Building Your First PC: A Beginner’s Checklist

Building your own PC is far more approachable than it looks from the outside — most of the difficulty comes from small compatibility details rather than the actual assembly. Here\’s the order we\’d check things in.

1. Pick the CPU first, then the motherboard

Every other decision follows from this one. The CPU determines the socket type, which narrows down which motherboards will physically fit it, which in turn determines the memory type you can use.

2. Confirm case, cooler and GPU clearance together

Case dimensions, CPU cooler height and GPU length all interact with each other. A common beginner mistake is buying a large graphics card and a tall air cooler for a small case, only to find they physically overlap.

3. Size the power supply with headroom

Add up the rated draw of your CPU and GPU, then add roughly 30% headroom for efficiency and future upgrades rather than buying exactly to the minimum.

4. Don’t skimp on the storage-to-RAM balance

A fast CPU and GPU paired with too little RAM or a slow drive will bottleneck the whole system. For most builds today, 16GB of RAM and a single NVMe drive as the primary disk is a sensible baseline.

5. Ask before you order, not after

If you\’re not sure two parts fit together, it\’s much cheaper to ask before checkout than to discover it after the box arrives. We check full parts lists for free — send us yours through the contact page before you order.