite as serious if you do the same thing whilst building a PC, admittedly, but having a magnetic stick ready to retrieve any screws that have lodged down the side of a motherboard, or fallen inside the bottom of a chassis, could save you a whole load of time, as it will save you having to dissemble things…

If you’re planning to get serious about building up your PC – whether it’s because you just want to do the best job you can, or because you’re planning on doing it regularly – it pays to prepare a great workspace, allowing you to work more comfortably and with all the right tools to do the job properly. ✓ Find some space Though the nearest floor might seem like an ideal place to begin assembling a PC, think about the consequences of what you’re doing. A floor is very low down, so if you’re working on a PC for some time it could give you terrible backache, so choose a surface that will allow you to work comfortably while you’re standing. Secondly, if you’re working near a floor with lots…

Building a PC is supposed to be fun, so while we don’t want to get you bogged down with boring statistics, we do want you to stay safe. So follow these simple tips and you and your PC will be in good shape for some time to come. ✓ Prevent static charge PC components are especially sensitive to static charge, and it can really do some damage if an excessive amount builds up – even fry your components, if worst comes to worse. So how do you prevent this from happening? Easy – you just need to prevent yourself from creating static charge in the first place. The first step is to prepare your workspace for PC building, which you can do by getting an anti-static mat to put your…

Design improvements mean that it’s never been easier to build your own PC – but it’s still difficult to pick the right components for a brand new build. Choosing the wrong parts comes with a host of potential pitfalls. Some aren’t serious, but others could be terminal. Plugging an SSD into the wrong SATA port only limits speeds, but your PC won’t even boot if the processor and motherboard aren’t compatible. Picking a motherboard without certain chipsets or slots makes it tricky to fit future components – and choosing a power supply without much grunt will make a graphics upgrade difficult. This guide makes it easier to pick the correct components for any kind of PC – from bargain-basement machines to full-throttle gaming systems. Every major component is covered, and…