I

magine that you’re looking round a

prospective new home, and instead

of all the electrical wires being neatly

hidden under floorboards and inside

walls, they’re snaking across the floors

ready for you to trip over them. The pipes for

the central heating are also climbing all over

the walls and sticking out of the floorboards,

and the extractor fan in the bathroom is the

wrong way round, so it doesn’t do its job. The

house might technically have everything you

need, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

It sounds ridiculous, but we’ve seen

plenty of home-built PCs with cables

PCMASTERCLASS

BUILDING

blocking upgrade paths and airflow, and

with fans positioned in a way that will make

your components run hotter. Building a PC

properly isn’t just a case of ordering the parts

and slotting them together like a piece of

IKEA furniture. You also need to know the

basic theory about which bits should go

where, and how to route cables and set up

airflow properly.

That’s where we can help. Building your

own PC means you can choose the exact

specification you want for your needs, and

it can be hugely rewarding. There’s nothing

quite like looking at a neat and tidy build with

the knowledge that you did it all yourself. Over

the next few pages we’ll show you how to

construct a smart PC that you can proudly sit

on top of your desk.

CHOOSE YOUR SPEC

For this feature, we’re going to focus on the

build process, rather than which components

you should buy, but there are a few pitfalls

to avoid. Firstly, before you buy any parts,

make sure they’re compatible. You need

to make sure there’s room for your chosen

motherboard, CPU cooler and graphics card in

your case, for example.

FEATURE / CUSTOMISATION

BEN HARDWIDGE TAKES YOU THROUGH THE PROCESS

OF BUILDING A SMART PC FROM START TO FINISH