I've owned computers for years. But I'm tired of not having FULL control over what is in (or NOT in) my machine. With that said, it's time I learn to put my own together. But I need some assistance. I'm not looking to make a gaming machine. Just something that can at least play movies and music at top quality. Can someone give me a couple of suggestions on what I should purchase exactly?
In terms of where you should purchase first of all I'd definitely recommend Newegg/TigerDirect if you're from US/Canada. If you're from anywhere else it doesn't matter since there are still a TON of stores, but I'm just going to assume you're from either country. In terms of what components you should buy it really depends on your needs, even though you're not after a gaming PC you can spend so much more or less depending on what features you'd like (low-end/high-end components, Blu-ray player etc.).
If you only want to play movies and music and don't do any editing work or stuff then I think a GPU with 1GB of memory is more than enough. There are a few GPUs out there that are cheap and work great. You don't need a lot of RAM either, around 4GB. If you rip backups of your own, a larger harddrive is preferable of course. This is actually the spec of my desktop, and I have no issues playing 1080P movies. No 3D though. The entire PC cost me about $200 give or take.
Building a computer on your own can definitely become pricey. If all you want to be able to do is listen to music and watch movies, I would suggest buying a desktop PC that is already built but that has room for upgrades. This would save you a lot of money in the long run. However if you have your heart set on building one, you will need the following: Motherboard CPU RAM Graphics Card Hard Drive DVD drive Power supply Computer Case These are the basic components that you will need to include in your system.
For gaming i would suggest you get a good mother board with a high spec processor. Make sure that you have good enough ram, 4 gigs and above would be ideal and that you have a really good graphics card as this will affect everything you do. These would be the things that i would make a high priority for me. Then i would get a whole load of other accessories to make my machine really cool and standout.
The thing is, I doubt I need anything powerful in terms of a graphics card. As I said, I'm not looking for gaming. I will however use it for other entertainment such as movies and music. I don't even need to have much HDD space since I like to work on external drives (I like being able to bring my files places WITHOUT cloud). And thanks for the Newegg and Tiger Direct mentions, I'll overlook both sites.
If you won't be gaming you probably won't need one, just get a decent processor and 8GB or so of ram, an Intel i5 should be more than enough.
If you are looking for a simple machine then simply buy an already built machine rather than going for building your custom machine. Just make sure it has better processing power, storage and memory since most games tend to need a lot of memory to run effectively.
If your needs are restricted to those areas only, I would recommend you to not spend too much on your build. In my opinion, you should start off with dual core AMD processor along with a stick of 4 GB RAM. You should get a decent PSU for 30$ and the motherboard should not be more then 80$. A 1 TB hard disk should be the norm for you. I would also recommend you to look for a good quality soundcard instead of going with the one already on the motherboard. The cost of this build should work out around 500$r.
Something you can do if you are not sure what you need it to look around for a prebuild computer that has the specs you want, then just see how much the individual parts cost on newegg. That should save you a lot of money, maybe up to 50%, then you just need to assemble it, take it slow if it's your first time, there are plenty of tutorials online that you can follow.
If you're building your own computer I suggest you take note of the most important parts, the CPU and the GPU (very important for video playing and other stuff) for the RAM and HDD, well I wouldn't invest that much, especially on RAM, a 4GB stick is enough, focus more on the CPU and GPU, if you scored a higher end CPU/GPU combo, then you'll be using your PC for long time.
