Are you tired of low frame rate? Tired of your games looking like slideshows on the lowest settings? Is the last time you upgraded your computer, people were pitching fits because Quake 3 PC players could play with Dreamcast players? Is your computer so old there is rust on your case? Want to upgrade but dont have a massive bank account? Relax! Im here to help. With this guide you will learn how to build a modern PC without breaking your wallet.
First, we need a case. Because this is a budget PC the case probably isn't going to win any major art awards And it probably wont make more you more attractive to women. But alas, it will be functional. One of the major points when buying a case is ventilation. If you buy a case and has no ventilation what-so-ever. You will be replacing parts quite often. Another thing you need to lookout for is case type. There are a quite large quantity of case types. Just using the ATX form factor alone there are 5 different types. But the ones you should be concerned about are ATX and MICRO-ATX. The form factor we chose for our cheap PC is an ATX. Even though we have an MICRO-ATX motherboard. The reason I chose this is because even though our motherboard is a MICRO-ATX, what if our next motherboard is a different form-factor? We would have to spend more money to buy a new case. The case I have picked out is a CoolMax CS-480-black.. Its decent looking, it has adequate ventilation, and most importantly, it's cheap. It retails for about 25 dollars on Newegg.
Secondly, we need a motherboard. There are a tremendous amount of variations in mother boards you can buy, some come on-board over-clock utilities, some have customizable boot screens, and hell, some come with their own inter-graded web browsers! Choosing a motherboard is excruciatingly important. Because the motherboard will determine what types of parts you have to buy to finish building your computer. Whats even more daunting is that every single part you buy, has to be compatible with the motherboard, else you just have a giant, expensive paperweight. The motherboard we have chosen is the ASUS P5VD2-VM. It supports all of the latest technology, PCI-Express, DDR2 memory, SATA, and the latest Core 2 Duo cpu are all supported. It will knock you back about 47 dollars on Newegg.