NOTE: I am not responsible for any errors I might have made in this article, and for any expenses that might occur from following it. I wrote the article to the best of my technical knowledge, but I am only human, so I make mistakes. If you find a mistake, please email me at
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. All suggestions are greatly appreciated! Also if you are not too confident about the computer you are building, please email me a list of parts that you want to use, and I will personally check whether they are compatible J I remember when I was little I used to worship people who could build computers. How could somebody create something so complex by themselves? I later learned more about computers, and found out, that it really is not as hard as it sounds. A few years ago, I decided to take a crack at it myself. There were a few nice guides out there, however they did not really explain enough. Or there was always the alternative of buying a 200 page book. In the guide, I hope to give the perfect mix, so that it would both be informative and will help you be ready to build a computer as soon as possible. This guide is not for professionals, so it does not list the “advanced” features of building a computer. First and foremost, where do you buy the parts? Newegg Newegg is my personal favorite store for computer parts. It is partly because of the prices, but mostly because of the searching, review, and other tools it puts in to make finding the right component easy. In this article I will show you some basic strategies to use when shopping in NewEgg. The Sections NewEgg sells a lot of electronics, however for the purpose of building a computers you will only be working in the “Computer Hardware” section of the site. More specifically, you will only work with the following Sub-Sections. I suggest you bookmark them right now. If you stay only within these sections, you will be less likely to make a mistake. · CD/DVD Burners & Media -> CD/DVD Burners · Computer Cases · Hard Drives -> Internal Hard Drives · Memory -> Desktop Memory · Motherboards (AMD or Intel) · Power Supplies · Processors (AMD or Intel) · Video Cards and Video Devices -> Desktop Graphics / Video Cards Searching – Advanced Search Finding the exact product you need can be extremely difficult, especially if you do not know what you want yet. For that, NewEgg created a cool tool Called Advanced Search. To use it, just go into any of the sections above (for this example we are using Desktop Memory), and click “Advanced Search” on the side. Now you can narrow down your search, by selecting the types of products we want to see. I suggest picking one change at a time, and pressing search (on the bottom). Say for example, you only want DDR2 RAM. Just go to Type, 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM, Search. Then you would see all the DDR2 SDRAM come up. Now you are not sure what to get, DDR2 800 RAM, 1066? Go to Speed, and you will see all speeds of DDR2 RAM. Next to the speed is a number in parentheses. This tells you how many products with that speed they have. So select DDR2 800, and press search. You will see the entire RAM selection available which runs at 800Mhz. Then go back, and pick DDR2 1066. So say, you decided to stick with DDR2 800. Next you narrow down by capacity, either 2GB in one chip or 2GB in 2 1GB chips. Or maybe 2 2GB chips…Play around with your possibilities. Searching – PowerSearch Advanced Search is good when you have a small number of products, and a small number of possibilities for each “feature”. But say for example, you are picking out a motherboard, and you want to make sure that it has everything you need. Picking it out using Advanced Search would take ages. Instead you can use PowerSearch. Say for example, you decided on getting an AMD motherboard. Now you go to PowerSearch, and pick out exactly what you need. For example, for the price you can put 70 – 100 dollars. For CPU socket, you choose AM2+/AM2. For CPU type, you want to make sure it supports a Phenom Processor (if you are getting a phenom processor of course), so you check every box that contains the word “Phenom”. You check 4 x 240pin slots, a memory standard of DDR2 1066. You want to make sure that it has 1-2 PCIE slots, so you check 1, 2, and maybe 3 (3 wouldn’t hurt right!). You want at least 2 SATA 3Gb/s ports, so you check 2, 4, and 5, and finally you click search. Now your selection is narrowed down to the motherboards that exactly fit your description. From over 152 motherboards you instantly went to 7. From those 7 you can select the one you like, either by price, by rating or by some other features. (I suggest always checking reviews by the way). Sorting – By Price, Reviews, Etc Probably one of the most used features in NewEgg is sorting. Products, at any time, can be sorted by Price, # of Reviews, Best Rated, and by Best Selling. The selection is available at the top right of the product table (to the right of the compare button). If you are just looking for the cheapest thing, do “Lowest Price”. If you want to make sure your product is reputable, select “Most Reviews”. This sort feature can be used in conjunction with the power and Advanced Searches. So in the example with the motherboard, you would sort by “Most Reviews”. I suggest using Most Reviews rather than Best Rating, because we want to make sure that lots of people bought and tested this motherboard. Once you sort by Most Reviews, you will see a clear winner. Reviews Make it a rule, in general, when internet shopping, to ALWAYS check reviews of a product before you buy. This is not just on NewEgg, but on lots of sites. This gives you the actual experiences of real people who bought your product. You might see an awesome motherboard, with tons of features, looking absolutely perfect, but if you don’t read the reviews, you will not know how reliable it is until 2 months after you buy it and the warranty is up. I tend to always check the 1 star and 2 star reviews. You can filter “stars” or “eggs” in this case by going to “View All Reviews” and then clicking on the link # of reviews next to the 1-egg or 2 egg ratings. Then you can see the specific problems of that product (for example incompatible with Phenom). However just because 1-2 users said that the board came DOA (dead on arrival) or stopped working, does not mean the board is automatically junk. If there were 200+ reviews, with only 10-20 ½ stars, then it is still an excellent board, just those 10-20 people were not lucky. Also remember that people tend to review products if they break rather than if they work well. Use your judgment! Another way to see whether your product is good or not is the “Awards”. Some products have been nominated by users to get an award, because they work so well. For example, the GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H got an award, because it says “ 1x Winner of Customer Choice Award - AMD Motherboards” next to it. Usually, if a product got an award, it is more than safe to buy it. Final Thoughts NewEgg offers tons of features to make buying products extremely simple for the customer. However, you really need to use your judgment when buying. If you use that and all the tips I said above, you will pick out the perfect parts quickly and easily. And now on to Part 2, how to choose your parts!
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