How To Decide A Desktop Configuration

By Author: Alison Deffenbaugh
Total Articles: 5
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Whether you build your own desktop PC from scratch or buy one pre-built, you're still going to have to take into account various aspects of the configuration to pick the one that best suits your needs. So how do you decide what configuration is right for you?

The first thing to consider is your budget - what price would you ideally be looking at, and what's the absolute maximum you're willing to spend? The next thing to consider is your minimum requirements - what aspects of your desktop PC do you vitally need and what aspects would you merely like if you could afford them? You'll then need to decide on a PC based on these two aspects, finding a good balance between performance and price. Once you have your budget though, you'll also need to decide which aspects of the desktop's performance your money goes into - graphics? Storage space? Processing speed? And this will again be based on what the minimum requirements of your PC. But how do you know which things your PC needs and which things you can do without? If you're not fully clued in to all the hardware mumbo-jumbo then it can be hard to know whether a desktop meets ...
... your requirements making it easy to be enthralled by an attractive outer casing and a low price tag.

The performance requirements of your desktop will depend very much on how you intend to use it. To make life more simple you can very broadly categorise desktop PCs into three categories. The first of these is likely the desktop used for work and business. Such a PC will be required to run various different programmes at once to allow multi-tasking and have a reliable internet connection. It would also be useful to have a software package that includes Microsoft office and certainly the latest OS installed (currently Windows Vista). RAM too would be useful but this can be added later. On the other hand it won't need to have particularly high-end graphics or lots of storage space. Your minimum requirements here then are a fast processor (anything above 4GHZ to be safe), Windows Vista, word processing and some extra RAM.

Another category of PC used regularly is the 'family' PC. Such a PC is required to cater to everyone's needs, handling school work, late-night MSN chats, casual gaming and business documents. In a case like this then you will want to spread the cost out as much as possible across all areas and to focus on processing power, graphics cards, hard drive, RAM and software. If you don't use this PC much for work, however, then you may find that you don't really need an expensive software package. Media will also be important for such a computer so look for one with a DVD drive that can read and write and look for a large monitor to watch films or view photos around.

For a gaming PC however that can play all the latest games the priorities shift slightly to the 'power' of the machine. This will require a top end processor as well as top end graphic cards and lots of extra RAM. Here software is irrelevant (though Vista may be required for some of the more recent games) and a large hard drive is less important as are any additional bells and whistles.

Author works for Canberra Computer Shop and often participates in deciding desktop configuration for his Computer Shop customers.