HOW TO BUILD A GREAT PC

TO DISCOVER THEIR TIPS ON CREATING THE BEST POSSIBLE PC FOR YOUR BUDGET, WHETHER BUILDING IT YOURSELF OR CHOOSING ONE FROM BUYERS

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Whether you want to buy a new PC or build one yourself, squeezing the most out of your budget is a challenge akin to four-dimensional chess.

Every decision you make has repercussions, some of which may not show themselves until three years down the line. This article is here to help. Based on my own 25 years' experience reviewing desktop PCs, responses from PC vendors and an interview with our very own Lee Grant, I aim to cover the big questions, the pitfalls and squeeze in a few handy tips. While you can visit sites such as PCPartPicker (pcpartpicker.com), which is a great starting point as it does an excellent job of ensuring your parts are compatible, this – like all “configure it yourself” systems – assumes you know roughly what you want already. It reduces our game of chess to two simplistic and manageable dimensions, of price and spec, but lacks soul. There's also the very real risk of either under-specifying or over-specifying.

This guide to buying PCs is also a dog-eared love letter to desktop PCs as a whole. Modern laptops pack phenomenal amounts of power into a tiny space, but if you find yourself computing from the same desk 99% of the time then PCs remain the best choice for value and upgrades. Much like Trigger's broom, if you choose wisely they can morph over the years to the point where virtually nothing remains of your original machine.

The big advantage that desktop PCs have over laptops is that they're upgradable

LAPTOPS VS DESKTOP PCs