Choosing PC Parts For Building Your Own Gaming Computer
Learn everything you need to know about PC parts and how to compare them so that you can build your own computer.
Do you want to build your own computer but don’t know where to start? Have you been wondering what all the different parts of a computer do and how to compare them and put it together?
In this article I’ll take you through all the different parts of a computer and what you need to know about each to compare it to another part and useful websites you can use to compare them easily, check all your parts work together and get an estimate of how good your computer would be.
We will go over things like
What parts do I need to get? What do they all do? How do they all go together? How can I check they will all work together? How do I compare different parts? How can I check how good the computer will be?
1. Graphics Card
If you are building a gaming computer then the most important component will be the Graphics Card. This is what calculates what to display on your screen. If you want to play better looking games and want them to run smoothly then you need a better graphics card.
Graphics cards contain their own processor called the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) just for calculating what to display on the screen. It determines how much detail it can display on the screen. The more it can calculate each second, the more detail it can display.
What you need to know to compare:
- The No. Of GPU Cores: These are what perform the calculations. The more the better.
- Base Clock Speed: How fast each core can calculate. The more the better.
You can get an estimate of the overall speed of the graphics card by multiplying the number of GPU Cores by the base clock speed. The speed is usually measured in Millions of Operations Per Second (MOPS). The clock speed needs to be in MHz. Mega means million. If its in GHz then you need to add 3 zeros on the end.
As an example take this spec for the RTX 2060 Super from the Nvidia website. The overall computing power would be approximately ~ 2176 x 1470 = 3198720 MOPS.
You can then just calculate this number for other graphics cards to compare them. But a much easier way is to go to this website to compare them.
The latest graphics cards also have two extra types of cores. Tensor cores and Ray Tracing cores.
- Tensors cores are only used for AI related stuff, so you don’t need to worry about this if you are getting a gaming computer. The speed of these cores is measured in RTX-OPS.
- Ray Tracing cores are special processors just for handling light in games and making all the lighting look way more realistic. These are a great bonus if you can get a graphics card with them, but you really need one of the best graphics cards to be able to use it as enabling it really reduces the number of frames per second the graphics card can produce, sometimes going below 60 FPS. The speed of these cores is measured in Giga Rays/s.
2. Monitor
Theres no point in having a top of the line Graphics Card if you don’t have a good monitor to display it on. There are several things you need to consider when deciding on which monitor to get.
If you want to find out the specs for a monitor you can use this website which has long list of loads of different monitors.
The things you need to consider are:
Pixels Per Inch (PPI)
The more pixels per inch your monitor has the more detail you’ll see.
Note that this is different to resolution which is just the number of horizontal and vertical pixels. You can have two different sized monitors which both have the same resolution. The pixels will be bigger on the bigger monitor and it will look worse as there are less pixels per inch of the screen. You need to consider both the resolution and size of the screen.
Take for example a 27 inch monitor with a resolution of 1440p. 1440p means there are 2560 x 1440 pixels. You can use this website to calculate the PPI.
It comes out as 109 PPI. For a 27in 1080p monitor it would be 82 PPI. If we take a larger monitor say a 34in 1440p monitor it would be 86 PPI. The higher the PPI the better.
This means you don’t have to have a bigger monitor to have more detail. The detail could be a lot better on a smaller screen. In fact smart phone screens have very high PPI typically around 400 to 500 PPI.
Refresh Frequency
The refresh frequency is how fast the monitor can update the screen, how many frames are displayed on the screen per second. This is limited by how many frames your Graphics Card can calculate per second. Having a higher refresh rate reduces the amount of motion blur in your game. Motion blur means anything moving on screen will appear blurry and when you turn your character the whole screen will be blurry. A higher refresh rate means everything will stay clear, which is important in fast paced multiplayer games.
A bad refresh rate would be 60Hz, a good value would be 120Hz.
Response Time
The response time is how long it takes between your computer calculating the next frame to display and when that frame gets displayed on your screen. It takes time for the calculated frame to get to your screen, a delay. You want this time to be as small as possible if you are playing more fast paced action and multiplayer games.
A bad value would be around 10ms, a good value would be 1ms.
Color Depth
The color depth is basically how many different colors the monitor can display and how accurate colors are when you try to display something on the screen. The same colorful image would look quite different on two different monitors with different color depths.
The image would look a lot more washed out and appear lighter on a monitor with a worse color depth. If you like to enjoy the view and pretty colors in your games then you definitely want to get a high color depth.
A bad color depth would be around 16.7M colors and good depth would be 1073M colors.
Screen Panel Type
Most screens these days use Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs). These screens are made up of tiny little crystals that can be rotated using electricity and by rotating them you can control how much light passes through them and control the brightness of your screen.
There are three main types of LCDs, these are Vertical Alignment (VA), Twisted Nematic (TN) and In Plane Switching (IPS). They all work slightly differently but they are all still LCDs. Some types are generally better at some things than others, but you should really check the spec for more details, because two different panel types can still have similar specs.
Some are quicker at updating and some are better at controlling how much light gets through and make whites look brighter on screen and blacks look darker and have better contrast.
IPS are the most popular at the moment. They are usually the best overall. They have great image quality and great color accuracy and have the best viewing angles.
Summary
What monitor you get really comes down to what you use it for.
If you like to play more slow paced RPG games and enjoy the view and like to be more creative and do things like edit photos then you’ll probably want to focus on more color depth and PPI.
But if you like to play more fast paced action games and multiplayer games then you want to focus on refresh frequency and response time as you want the monitor to be able to update its screen more quickly as you move about.
