For someone who wants to custom build their own computer, but have never done so before, what are your suggestions on where to start? Putting aside basic knowledge of motherboards, power supplies, graphics cards and other essentials, what should I be looking in to? And what websites would you recommend for comparing/buying parts? Also, any part recommendations are welcome. I realize that it'll be a good 1-2,000 dollar project, but I want it to be fairly capable of running newer PC games as well as design/developer programs such as Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator without much strain.
Newegg.com all the way. This is the best website for hardware hands down. I've been buying from there for well over 7 years. Best prices and variety. They even have a video tutorial for choosing hardware. [video=youtube;lPIXAtNGGCw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIXAtNGGCw[/video]
It depends on where you're from, I'm going to assume you're from the US. In that case Amazon.com and Newegg are probably the best places. Don't always go for the cheapest site where you can get your parts, you are dealing with a lot of hardware components and if something does go wrong you want good customer support.
Oh! I love building PCs! Honestly, Newegg is awesome, I really like TigerDirect.com as well! Remember to read the reviews and google each part you're interested in to compare prices. Don't skimp on RAM and graphics card since you're going to be running photoshop. Also, you should decide on a more specific price. That will eliminate a lot of extra stuff you might have to look into. I built my computer with a strict $750 budget. It helped a lot because I didn't need to look like 20+ video cards.
This is pretty much the best piece of information you could get on the matter. Everything you need to know is here, I completely agree with everything.
A word of caution with NewEgg - a friend of mine recently got into an argument with them over their supposed price matching guarantee. Apparently there is a lot of fine print related to that, and it's only under very specific circumstances and does not include many other sources such as eBay, or promotional offers such as Amazon's Prime membership. It also doesn't include shipping costs or taxes, etc... Plus if you return something to them to get a better price elsewhere, they will try and charge you a restocking fee... Something else I will throw out there, have you looked into any of the "all in one" desktop systems out there? Many of them these days have great specs at a very reasonable price. I got one for about $800 last year and I love it. The nicest thing about them is they take up practically no space and there are no crazy wires all over the place behind your computer - mine only has one wire, the power cord.
Oh wow, thank you! This is awesome. I have thought about it, but for this I really wanted to be able to customize the components and to be able to replace/upgrade them easily in the future. I want this thing to be reliable and to last a long time, as well as have it catered specifically to what I want, and I think that the only way to go about that is to build one myself, and if I'm able to do that, I'll be able to understand what needs to be done/which parts are which and where when I go to customize and upgrade later. Thank you everyone who gave me suggestions, this was a lot more helpful than I thought it would be.
Try checking this site out: Log In I've never put together a PC myself, but I imagine this would be a good place to start. Good luck!
That's like saying beware of cell phone companies. You usually don't have to price match on Newegg anyways.
I would personally advise doing simple mods on an existing desktop PC before you build your own from scratch. Simple upgrades like adding RAM would be a good place to start. Maybe a new grpahics card too. Once you know the basics of the inside of a PC and how things go together it will be easier to make one completely from the bottom up.
I would suggest looking for some type of tutorial on YouTube personally. Youtube is great at helping you find exactly what you need on any topic almost ever. I would start there because it will show you exactly how to do it, step by step.
