If you really want the learning experience of building your own PC, but don’t know where to start, then this post may be able to help. We’re going cover what the basic components of a gaming PC actually do in order to break down some of the basics for you. The main components that you’re going to make up your gaming rig are the: CPU, motherboard, memory (RAM), hard drive, video Card (GPU), power supply, and the case. This may sound like a lot, but understanding what each component does can go a long way in helping you build your PC.
CPU
The CPU is the central processing unit and is essentially the brain of your computer. It is responsible for doing the computations that are needed to do just about everything in your computer. This is an area where spending more on a faster CPU will result in big performance increases in your computer.
GPU
The video card is a little bit like your CPU, except that it specializes in generating images, where the CPU focuses on the more traditional computations. This is another area where spending more on a better graphics card will help your computer render higher quality images.
Motherboard
The motherboard is the infrastructure that is going to connect all of the other parts of your computer together. It is the primary circuit board inside your computer and all of the other components listed here will connect to the motherboard in some way. When choosing your motherboard and other parts, it will be very important to keep compatibility in mind.
RAM
RAM is where the CPU temporarily stores files that it is using that it needs quick access to when doing computations. When you compare RAM to hard drives, the information can be accessed much quicker through RAM, but there is considerably less storage space. So the CPU copies files that need to be accessed quickly to the RAM temporarily. This is an area where you really need to keep compatibility in mind when building your PC, because there are many types of RAM in many different sizes.
Hard Drive
The hard drive is pretty straight forward. It is where all of your files and programs on your computer will be stored. The more files and programs that you expect to have, the bigger the hard drive you will need. If you are looking for top of the line storage speed, you should consider a solid state drive (SSD) over traditional hard drives.
Case
Finally, we have the case. This is where you get to make a choice based purely on aesthetics. Cases come in a variety of shapes, colors, styles, and sizes. You just need to be sure that the one you choose is large enough to house all of your components and you can choose whichever case suits your preferences.