→ How to choose a computer 【step by step】 ️

Actions as important as choosing the correct socket and processor and placing the right and balanced components is very important when setting up a computer. Not only is it enough to choose the cheapest or most expensive of each element, you have to do it judiciously and always knowing that we are looking for it.

Next, we explain the considerations and the best tips to get the purchase of a new computer right. We recommend, whenever possible, that you assemble a computer by parts, but everything will depend on our needs.

Index of contents

What are you going to use it for?

The first thing we need to take into account is, what are we going to use our new computer for. The components to be used, the type of PC and, above all, the price will largely depend on this decision.

Computer to play: Here we always recommend choosing the components, powerful graphics card, processor, motherboard and RAM ourselves. Not to mention a good chassis, good cooling, and at least 1TB of storage with another SSD for the system. In any case, there are manufacturers such as Asus with its ROG range or MSI with its Trident range that have high-level pre-assembled equipment. We will also need a monitor with a refresh rate of at least 120 Hz. Computer for multimedia design and rendering: in this case we need, above all, large storage capacity, good connectivity for peripherals and a powerful processor of at least 6 cores. If it is for video rendering work we must consider an Nvidia Quadro and a 4K monitor with good calibration and color rendering. General Purpose Computer: For users who use their PCs to write, browse, watch movies, and eventually play games, they don't need overly powerful hardware. Perhaps some compact equipment that manufacturers provide us could be a great option, or if we prefer, mount a small Micro-ATX tower with AMD Ryzen quad-core or Intel Core i3. Surely you highly value the fact that it incorporates Wi-Fi connectivity, so an all-in-one would be a good option and especially that it brings an embedded operating system. Multimedia station: we are facing a case similar to the previous one, although in this case, we would almost have enough capacity to play content in 4K, good Wi-Fi and network connectivity and, above all, portability and that it occupies little. The all-in-ones, or the mini-PCs connected to our SmartTV will also be highly recommended.

Tower vs all in one (AIO)

Today, we have a wide range of equipment to choose from, because in addition to laptops, we also find equipment that installs all its hardware behind a screen, they are called AIO (All In One), and we obviously have traditional towers. Both have their advantages and also their disadvantages.

towers

The half tower PC is the classic form that desktop computers have. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that peripherals and monitors are not normally included. What's more, sometimes we do not have an operating system as it happens in most portable computers. The advantages and disadvantages that we can consider are:

First, we will have greater capacity for installation and expansion of hardware, much more if we decide to buy all the components ourselves. Cooling is generally better too, as there is more interior space, there will also be better air circulation. Possibility of expanding the storage if we buy large towers, in which 3.5-inch units can be inserted. Higher power, this is quite relative to today, but there is certainly more range of desktop processors than for example for mini-PCs or laptops. Ideal for gaming for the simple reason of its expandability and power.

Higher consumption due to more powerful hardware and larger power supplies. They take up more space in the case of being a half-tower chassis. Although we will also have Mini-PCs that according to the cases could be considered as all one. They do not have a built-in monitor, and possibly no peripherals such as a mouse or keyboard.

All in One

The good thing about these computers is that they come with the included monitor, in fact, almost always the hardware is inside them, at the rear. We can also consider all-in-one Mini-PCs for having the ability to be installed behind a monitor, for example, with VESA 100 × 100 mm support. The advantages and disadvantages then are:

They take up very little space, practically what a monitor occupies. They have a very low consumption, due to having little powerful hardware as a general rule. They are very portable and have almost secure Wi-Fi connectivity and a touch screen. They include peripherals such as mouse and keyboard in most cases. Ideal for viewing multimedia content.

Little processing power, so they will not be used to play or render videos. Reduced storage capacity, so we will surely have to buy portable hard drives, NAS or DAS. Almost no hardware expansion.

Basic hardware: CPU, memory, board and storage

The hardware of a computer are the internal components that take care of that computer works, without them we could do nothing with a PC. So we need a processor, RAM, a hard drive and a motherboard to interconnect all of it.

