01 Mar 10 Building Your Own Custom Desktop PCs

In this day and age, computers are outdated before you\’ve even bought them. To help prolong the lifespan of desktop PCs, more and more users are turning to custom building their rigs. It takes a little more time and research, but it can save you money and it can guarantee a better deal overall.

This is useful because it lets you decide what goes into the machine. Ready made PCs tend to get outdated because the stuff they build them with is meant to be sort of \”all purpose\”, so while it\’s up to date for everything today, it\’ll be out of date for something or other tomorrow.

You\’ll want to do your own research to make sure your new PC is perfect for you, but here\’s what you should know about minimum requirements to get started designing your own PC…

How Much RAM?

RAM is basically your computer\’s short term memory. Everything your computer\’s doing right now is being stored in RAM. As much of this stuff as possible is your best bet. If you\’re doing something media intensive like video editing, sound editing, graphic design or gaming, you\’ll want to prioritize this part of your computer. As a bare minimum, though, a desktop can\’t really do much without at least 128MB. You can squeeze by with less, but 128MB should run any basic stuff. For serious gamers and media types, don\’t settle for less than 256MB.

HDD

Your hard drive disk space should be somewhere between forty and eighty gigs for basic, general use. Again, the more multimedia and gaming type stuff you get into, the more high end you want to go. Forty is enough for most users, but for gamers and media types, eighty is basically your starting point.

Picking Out Your Graphics Card

For a gamer, don\’t settle for anything less than the NVIDIA GeForce series. If you\’re into media creation, GeForce will do, but a Quadro will really blow you away. For everyone else, a cheap, basic graphics card that just gets the job done is all you need.

Andrew Johnson is an expert in computer products. If you want more information about types of desktop pcs or are looking for a reputable computer retailer please visit http://www.ebuyer.com

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