Input/output devices

Input devices such as mouse and key board are important too. With out them, we can't do work with our computers.
How to select a good keyboard and a mouse is very important for you not only if you play video games, but for your health. There are researches said that a bad habit of using key board and mouse can cause joints and other kinds of health problems.
Key boards are divided in to Mechanical keyboards and Membrane keyboards. Mechanical-switch keyboards use real switches underneath every key. Depending on the construction of the switch, such keyboards have varying response and travel times. This kind of key board is more comfortable and easy to use, and it is built with body mechanics.
Famous brands are Razer and Logitech. Razer is more for gaming, Logitech is more for commercial users.
As a huge game fan myself, mouse and keyboard are important for me. If a mouse is not comfortable to use or the sensitivity is too high or too low, it will not be pleasant to use.

Output devices such as a headset is needed too. For desk tops there are problems that there is no built in speakers. So for audio purpose, a head set is needed. Headset price can vary from $10 up to $1,000. Depend on what your use is, you can pick your headset as you like. Unless you are those who insane with Hi-Fi qualities, you won't need one over $200.

Graphic cards and benchmarks

If you are a huge game player, a good graphic card is needed for your computer. 3D games with realistic computer graphics need a lot of graphic processing ability. For an integrated graphic card, it can't do all the job that is needed. What will happened is when you are trying to play a video game, there will be a lot of frame lost, and fps ( frame per second) will be lower than 10p. What you are running will become lag and can't flow well.

Famous graphic card brands are ATI and NVIDIA. NVIDIA is a little bit more expensive than ATI but it have better ability in some special cases. So I prefer NVIDIA better myself.
The other thing we need to know about is DirectX. Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. In a more understandable way to say it is a programming language for graphic  multimedia. Almost every Windows machine is based on that.

Heaven DX11 Benchmark is a bench mark specialized for DirectX 11. Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced UNIGINE™ engine. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.It is the first DirectX 11 benchmark in the world, the original version was released at the moment of Microsoft Windows 7 launch in October, 2009. It can test test the gaming ability of your computer.

What you need to build a tower

If I am thinking about building a desktop what would I need?

The most important part is of course the main tower. Which you need to build up your self. First you need to go to amazon(www.amazon.com) or new egg(www.newegg.com) and look up for parts. The tower case, a main board, a power supply if the case doesn't have one build in, CPU, rams, hard drive and graphic card if you want it to be more powerful. Usually in the processor (CPU) there is an integrated graphic card, but that one is never enough; even you want to run some filter effect on Photoshop, it will lag a while. So a discrete graphic card is recommended.

CPU (Central processing unit) is the most important part of a computer. It is in charge of all the calculations that a computer is needed. A better CPU can make a huge different to the computer. Nowadays the two most famous brand is Intel and AMD. They both have CPU at all price levels, you can choose one with your own preference.

Main board is where everything is put on, CPU, hard drive, ram and graphic card. It is like back bone of the computer. Good main boards have protection for over heat, static electricity and other problems that may break your computer. So main board is also a very important part.

Lets get started

Building up a computer is impossible for me, I don't even know how to fix a toy car. If you are thinking this way right now, don't worry, let's start with some easy stuffs. We can started with how to change ram and hardrive for your laptop. All you need is a + screwdriver and your hands.
First you need to shut off the power and take out the battery if you can. Here is a special tip before you do that. In winter time, especially you are wearing a sweater, the static electricity on your hand can possibly have huge damage to the old main boards. So before you take things apart, touch something that is metal so the electricity on your hand can flow away. Then we can start unscrew the screws on the back of the laptop. Different brand have different design on the back. This is basically what you are going to see.

rams are usually by the middle, in this case is right above the battery. The two hard drives are next to it.

You can take out the ram by pressing at the metal part on the side of it, and it will pop out. For the hard drive, you need to unscrew the screws again.

Why are we wasting our time doing this you may ask. Do you know that by knowing how to do this can save you at least 100 bucks. Also if sometimes your computers shows blue screen, taking off the ram and plug it back in can help.

Why we want DIY

Do you think your computer is not powerful enough, and you want to get a better one? But you don't have that much money to afford a nice and powerful tower. Then you don't need to do it, let's do it yourself!

This might rise to another question: Why we need a powerful computer, and what makes a computer a good computer? When people are talking how powerful their computer is, they are basically talking about their computer's high speed, amazing graphic processing ability, and gaming power.

Speed is usually depend on the processor and the hard drive. If you have a good processor you can load applications in a matter of second, transferring files without any waiting, and even do heavy load of works in the blink of an eye. Monitor and graphic card are in charge of the display and graphic processing ability. Just thinking about watching 1080p movies on a huge screen without any lag or lost of frame, and running 3D video games with effects as in real life. How awesome will that be. These above are all the great things that a powerful computer can help you.

Now you might starting to get worried about how much can it be to have a powerful desktop. How much you think a desk top with 1080p display, core i5 processor, 8GB of ram, powerful NVIDIA graphic card and 1TB hard drive can cost? 2,000 bucks, or maybe even more? That might be true, but it is only when you buy it from a Dell or maybe Sony official store. If you want to do a little bit work yourself, all those above can be half the price. All you need is to buy parts online or in stores by yourself and put them all together. There are about over 50% of the price become profit and get into those computer company's pocket. Now you can save all that and do better than that. Why still waiting? Let's get started.