This can be a be a daunting task all in its own. In fact its probably harder to
decide what to buy than how to put it together. There
are lots of choice to be made, and it is easy for one
to get caught up in the research and continually
changing prices and put off buying because of it. One
of the first rules to learn when buying computer
hardware is that the price will always be lower
tomorrow, and the chips will always be faster, but if
you don't have them it doesn't matter.
You have to decide if you
are going to build the whole thing from parts, or if
you are going to let a custom PC manufacturer build
part of it and you are going to finish it off.
Sometimes it costs no more to let place you buy it
from put it together for you. Odds are this means
that the settings for the hardware, and compatibility tests we be more assured.
Of course don't get fooled
into thinking they don't make mistakes.
I am going to assume you are
going to buy the whole thing in parts and put it
together one by one. If you decide to let another
party build part of it for you, you will just have to
skip ahead to the instructions for the components you
wish to install.
A list of components that
must be purchased:
Case (usually comes w/ power supply)
Processor (CPU)
Motherboard
Hard Drive
Memory (RAM)
Video Card
Monitor
Mouse
Keyboard
Optional components that you will want to have:
3.5" Floppy Disk Drive
CD ROM
Sound Card
Modem
Speakers, Powered
Other completely optional
components:
DVD ROM (replaces CD ROM usually)
CDR or CDRW Drives (CD writers or rewriters)
DVD-RAM Drive (New to the market, allows you
to write to DVD disks)
ZIP Drive, SuperDisk Drives, and other
removable media.
Network Card
Tape Backup Drives
Scanner
Printer
Microphone
Video Camera (i.e. Web camera)
Digital Camera