No, building your own Windows 10 PC is not as complicated as rebuilding an engine on a Buick: still, it's not for everyone

Those of you who are not tech-savvy, may have, at least a few times, heard your PC-savvy friends talking about the benefits of building your own PC, instead of purchasing one off the shelf, and there is truth in what they say, when looking at the cost of purchasing separate components and putting them together, let alone the fringe benefit that comes with the ability to upgrade parts, within the same PC case.

Putting together a custom PC that is more powerful than a store-bought desktop is comparably cheaper, as well as being a very satisfying experience, as celebrity comedian and actor Terry Crews decided to build a Windows PC from scratch with his son. It certainly was a bonding experience, but it didn’t come without a fair share of hurdles and mishaps, some of which, customers on a budget may not like to deal with.

First of all, let’s break down the actual cost of all the parts needed to build a PC:

On average, a decent mainboard capable of supporting the latest AM3, or Intel CPU socket, as well as up to 64GB or RAM, is relatively inexpensive, in the range of $100 and $300, depending on features.

With the mainboard being the least expensive part of your custom-built PC, you may guess the rest of what you need won’t be as cheap, depending on how powerful, or featured-packed you want your PC to become.

The good news is that most desktop processors, either Intel or AMD, come in such variety, that price and performance are not necessarily in a mutually exclusive relationship. A decent AMD Ryzen CPU can start from $200-$300, up to a thousand, for high-end performance, such as the latest Ryzen 7. Intel Core i7 CPUs can set you back around the same, and most come with their own performance heatsink, rather than the standard little one that used to be sold together with previous generation processors.

Storage and RAM are perhaps the two pain points of building a PC.

DDR4 RAM, much like DDR3 and previous kinds, is still a pricey commodity, which is why even used RAM tends to retain most of its original value long after purchase, as long as it’s still supported. 64GB of the best DDR4 RAM can cost between $800 and $1200, however cheaper RAM can cost half that, if you don’t mind more error-prone memory, and a more limited shelf-life. With that in mind, 64GB isn’t necessary for most users, and even 32GB. Running a system with 16GB at a cost of few hundred dollars will still get you respectable performance, depending on the processor and storage you have.

In 2018, solid state drives are a must. There is no two-ways around the fact that they both speed up your system boot-up time, and overall performance with every app. Unfortunately, 1TB SSD still costs about three times more than a comparably capable 7200RPM spinning drive. The smart thing to do in this case, is to get an SSD big enough for your operating system and apps, and a regular old, cheaper spinning drive for storage only. Your system will still be fast enough, with minor decay in performance when working off of your spinning drive.

If you plan on playing games, a good GPU is crucial, and NVIDIA has an impressive range of cards that cater to everyone, from the most basic Minecraft enthusiast, to the hardcore triple-A gamer who wants to push hardware to the limit. NVIDIA GPUs range from the cheaper GTX 1050, all the way up to GTX 1080 and Titan X, very popular with gaming enthusiasts and also cryptominers.

Now let’s take a look at everything that could possibly go wrong with actually building a PC

Let’s assume for a moment that, just like actor Terry Crews did, you are going to approach building your PC by merely relying on YouTube videos and friends online giving you pointers and directions.

Choosing the right RAM and CPU according to your mainboard is perhaps one of the most daunting tasks you will ever face, if you don’t already have a foundation of building a PC.

For one thing, DDR4 RAM is merely the generic definition of the latest generation of RAM modules available on the market. There are literally hundreds of types of DDR4 RAM available,that may not be supported by your mainboard. The reason for it is that mainboards are built for performance. Tey are finely tuned to work with the best hardware for their purpose, and are designed to support RAM with a specific voltage and clock frequency, to best suit the hardware that is already included on the mainboard.

Figuring out which RAM to buy for your mainboard requires some research,and getting acquainted with the hardware support page of your mainboard manual, which can be very cryptic to the average user.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong when turning on a PC with the wrong RAM inserted, ranging from the PC merely not booting up at all, to your mainboard and CPU going up in smoke, along with your investment.

Choosing the right CPU is usually not as exhausting as trying to figure out the right memory, but more trouble can occur, if the CPU isn’t installed the right way. Installing a CPU requires the right amount of thermal compound paste to be applied between the CPU and the base of the heatsink. Too much or too little, can result in the CPU overheating for lack of proper contact with the heat dissipator, which in turns will cause the CPU to burn out.

Power is everything when building a custom PC, and the proper distribution of electricity across all components is crucial to guarantee the proper functioning of your PC. This is especially applicable to the installation of advanced GPUs. Typically graphic cards draw power directly from the PCIe slot they occupy, but more powerful GPUs require a bit more of a kick, which means that they have special power sockets that must be connected to the main power supply. Underpowering a GPU always spells trouble, and considering that a decent GPU can cost an average of $500, one can see the importance of connecting the proper wires.

Speaking of wires, the last, but not the least important aspect of properly assembling your PC is in regard to internal wiring that connects your external ports to the mainboard. This is where the manual comes in handy. Nearly all mainboards come with detailed diagrams depicting where every wire is supposed to go, but that can still be very confusing to anyone attempting to do this for the first time. In some cases, and without the proper experience, one may be tempted to bend some pins, or fit somehow a wire in the wrong port, which may almost always results into that dreaded white smoke rising from the mainboard, along with some very loud beeping noises.

In conclusion...

Let’s not shy away from the fact that, yes, building your own PC is cheaper, more fun, and more rewarding than buying one off the shelf, just as it would be rebuilding a car’s transmission or engine. The caveat is that knowledge and experience are required to avoid very expensive mistakes that most consumers simply can’t afford to make.