I personally like to play more slow paced RPG games, so I like to have a monitor with a better color depth and PPI and I have an IPS panel screen. Things like refresh frequency and response time don’t really matter as much for me.
3. CPU
The CPU is what determines the overall speed of your computer. There are two main brands of CPUs, AMD and Intel. In the past AMD has been considered best at making CPUs for lower speed gaming computers and Intel higher speed. But over recent years thats really begun to change. AMD has been making CPUs that are much faster and at a better price than Intel.
The CPU and GPU both perform calculations and you can determine the overall speed in the same way:
- The No. Of CPU Cores: These are what perform the calculations and determine how many apps you can have running at the same time. The more the better.
- Base Clock Speed: How fast each core can calculate. The more the better.
You can get an estimate of the overall speed of the graphics card by multiplying the number of CPU Cores by the base clock speed. The speed is usually measured in Millions of Operations Per Second (MOPS). The clock speed needs to be in MHz. Mega means million. If its in GHz then you need to add 3 zeros on the end.
As an example take this spec for the Intel i7–9700K CPU. The overall computing power would be approximately ~ 8 x 3.60 x 1000 = 28800 MOPS
You can then just calculate this number for other CPUs to compare them. But a much easier way is to go to this website to compare them.
I’d recommend at least a 4 core CPU for games these days, but you don’t really need to go beyond 8 cores.
4. RAM
This is what allows you to have many apps open at the same time and more tabs in your browser before it starts to slow down.
RAM is basically a faster but smaller storage for your apps.When you load an app up its moved from the slower Storage to the faster RAM so that when you switch between two apps that are open they will respond straight away.
Once your RAM gets full and you have a lot of apps open your computer will become a lot less responsive and it will feel much slower to open apps and apps may not even respond when you click on them. You can reduce it by just closing down some apps.
There are two main things you need to consider:
- Storage Space: How many apps you can have open at once. The more the better.
- Speed: How fast you can save data to and load data from RAM. The higher the better.
There are different types of RAM, they are DDR3 and DDR4. DDR3 is older and only works on older motherboards and DDR4 is newer and works on the latest motherboards.
I’d recommend at least 8 GB, but preferably 16 GB. I’d recommend a speed of at least 2600 MHz.
5. Storage
Storage just means your computer drive. Its where all your files are saved. The key three things you need to know are:
Storage Space — How much data you can store on your drive in GB.
Reading Speed — How quickly you can load apps and data up from the drive.
Writing Speed — How quickly you can install apps and save data to the drive.
There are a few different types of drives. Some are just generally faster than others and use newer technology.
Hard Drives — These are slower, but can usually store a lot more than SSDs.
Solid State Drives (SSDs) — These are much faster, but can’t usually store as much as a Hard Drive for the same price.
NVMe M.2. SSDs — These are even faster than SSDs but they connect to your computer’s motherboard in a different way using an M.2. slot. They connect directly to your motherboard instead of using SATA cables like normal drives do. You need to make sure there is an M.2. slot on your motherboard and it supports NVMe.
If you want your computer to start quicker and for apps and games to load up quicker and to make loading screens in games go faster then you need a fast SSD.
6. Motherboard
This is where you plug in all the other computers and what connects them all up. The motherboard doesn’t really matter that much but you need to make sure its got space for everything and its compatible with the rest of your computer parts.
You can use this website to check the parts are compatible.
Slots to check for:
- NVMe M.2. Slot
- VR Ready USB Port
- USB 3.0. Ports
Each motherboard only works with either DDR3 or DDR4 RAM. If you are building a new computer I’d recommend getting DDR4 RAM and a DDR4 Motherboard. PCPartPicker will tell you about this.
Each motherboard only works with a certain generations/versions of CPUs. Newer motherboards only work with the latest CPUs and older motherboards only work with older CPUs. Again you don’t have to worry about checking this, PCPartPicker will tell you about this.
Only the latest motherboards have a special VR Ready USB Port just for plugging your VR Headset into. You really need to make sure you have this port on your motherboard if you want to play VR Games, normal USB slots won’t be able to handle your headset that well.
7. Virtual Reality
You may also be wanting to play virtual reality games and use a VR headset with your computer. What matters most here is the graphics card again. The latest graphics cards
But you also need a motherboard with VR support. Usually it says something like its VR Ready which means it has a special USB Port just for plugging your VR headset into. Using this instead of a normal USB Port will mean your VR games will run more smoothly.
Checking Parts Work With Each Other
You can easily check whether your chosen parts can work together using this website.
Just select your chosen parts and it will tell you if there are any problems. It recognizes most components and also shows you the history of the price of the component.
You may get a warning about a motherboard BIOS that needs to be updated before it can work with your selected CPU. You need to be careful with this. You can only update the motherboard if you already have a CPU that works with it.
Comparing The Performance Of Parts
You can easily compare the performance of different parts or your whole computer build using this website.
You can compare graphics cards, CPUs, RAM and your whole computer build. People can download some software from this website that runs some performance tests on your computer and retrieves what parts are used in your computer and you can then see how your computer compares to other peoples. You can select your computer parts and based on the results of other people it can estimate how good your computer would be.
Using this website you can see an estimate of how many frames you would get for different games and how good they are a different tasks like handling lighting and handling particle effects like smoke and fog and many other things.
You are given an overall performance score which is broken down into three separate scores. A score for general web browsing and app use performance, a score for gaming performance and a score for video and music editing.
