Choosing a Monitor for Your Custom PC

 

Every PC needs a monitor. Laptops have one built in, but you’ll need to buy one for your desktop. Unless you buy a bundled kit, most desktop computers don’t come with a monitor. When you’re building a custom PC you could easily include a monitor when you’re purchasing the parts. If you’re buying a pre-built computer you’ll often be able to buy a display too. Sometimes, though, the computer manufacturers you’re buying from don’t have the best selection of monitors to choose from.

Before you buy a monitor you should make sure it’s the right one. First take into consideration your PC and how you’re going to be using it. If you’re going to be using it for work and basic office tasks, like email, web browsing, and spreadsheets, a simple low to medium-grade monitor will suffice. I find that at work I greatly enjoy having multiple monitors so consider purchasing a couple monitors instead of just one big one. If you’re going to be doing video editing or graphics design, consider a higher-end monitor with high refresh rates (Hz). In these scenarios it’s important to get a monitor with adjustable color balance so that you know the colors you see on your display are the same as what will be printed or displayed on other screens.

If you’re going to be gaming on your custom PC, you’re going to want a great monitor. It would be a mistake to blow your budget on awesome high performance parts for your gaming computer, and be left with little to no budget for a monitor. If your gaming rig is capable of playing the latest big games at 4K resolution and high frame rates, but you have a 1080p monitor with a 60Hz refresh rate, all those high-performing components will go to waste – you’ll never see the performance you paid for. When looking at monitors you should consider the trade-offs of resolution vs refresh rate. Of course you can get a monitor with 4K resolution and 144Hz refresh rate, but these are expensive, and most computers – even custom gaming PCs – can’t render video games at 4K and frame rates over 120 FPS.  So decide what you’ll prefer to play games at – 1080p resolution and ultra-high frame rates, or 4K resolution and acceptable frame rates. Then buy a monitor that matches that preference. One of the newest technologies in monitors is nVidia G-SYNC. This allows the monitor and GPU to talk together and allows the monitor to refresh when the GPU has a new frame rendered. It addresses the issue of screen tearing, and also the lag issues caused by previous solutions like v-sync. To take advantage of G-Sync you’ll need an nVidia graphics card and a G-Sync ready monitor. Even some gaming laptops have G-Sync displays.

Lastly, you should consider the hardware in your computer. As I mentioned this is important for games so that their monitor doesn’t limit their gaming performance. This is also important for other users. Make sure that your computer has the right ports to connect to your monitor. Of course you can get adaptors and so on, but this will be a hassle and may decrease visual clarity. If all your computer has is a VGA port, then it’ll be silly to buy a monitor that doesn’t have a VGA input.