General guide to building a new desktop PC

Computer industry is so dynamic that no matter when you build your PC whether it is cheaper or dearer, you will end up hating your decisions 6 month in the line, because something better or cheaper comes out.

Everyone wants a computing power house having most bang for their buck, but as the saying goes that the "Chain is only as powerful as its weakest link" same way the computer is only as powerful as its most least performing component. 

You can go and buy a i7 (or xeon) with 8 cores and 16 hyper threads, but if your hard drive is still the old school mechanical drive, all that CPU power is not gonna able to use its full potential. 

Processor

Your computer performance is define by it, how powerful its gonna be and how much multi tasking can be done on it.

So here is a general way to choose a processor :

1. If you are a casual user, browse around store files, edit JPG pictures, watch movies Buy a Intel i3 processor or AMD FX6300 series processor.
2. If you are a programmer visual studio eclipse and stuff, go for i5 (4th generation and above) 
3. If you really want a powerful computer which just listen all of your commands and does not slow down no matter how many actions you are taking, you can consider i7 processor series. 
4. If you are a pro gamer choose i5 unlocked (they come with a extra K) because a game just use 1 or 2 processor thread and a i5 with over clock will give you more bang for you buck over i7 K. (because rest all rest on what graphics card you are gonna use)
5. If you are really a computer enthusiast, you just wanted to know what humanity in consumer retail section has achieved go for i7 unlocked (K) 

Mother Board

There is a reason people call it a mother board, Micro ATX,  ATX and HPATX, there are whole bunch of category, and more size mean more peripherals input output support and more graphics cards and other stuff and it actually define the scope of your computer performance, a mother board in a very broad sense can be generalize which type of processor they are gonna support by brand and pin numbers. Like 1150 intel mother board can support 4th generation i3,i5,i7 only but the 1151 is for 5th and 6th generation only, 1150 and 1151 are the numbers of pin present on micro processor. So you need to consider lots of option before you buy a motherboard.

1. If you are a gamer, you need a motherboard with at least 2 PCI express slot, you can crossfire or SLI (making two graphics card work in together to get more graphics power)
2. Which generation or brand of processor your motherboard is gonna support. 
3. How many front or back usb port. 
4. How many channel speakers you motherboard is gonna handle. 
5. The lan port
6. and many other small things. like sata port, cross fire port.

My simple guide is :

1. 32gb ram should be supported, (
2. 2 front usb 3.0 and two rear usb 3.0 ports
3. and 6 usb 2.0 ports 
4. if gamer go for 2 PCI slot. 
5. Gigabyte ethernet port. 
6. 1 HDMI and 1 VGA port at least on a mother board. 
7. Two PCI express slot will only important if you are a very very serious gamer or very very high end animation designer and want nothing less then 4K resolution @ 120fq 

Then choose other features like surge protection and all.

Hard Drives 

If you are building a new computer, I will say a just drop the idea of getting a regular mechanical (magnetic disc) hard drive as primary and partition, its a absolute must that you get a SSD as primary partition (where the windows or Linux and all install application will sit)

RAM

DDR4 is now in retail section but with a catch, the initial releases still have the speed crossing the DDR3, so there are not really big advantage of getting them and they are currently only supported by intel skylake series processor (5th and 6th generation), but they consume less power.

• So for regular user 8gb,
• For a regular gamer 16gb
• For heavy gamer 16gb DDR4 overclocked (things will come down to your graphics card performance more)
• For computer enthusiast no capacity is less.

Cabinet:

2 USB 3.0 in front at least

• Normal cabinet For every i3 normal user, or even a medium level gamer, with 2 fans at least, one or in air and other for out, so a constant flow of air is there in your cabinet.
• For a gamer with over clocked CPU or multiple high end graphics card Get a Mid Tower.
• For a Computer enthusiast with Over clock CPU and multiple over clocked graphics card get a full tower. 

Invest in your cabinate, this is the thing which will remain constant even if you upgrade your other component. 

Power Supply :

There are lots of sites on internet which let you calculate the exact need of power supply, but let me dumb it down. 

• With any non over clocked computer with no graphics card 450W to 500W are enough.
• With any non over clock computer with single mid range graphics card (non AMD) 600W are enough. (AMD card consume more power than nvidea one's)
• For a over clocked PC with some extra cooling solution involved, go for a 750W, this a pretty decent power supply for computer enthusiast also. 
• If your a re true cpu over clocker, sky is the limit choose between 800W to 1KW what ever your need. This post is not for you.

Again power supply is the core feature of your PC, your PC life span greatly depends on this. So go for a branded one.

Sound Card 

Almost all mother board comes with sound card, but even then if you need a superier sound go for external DAC rather than a sound card, because sound card is installed inside the PC and exposed to all kind of  electrical interference getting generated inside a PC. 

Graphics Core

Most of the modern Processors (expect highly professional ones, like Intel Xeon series) comes with a graphical processing core, and even you does not install a graphics card your CPU and motherboard will provide you bare minimum graphics rendering capability.

AMD APU's are better than intel integrated HD graphics and they share the graphics memory from your RAM.

I have never been a AMD user, but as far as Intel HD graphics are concerned they provide very general purpose graphics capability and if you want to play games using it, plan to play not more than 3D chess on it (I am sure that you will not see smooth frame rate during movements) Forget 4K even the display rendering on 1080p is not that good. You can watch 4K movies on it but thats it, anything which need advance graphics capability are out of scope from intel HD graphics.

A External Graphics Card

Do not go for cheap graphics card if you want to play little bit of latest games the current decent entry level graphics card is nvidia 750ti (2GB GDDR5) and at mid range go for nvidia 960 (4 gb GDDR5) or a equivalent AMD ATI Card, again the ATI Cards are better at equal price bracket (just in graphics ) but they are twice the power hungry, so make sure you have decent cooling solution and Heavier power supply in place.

Think about SLI or Crossfire (where you combine power of two graphics core) if you are really serious into 4k Gaming @ 120 fq. Which will really boost up your monitor budget like anything.

Blueray or DVD drive.

Blueray was never able to dent the market at DVD did. I will say skip the Blueray drive and go for DVD RW, because still many installtion media comes in DVD, like your retail Windows DVD or your Motherboard driver DVD, I haven't see anything important coming in Blueray drives (or even have a requirement for it)

UPS 

Depend what power supply you have fitted in your system take the next higher power rating for UPS for your power supply, like if you have a 600W power supply you can go for 800VA. 

Monitor

Again it is matter of choice but settle no less then 1080p resolution, 4K resolution are good but expensive and required more Graphics power also. So instead getting a high end monitor and running it on low resolution get a monitor fits your budget and graphics power. 21-22" monitors are decently great at 1080 resolution. 

Touch monitors are nice to have but generally have glossy finish and that really put me off and they are not that much useful also.

Keyboard 

Go for a mechanical one. Even with a less features (like no multimedia keys) the regular membrane keyboard just can't match the typing experience of a mechanical keyboard, the only downside is that they don't come in wireless option.

They are the most long lasting piece of hardware in computer history and still going strong.

Mouse

Logitech G90 or G100 are decent enough mouse to do basic gaming as well as general work without looking too wacky. Option of having a switchable DPI is really useful, while doing general work or playing games.