Welcome to the Celtnet How to Build your PC Home Page
Advanced Search

Welcome to Celtnet's How to Buld your Own PC Page — This is the first page in a series of articles that takes you through the main components of a PC, how they work and how you can put them together to either build or upgrade your own PC. This is an illustrated guide and by following these instructions you can learn how to build, repari and upgrade any PC. If you would prefer not to wade through several web pages, the entire series is avaialble as the How to build a PC eBook, sales of which go to support the One Milion People Charity Campaign.
stefan and zogo small One Milion People Campaign
If you can spare $1 then help support this site and change someone's life forever? Learn how and why on the One Million People campaign page. Or donate $10 and get my pictorial guide to building your own PC book as a gift for your donation!

Building your PC:
Getting Started

If you've reached this website, then you're obviously interested in either building our upgrading your own PC. You may have done this before, but need some refresher tips, or you may be new to playing around inside the guts of your PC. Whatever your personal knowledge or experience, you should consider this as a daunting prospect. As long as you can screw in some screws and fit plugs into their sockets then you have all the skills necessary to assemble a PC.

I upgraded my first PC almost exactly sixteen years ago and built my first machine from scratch in 1991. From this date I have built or upgraded a few machines every year. Everything from simple home PCs to instrument-linked PCs, high-end gaming stations as well as Mac desktops, PC laptops and Mac PowerBooks. I have a fair amount of experience, but would call myself a skilled amateur rather than an experienced professional. The construction of a PC no longer daunts me, but I still encounter many of the same problems that you will. Problems that I have solved over the years and will attempt to solve in these pages as well.

For my work I write software using PC, Mac and Unix systems. So I will take this series on building a PC into the areas of what software to install and how. Then I will go beyond this and show you how to use Linux to get all the software you need for free. This will go far beyond what you would want from a gaming PC and though the focus of these articles will be on a PC designed for number-crunching and writing programs I will also tell you how to construct the best gaming PC you can. As well as indicating which software to install and how to protect both your hardware and software from harm.

But enough about me and what I do and don't know. How about getting started?

The Basics:

Before you even start on looking for and buying any hardware you will need some tools. In building a PC you will be handling a number of fairly delicate electronic components. As a result the most important item you can buy is an anti-static wrist strap. This will protect your central processor and memory units from accidental damage by static electricity. You will also need a couple of different sizes of Phillips (cross-head) screwdrivers and a pair of long-nosed pliers.

components for building your PC: anti-static wrist strap components for building your PC: screw-drivers and pincers

You might also want to consider an anti-static mat on which to lay your various components as you're assembling them.

components for building your PC: anti-static mat

If you have a table with a wooden or tile top, or a wooden floor on which to assemble your computer the anti-static mat is not necessary as long as you wear your anti-static wrist band. However never assemble your computer directly on a carpeted floor as the movement of your body on the floor will generate a static charge that can adversely affect the components you're assembling.

Right, you now know what tools you need and where you can build/upgrade your computer so you're ready to go aren't you? Yes you are... But I'm going to hold you off for a little while yet. First I'm going to introduce some basic concepts of computation, as knowing this will allow you to know what you're buying when you're sourcing components. After all you want to buy the right bits don't you?


So what is a computer? At its very simplest level a computer comprises a set of instructions (which originate from the user or the hard drive or both) that are interpreted and executed by the CPU (central processing unit, the 'brains' of the machine). The results of these are then displayed to the user. So that the CPU can access the instructions faster it's operations and instructions are stored in a bank of memory (memory access is much faster than hard disk access). Thus a 'computer' is a keyboard, hard drive, CPU, memory and a display; with data flowing between one and another, as shown schematically below:

components for building your PC: schematic of how a PC works

The computer is really simply a way of shuffling data around so that it can e analyzed. Indeed, were it not for its need to interact with its human operator a computer would be a very simple machine indeed. However, the need for keyboard input, video display, sound input and output of necessity complicates the entire architecture of a system and these are elements that need to be factored into the design of the machine.

With all the basics out of the way we can now move on to choosing the necessary components. On to the next part...


Building and Upgrading your PC PDF file — It takes time and money to keep The Information Site on the world wide web. You can help via the PayPal donation system:



You remain anonymous as all eMail details are destroyed once your gift has been verified and a 'thank you' email has been sent. I need your trust and do not keep or sell eMail addresses. Once your donation has been made you will receive a copy of my Build and Upgrade your PC PDF file which takes you through the main components of your PC along with how to chose those components and how to build a PC from them, all in a pictorial guide. Any donation you make goes towards the One Million People charity campaign. For more information see the Frequently Asked Questions. Also, if you purchase a book through any of the Amazon links below then a portion of the price will go to the maintenance of this site. Thank you for your help in keeping 'Celtnet Information' running.

Build a REAL business you can be proud of

Want to know more?

1. Take the tour 2. See the results 3. See the Proof 4. Take the Video Tour Want to learn more? Talk to a real (and successful) SBI owner