Why Choose a Custom PC?

There are thousands of computers available for purchase today. With all of these PCs to choose from, why would anyone decide to buy or build a custom computer? One could certainly argue that you could find exactly the PC you are looking for that has been pre-configured and built by a large manufacturer and available for purchase at a retailer or online. This certainly makes sense for someone shopping for a laptop or simply a cheap computer for basic office tasks. Sometimes, though that simply won’t do. Gamers often have specific criteria when they are looking for a new computer, and these criteria will be drastically different depending on the specific person and what kinds of games they are looking to play.

First person shooters are a popular category today. These games require lots of graphics performance to produce a high frame rate that is crucial for competitive online play. In these games the CPU doesn’t matter as much, as long as it is at least an Intel i5. The graphics card is usually the bottleneck and will determine your gaming performance.

Strategy games, on the other hand, like Heroes of the Storm, Dota 2 or Hearthstone are usually limited by the processor. These games don’t have intense 3D graphics like first person shooters (they do have 3D graphics, in a sense, but they are usually limited to just a few perspectives, and this doesn’t require lots of graphics processing performance). These games will hardly use the graphics card and have the processor running at full steam. However players will usually get very high frame rates with these games in the triple digits, and at this point it doesn’t really matter since gamers are limited to the refresh rate of their monitor. Some monitors have refresh rates as high as 144Hz meaning it could handle up to 144 FPS, but many gamers have monitors that are only 60 Hz.

Since some people demand very specific specifications on their computers, they opt for a custom PC that is designed to fit their needs exactly. Because of this they also save money by not buying components that they do not need. Some manufacturers bundle high performance graphics cards with top-of-the-line processors like the Intel i7, but many people would prefer an i5 instead. If you buy a preconfigured computer then, say, upgrade the RAM yourself, you will have spent extra money on the memory that you took out of your computer. What a waste! When you're building or buying a custom gaming PC every component and every dollar matters.