Processor, AMD or Intel

The basic component of a computer is the CPU, all the instructions that our computer and operating system carry out pass through it so the more powerful, the faster the tasks and programs will run on it.

AMD and Intel are the main manufacturers of desktop computer processors in the market, at least they are the best known and the ones that offer the most options, since for example Qualcomm or Realtek are more focused on mobiles and other devices such as NAS.

Between these two manufacturers, the performance gap has narrowed considerably, and we have very good processors and equivalents across virtually the entire range they offer. While it is true that Intel still gives an extra power with its Intel Core, AMD offers great performance with its Ryzen and also at a cheaper price.

The AMD and Intel processors that we must know are the following, although we group them, in families there are no completely equivalent models, and this must be made clear:

AMD Athlon and Intel Celeron - These are basic dual-core and quad-core processors in some newer Models. They are the cheapest of the manufacturers and very valid for mounting multimedia equipment, since it has a built-in GPU and is capable of playing content in 4K at 60 Hz Intel Core i3 and AMD Ryzen 3: we are already entering the powerful desktop processors of both manufacturers. We have quad-core chips with higher power and capacity than the previous ones, and highly recommended for inexpensive office and general-purpose equipment. AMD Ryzen 5 and Intel Core i5: These processors elevate their performance to 6-core and 6 or 12-thread processing chips. They are available in mid-range and high-end gaming equipment and are the smart purchase, since they combine a fairly affordable price and a great multitasking capacity for gaming, design or professionals. They are by far the most recommended. AMD Ryzen 7, Intel Core i7 and Core i9: These are the most powerful desktop processors from each manufacturer. They are 8-core chips and 8 or 16 threads of processing, for high-end gaming equipment and designers and professionals who need high processing capacity. Intel Core i7 / i9 X and AMD Threadripper: They are the processors destined for Workstation, beasts of 18 cores in the case of Intel and 32 cores in the case of AMD. They are intended for high performance design, rendering, composition and modeling tasks, although we can also play with them, no doubt.

RAM Memory How many GB and speed?

RAM or random access memory is the place where running programs and operating system processes are loaded. It has direct communication with the CPU to send the necessary instructions to it. The more memory, the more programs we can have open simultaneously.

In this case there is little to say, all current computers use DDR4 memory, even Mini PCs, although these are installed in smaller slots called SO-DIMMs, compared to the DIMMs of desktop computers. The speed varies between 2133 MHz and 4000 MHz, although there are faster ones.

What is really important for capacity issues, mediate in GB:

4GB - Ideal for general users who perform basic functions such as web browsing, email, and music file playback. 8 GB: enough for moderate users who will be running various programs like Office, media players, etc. We recommend this capability as a minimum for any type of all-in-one or tower PC. 16GB - Recommended for gamers and other image and video editing programs as these programs require a large amount of memory to run at the ideal speed. 32 and 64 GB: These are higher capacities and recommended for professional CAD / CAM design, video editing and rendering teams. Today, a gaming computer does not need 32 GB of RAM.

Both Intel and AMD are perfectly compatible with these DDR4 memories, so we will have practically no problems when choosing them.

Motherboard

Motherboards are a world, both for complexity and for components that we must take into account to choose the best computer. As you will understand, a tower is not the same as an all in one or a laptop, the boards are very different in all these cases.

On a motherboard we will have to take into account some of these elements:

Connections: the more and more variety the better. We need USB for peripherals, 3.5 mm jack for audio, video connectors for the monitor and also a network port to connect to the Internet via cable. For design teams, Thunderbolt 3: is a connection that works through USB Type-C and provides a speed of 40 Gb / s. only the most powerful boards and equipment have them, and they are ideal for large transfer capabilities, for example in network rendering. Chipset: if we buy a computer by parts we will need to choose the chipset, which is a processor that is in charge of managing the communications of the peripherals and some USB and the SATA storage of our computer.
- High-end gaming and rendering equipment: We recommend the Z390 and X299 Chipset for Intel processors and the B450 and X470 chipset for AMD processors. Low to mid-range gaming and generic equipment: We recommend the B360 Chipset for Intel processors and the B350 Chipset for AMD processors.
Wi-Fi: If we want multimedia equipment, there are boards with built-in Wi-Fi, so we will have to identify these characteristics with the presence of the 802.11 protocol in its network specifications. Ability to connect hardware: that will be true on any PC, the greater the capacity to expand hardware, the better, so we can add RAM, or more hard drives.

