You’re Not Too Stupid to Build a PC, But You’re Still Stupid

So you’ve never built your own computer before. It’s fine, I’m not here to judge. Unfortunately, I am here to belittle and deride. Your rig sucks, your frame rate sucks, and you haven’t modded your case to look like Constantin Brancusi’s “Bird in Space.” Because I’m feeling especially charitable today – due to parole requirements set forth by the state of California – I’ve deigned to acknowledge the existence of sub-optimal machines. Building your own rig is no small task, but it’s not nearly as hard as it looks. I’ll go through the basics with you and spoon feed you some recommendations, lest you starve to death in a pile of your own ignorance.

The Motherboard:

When purchasing a motherboard, you want to try and find a happy medium on price. First-party boards are generally overpriced, so I’d recommend looking at third-parties such as ASUS, MSI, Foxconn, and Gigabyte. You don’t want to short yourself on a crucial part, but you should be able to find a quality motherboard in the $120-180 range. Motherboards are all about slots and ports. You want a decent number of USB ports for mice, keyboards, and flash drives full of your greatest LARPing pictures. If you plan to build a computer with multiple graphics cards (SLI or Crossfire, and only recommended for seasoned vets), make sure your motherboard has the proper certifications and PCI-Express slots.

The CPU:

These days, everything is moving to multi-core processors. Currently, most games don’t really take advantage of these “multi-threading” capabilities (notable exceptions being Lost Planet and Supreme Commander), so the sweet spot right now is the dual-core. If you’re into heavy audio and video editing and want to create indie thriller flicks to send to your hero M. Night Shyamalan, quad-core might be good for you, but then again so would a vasectomy and a lobotomy to prevent you from breeding or speaking. As far as dual-cores go, I strongly recommend the Intel Core2Duo line. If you can afford it, grab the E8400 Wolfdale processor with a 6MB cache. You don’t know what these things mean, but I suppose even cretins can build computers these days.

The RAM:

Do you even know what RAM stands for? Ugh. I can’t believe you’re about to build a computer. If you drool all over it and get electrocuted, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Anyhow, if you’re building a gaming rig, you’re probably going to be running 32-bit Windows, meaning you’re limited to 4 GB of RAM. You can get by with 2 GB, but you can also get by with one liver. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t harvest organs just in case. Most motherboards these days use DDR2 RAM, and given the prices of DDR3, that’s what you’ll be buying.

Graphics Card:

Like Intel vs. AMD in the processor space, nVidia vs. ATI (now part of AMD) is a battle from time immemorial. Although several months ago nVidia was a no-brainer choice – lucky for you, recent lobotomy patient! – some of the more recent Radeon cards have been stellar, such as the ~$200 Radeon HD 4850. If you’re comfortable at $200, the 4850 is a great choice. If you want to drop down from there, the GeForce 8800GT offers comparable performance at ~$170, and if you’re feeling especially saucy, you can drop $450 on the GeForce GTX 280. Graphics cards are the easiest major part to swap out, so don’t feel bad if you make a terrible choice; eventually, it’ll just feel like every other choice you’ve ever made.

Additional parts:

Although there’s plenty more to cover, you’re feeling beyond inadequate at this point, so I’ll keep the rest of my points brief. These parts are the easiest to extract from an older system, so if you’re feeling cannibalistic, here’s where to start:

• Power supply – You probably need at least 400W these days, and the more powerful your system, the higher you need to go. A 500-600W power supply should cover almost any system you could possibly build.
• CD/DVD drive – DVD burners cost about as much as DVDs these days, so just grab any old one and call it a day.
• Hard drives – If your motherboard has SATA connections (most do these days), buy a SATA-compatible hard drive. They’re faster and easier than your old hard drive. And yes, hard drives are a metaphor for your harlot of a mother.



• Keyboard/mouse – Again, whatever you want. None of this matters when you’re getting owned by racist 10-year-olds in Call of Duty 4 anyway.
• Sound card – The onboard sound on your motherboard is generally more than adequate these days. However, if you have money burning a hole in your pocket, mail it to me. I’ll buy a sound card for you and mail it back. Don’t worry if it looks like a package of half-eaten feces – that’s just how sound cards work, and you should be more worried about the fact that you just ate half a package of fecal matter.

Budget:

If you’re the failure I’ve pegged you for, you’ll want to keep it cheap. You should be able to build a moderate gaming rig for $1000, especially if you use wonderful sites like Newegg and Tiger Direct to assemble your system. If you’ve come into some funds by letting internet bankers put cigarettes out on you, then you can build a pretty stellar system for $1500-2000.

As a final act of showmanship to show Judge Stevens that I’m truly a changed man, I’ve included a solid gaming build with some suggested upgrades below. Don’t worry: you can build this machine for just over $1100 and play all your favorite games, like Barbie Horse Adventures:

If you’re currently looking to build a computer, post any questions in the comments below so that you may be humiliated in front of your peers.