Cost To Build Computer

If one looks back to history of computers, the cost to build a computer was high and the computer built are also very large. The first computer ENIAC occupied a room space! With advancements in technology, the computers today are smaller in size and are less expensive.

Select Computer Parts

The first thing one has to do is searching for a good motherboard and a processor. Mother board can be purchased at around US$ 100. The cost of Pentium 4 processor from Intel will be around US$ 55. Earlier, the cost of mother board and processor was high. Due to competition from other manufacturers, such as AMD, the cost has been reduced. One needs to purchase high speed processors, which works above 2 GHz for working with newer operating systems.

The motherboard should have built-in sound card, modem card, USB ports. The mother board also should contain 3 to 4 expansion slots, such that one can add LAN and other device cards into it. Mother board should also contain at least 2 DIMM slots, so, that a maximum of at least 2 GB memory can be fixed.

Decide Memory capacity

The next thing to purchase is the RAM. It stands for Random Access Memory. It decides the memory capacity of computer. The higher the memory better is the performance of the system. One has to look for at least 256 MB of RAM for working better with Windows XP.

Though the system requirements for Windows Vista are not finalized, the requirement for memory will be high as 512 MB or even 1GB. So, if one is crazy about installing newer operating systems as and when they come, they should go for higher RAM. The pricing for RAM of 512 MB will be around US$ 40.

Decide hard disk capacity

The next item to purchase is the Hard Disk. One needs to have hard disks of large capacities now days. Better performance hard disks can be determined by means of RPM. The term RPM stands for Rotations per Minute. Better the RPM, better the processing is. Thus, RPM of Hard disk should be as high as possible. The information can be quickly read and written to hard disk, if the RPM is quite high.

Now a days, Hard disks with 5400 and 7200 RPM are most common. The next thing to look in the purchase of Hard disk is its capacity. Latest Hard disks are of high capacity of above 40 G.B. The best choice is a hard disk with 80 GB which costs around US$ 150.

Case and SMPS

The next thing to purchase is the cabinet with SMPS. For cabinets, one has to look for easy to handle designs and upgradeability. Some slim cabinets are not good for users who keep upgrading their mother boards and processors. Look for a cabinet, which provides easy access to CD-ROM drives and floppy drives. Otherwise, you may have to use your hair pins to remove the disks from the drives!

I had a system, in which, floppy drive entrance was designed like our open mouth. But, I had to use a pin to remove the floppy from the entrance of the drive, although the drive ejected the floppy correctly! The SMPS with cabinet will cost around US$ 30.

Check out monitor

Without display device, nobody knows what is going on inside the computer. The display device is called as the Monitor. Monitors, today, are of high resolution type. In older days, the monitors are available only in Black and White mode. Today, the black and white monitors are outdated, but you will still find them in some of the Banks. These monitors are of low resolutions. It is better to go for color, SVGA, 800x600 resolution monitors.

There are monitors which supports high resolutions than 800x600. However, these monitors are suited for creative and art full design purposes. The monitor with higher resolutions can be used for softwares like Computer Aided Design (AutoCAD) etc. The price of monitor varies from US$ 100 - 200 or even more depending on the resolution it supports.

Select keyboard and mouse

The next thing to purchase is the keyboard and a mouse. The Key board and mouse are the input devices. In early days of computing, the keyboard was only the input device. The mouse was added later, mainly because of its use in Graphical User Environment. Now, keyboards are available in different colors, and styles, with or without palm rest.

The keyboards are now available with special keys for operating with windows. One can directly launch a program such as Internet Explorer by pressing a single special key, instead of navigating through different paths. Mouse also has been changed, such as three button mouse. In this mouse, there is a middle button, which can be assigned to perform a particular task. In some mouse, there is a wheel in the middle, instead of button. Such a wheel is called as web wheel and used when one want to scroll down or upward through the document.

Some mouse has got LED, in the bottom instead of ball. Such mouse requires no cleaning of balls, wheels inside the mouse etc. The cost of Keyboard is at around US$ 20. The cost of mouse will be around 500. But, due to competition some companies offer mouse free of cost when one purchases particular keyboards.

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