Build a Computer Online
You can easily build a computer online if you follow a couple
of the key steps outlined below to ensure that all of the components
will fit together. Don't worry, it's not nearly as tricky as
someone may have you believe.
TIP! Use
benchmarks, they will often get you faster components without having to
spend more money.
Step 1 - Pick your CPU
Be smart here, use the benchmarks to help you be able to pick out the
CPU that packs the biggest punch for your dollar. If you need
help, I can show you how to pick the
best
CPU. The information of the CPU I picked for the
purpose of this tutorial is below. As you can see below the
interface is an LGA1155, the motherboard will need to have this same
interface to be compatible.
Specifications
|
 |
| Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40 GHz
Quad-Core Unlocked
|
Step 2 - Pick out the Motherboard
To build a computer online or off, the part that will
determine the
longevity of your system will most likely be the motherboard.
Choose a motherboard from a high end motherboard
manufacturer,
you don't want to cheap out here at all.
Find a board that supports your CPU, Tigerdirect
will let you
narrow a search by many parameters including processor interface.
As you can see, this motherboard will support the CPU
selected. To build a computer online you'll like, either Asus
or Gigabyte make good boards.
Specifications
|
|
| ASUS P8P67 PRO REV 3.1 Intel P67
Motherboard
|
Step 3 - RAM
The next part to build a computer online is finding the RAM supported
by the
motherboard. As you can see, this board supports DDR3 1066,
1333,
1600, 1866 (OC), 2133 (OC), and 2200 (OC). The OC simply
stands for overclocked. To achieve the speeds listed, you
will have to overclock. Pick the fastest speed with no (OC),
in this case
DDR3 1600.
I can hear many of you wanting to go to the 2200 (OC), you'll have to
trust me on this one, timings play a bigger part in speed then MHz.
For the purpose of the build a computer online guide, you
want to pick RAM with the highest MHz without overclock
and the lowest
RAM timing
values. It's the numbers listed when you pick out your RAM
that looks like 9-9-9-24. Lower is better.
The final number is pins, as you can see by the motherboard
information, it's 240.
As you can see in the picture above, this board also supports dual
channel memory, the easiest way to identify this is with the different
color RAM slots. Putting 2 4GB sticks of memory will be
faster on
this board than 1 8GB stick since the board will write to both RAM
slots of the same color at the same time. Kind of like a RAID
setup. Below is a spec sheet for some nice memory for this
setup.
For the purpose of the build a computer online guide, we'll
choose 2 sticks.
There is more information on this site about picking the
best RAM if you're unclear.
Specifications
| Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 PC12800
1600MHz RAM
|
Step 4 - Hard Drive
Probably
the easiest part to build a computer online is to pick out the hard
drive. Find the fastest interface that supports common hard
drives, then check your benchmark and find a drive in your budget as
high on the list as possible. In this case the common
interface
is SATA 6GB/s or if you want to spend the money, you have the
PCI-express slots to go that route.
Using benchmarks here again is very important to make sure you get the
fastest drive possible for your budget.
Step 5 - Video Card
To
build a computer online, you'll also need to choose a video card,
another easy thing to do. The motherboard has PCI-express
slots
which is what's needed for video cards at this time. Choose a
card by benchmarks and features that has a PCI-express interface and
you're good to go.
Step 6 - The Rest
That's it, you've
learned how to build a computer online, the other pieces you need are a
case that is compatible with the motherboard form factor, a DVD or Blu
Ray drive, a power supply and a Windows disk and you're all set.
Manufacturer: 
