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Even in the face of ever-more-powerful laptops and 2-in-1 tablets, the PC - despite occasional predictions to the contrary - refuses to die. A big part of the humble desktop's ongoing appeal is its modularity and customisation potential: you can buy a PC where every single component, from the motherboard to the chassis, delivers the exact performance, features and capabilities you want.
Buying a PC, however, is often less wise than building it yourself. Acquiring each component separately and assembling everything with your own hands can save you hundreds of pounds compared to a pre-built system with identical specs, and it's so easy to do that even a first-timer can put together their PC in an afternoon.
If anything, the only daunting aspect should be having to sift through the hundreds of available components to pick the parts you need. Luckily, we can help with that. In the following pages, we've brought together the best PC parts to suit all requirements and budgets. All you need to do is choose the components that suit your needs, and get building. We've even put together a series of complete guide specs to provide bases for your own system.
SCIENTIFIC PROCESS CPUs
The single most important component in any PC, the CPU influences every aspect of performance. Choose wisely, and it can serve you well for years
AT THE HEART of every great PC build is a great central processing unit, or CPU. Just about everything you can do on a computer - from transferring files between drives to opening applications and running games - needs to be, quite literally, processed by the CPU, so it's as crucial a part as it's possible to get. This remains true even if other components have a larger overall impact on certain areas of performance, such as graphics cards.
That's why, even if not everyone needs high-end processing power, we 72 still recommend getting as capable a chip as your budget allows.
MANY HANDS
The number of cores a CPU has can have a big impact on performance, especially when juggling several tasks at once. Think of cores as processors within a processor: each can focus on a separate task, or pool its power with other cores to maximise performance. There...