In the case of all-in-one and mini-PC we will not be able to rely on these characteristics, since they will be very different motherboards in terms of this type of element. But we will always ask for good connectivity and at least capacity to expand hardware.

Storage HDD or SSD? Better together

In practically all the cases we have considered, we are going to need a large storage capacity. Applications are becoming more powerful and varied, so most of them occupy spaces of more than 500 MB. And not to mention multimedia content such as series, movies and especially games that we can acquire through platforms such as Steam that comfortably exceed 50 GB.

Manufacturers know this, and on many occasions they add storage of two types, SSD and HDD, to a PC.

HDD: found in most desktop computers, they are much cheaper, but also slower, and have more storage capacity than SSD devices, and can obtain figures of more than 4 TB (4096 GB). To choose a gaming or design computer, we will need to have one of these, or at least that the tower has capacity for it, and we will use it only to save files. SSD: SSDs are infinitely faster than HDDs, although they are also more expensive and with less storage capacity, hovering around 1024 GB on larger SSDs. Today, they are practically mandatory to install the operating system, since the speed is unmatched by HDDs.

HDDs are always connected through a SATA port, while SSDs can be SATA or M.2, which is a slot on the motherboard that provides much higher speeds than SATA. We are talking about 3, 500 MB / s compared to 600 MB / s of SATA.

We always recommend having a hybrid storage, HDD for files and SSD for operating system and programs, so everything will go much faster.

Graphic card

The most desired and necessary element for the players and to assemble a gaming equipment. If your preferences are based on choosing a computer for design or games. You are going to need a graphics card. This card installs independently on the motherboard, in a PCI-Express x16 slot and takes care of all the 3D graphics and textures processing of your computer.

They have a cost that ranges from 150 euros to more than 1000, but be careful because they are not mandatory on a computer. The processors that we have seen before, all of them, or all of them, have a special core to process graphics, or what is called APU or integrated graphics. With it, we can perfectly reproduce multimedia content in 4K, and even play some basic games.

Nvidia and again AMD are the leaders in graphics cards with their Nvidia GeForce RTX and AMD Radeon Vega. Of course there is a lot to choose from and you had better visit our guide to the best graphics cards to get to know them better.

Screen size

Of course, we will need a suitable monitor that adapts to the needs. In either case, a size between 24 and 27 inches should be more than enough for any user.

For all-in-one computers, the ideal will be a tactile momintor that adapts to the space that we have reserved for you. A Full HD resolution (1920x1080p) should be adequate to play Blu Ray. If we want to see 4K content we will need a 4K UHD screen (3840x2160p). For gaming or desktop computers we will be practically the same.

For design, we will need a monitor with a good calibration and an IPS panel, with greater fidelity in the representation of colors. Nor should we rule out a 2K or 4K resolution in the case of CAD building design or video editing.

Included software

Unless you have special needs, you probably only need the basics, such as security and office software that provides word processing and spreadsheet functions, among others. There are many free applications for the different operating systems, namely: Windows, Mac OS and Linux / Ubuntu. But the ones with the best compatibility, functionality and power will be paid, for example, AutoCad, Adobe Photoshop or Premier, Office, iTunes, etc.

A positive aspect of pre-assembled and all-in-one computers is that they have an operating system (in most cases) and also include applications such as antivirus or word processor and video playback.

Another interesting option is the Mini-PCs with Chrome-OS the Google system, which is a desktop variant oriented towards multimedia playback and Web browsing.

Conclusion: visit guide samples

Choosing the best PC is not an easy task, and as you can see, many things must be taken into account. To help you, it is best to visit our updated guides and our recommended PC configurations. If we stand out in anything, it is in being the best in terms of hardware configuration, component analysis and guides:

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