Once you decide what you’re building the machine for you’ll need to put together a Parts List.
In general you’ll need to purchase the following pieces:
- Motherboard- The main component of the PC. All of the parts attached to the PC require a connection to the Motherboard in order to work. There are many Motherboard manufacturers. All build Motherboards based on a “Chipset Specification.” At the time of this writing there are two mainstream desktop Chipset Specifications: the Intel Z390 chipset and the AMD X470 chipset. Which one you buy depends on your CPU choice.
- CPU- The CPU determines how quickly the programs in use by the PC run. The more money you invest in the CPU the more overall performance you’ll get as you perform operations on the PC. As with motherboard chipsets there are two CPU manufacturers to consider. Intel and AMD. Intel is the more mainstream brand that is more familiar to most people. AMD has long been considered a “bargain brand.” This perception has been changing in recent years with the introduction of the Ryzen processors. We’ll do a deeper dive into CPUs in a future post. For now you’ll need to pick one for your parts list. It must match your motherboard chipset you picked above.
- RAM- You’ll need to determine how much RAM is needed to fit your workload. At the time of this writing most people can get by with 16 Gigabytes of RAM. If you plan to do heavy video editing work you’ll want to consider 32 Gigabytes. The current standard for RAM is called DDR4. You can purchase the same RAM for Intel or AMD chipsets. One important note: RAM needs to be installed in pairs. So if you want 16 gigs of total RAM you’ll need to buy two sticks of 8 gig in order for things to work.
- CPU cooler- You’ll need to decide how to cool the CPU. The modern CPU requires active cooling. Your choice here is fan/heatsink cooler or Liquid Cooling. Fan/heatsink cooling is more common but liquid cooling has come on stronger in the last few years. For most users there is no difference between the 2 methods. For very heavy users liquid has become the preferred method. The reason? Under heavy loads liquid can be quieter. Don’t worry we’ll do a deeper dive into cooling in a future post.
We’re off to a good start on our parts list. Let’s take a break here so you can explore some of things we’ve talked about. Here are a few links to help with your research.
Next time we’ll continue on with the parts list with a video card, storage, power supply and case.
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