General purpose applications, gaming, high-definition (HD) content, and professional 3D modeling all pose unique requirements for the graphics subsystem. Typically, power users spring for discrete cards, which you drop into an open expansion slot on your motherboard. Both Intel and AMD are adding increasingly capable graphics engines to their host processors though, so you might not even need to buy a card if your needs are basic enough.
If that's the case, the information and resources linked on the previous page are good enough to get you armed with a capable CPU. But if you're interested in playing the latest games using high-quality detail settings, mining cryptocurrencies, accelerating video rendering workloads, or building a workstation designed for heavy lifting, add-in graphics plays a big role in your system's performance.

Extreme gaming hardware is specifically designed to drive the most realistic detail settings at very high resolutions. We’ve even seen game demonstrations using three 4K displays configured in panoramic view, a technology that AMD calls Eyefinity and Nvidia dubs Surround.
Our benchmarking experience suggests that you’ll probably want two high-end graphics processors to enjoy smooth frame rates at the highest detail settings in the latest games using just one monitor at 3840x2160. A Full HD display with a native resolution of 1920x1080 only has one-fourth as many pixels to drive, so you'd get similar performance from a more mainstream graphics card.
Frankly, Don does a stellar job keeping our Best Graphics Cards for the Money column up to date each month. If you want specific guidance on the right card to buy at any given budget point, that's the resource to bookmark. Of course, you can always check out our 2014 Graphics Card Charts for more specific performance data on the GPUs you're trying to choose between. Specific performance differences between specialized card models, along with analysis of new technologies and alternative cooling methods, can be found in our graphics reviews.
As you move away from traditional desktop use cases and toward professional workstations cranking on business-class software, AMD's FirePro and Nvidia's Quadro graphics cards become more apropos, mostly because their drivers are optimized for OpenGL performance and validated extensively with the most notable ISVs. OpenGL is a multi-platform application programming interface that software developers use to render graphics, and it's particularly prevalent in the workstation space. Expect to pay a lot more for correspondingly-tuned cards, even though the GPUs under their heat sinks are exactly the same as what you get from the consumer equivalents.
It's tempting, then, to save a few grand and tap a Radeon or GeForce card for those heavy lifting tasks. But even if you disregard potential accuracy/image quality differences, remember that the desktop boards lack those driver optimizations, and consequently aren't always as fast. If you're using your PC to make money, the smart move is to go with hardware designed for the job. We recently published Workstation Graphics: 19 Cards Tested In SPECviewperf 12, which should help put the potential of professional and gaming graphics products into perspective.
- Step One: Size Up A Case
- Step 2: Select Your CPU
- Step 3: Select Your Graphics
- Step 4: Select A Motherboard
- Step 5: Select Memory
- Step 6: Select Storage
- Step 7: Select A Power Supply
- Other Components
- Step 8: Choose Your Vendor
- Step 9: Preparing For Assembly
- Step 10: Build The Platform (CPU, Cooler, And DRAM)
- Step 11: Install Motherboard And Power Supply
- Step 12: Install Cables, Cards, And Drives

Cheers!
Cheers!
Wonderful as usual toms.. Appreciate it..
Great article! No doubt this is going to help a lot of folks.
Thanks, guys!
I think you missed a section for "SLI - XFire", but it's great overall. Since its a guide for folks with little to no knowledge, I think it would help them to dispel myths and get some facts over XFire and SLI.
Cheers!
First I put the motherboard into the PC (not fastened) to see where the standoffs are going to be placed onto the case. Also I note what routes I'm going use for my cabling. Then I take the motherboard out and insert the standoffs and port plate into the case. Also I take my case cables (power sw, reset sw, USB, front audio and mic cables and put a twist tie around them all and place them near where they are to be plugged into the motherboard. These cables are easy to lose track of.
Next I place the power supply, and "bay devices" (optical drives, non-removable storage, etc) into the case and have those cables attached and either hanging over the outside of the case or routed behind the motherboard tray. This obviously depends on how you determined the cables will be routed earlier.
Then I take my motherboard, put the CPU, RAM, and cooling system on as much as I can. Then I place the whole thing into the case - usually at an angle at first, leading with the side with the RAM (which is normally going behind the case bays in smaller cases) in first.
At this point it's just a matter of aligning the motherboard with the standoffs and port plate. Plug it all in (including the case plugs which are conveniently out of the way and together).
Power it all on and volia!
Otherwise, it was a good article. People who are uncertain of building their own PCs can learn a lot from it.
The 647W is measured at the wall socket, as the article mentions input power. After taking into account the 85% efficiency of their power supply in this example, the PSU is only outputting 549.95W to the PC components at max load. Adding some headroom they come to the 600W PSU recommendation.
Personally I'd like a little more headroom, but the calculations in the article are correct.
Building your own is great fun, and most serious users should probably give it a try at least once in their lives. Given that, I'd recommend an annual "refresh" of this article, with updated info and re-validated links to corresponding reference articles and resource forums.
A great service to your readers!
I wanted to comment on the power supply part of the article. One is the efficiency and the total cost to use versus the front end purchase cost. A less efficient system will obviously create more total heat as wasted energy. But aside from possibly making someones room rather uncomfortable, it also increases your airconditioning energy use. A good rule of thumb is that an AC system will use 50% of the heat energy. To add the total annual cost, multiply that times the percentage of the year that the AC is on. So your example of a 647W system with 85% PSU would give (550W used):
647W - 550W = 93W at plug
93W * 50% = 47W AC energy
Total Energy (summertime) = 93W + 47W = 140W
If the AC were on the while year and the PC were on continuously, this is about $140 annually, or almost $12 per month added electricity in the summer. If you did the same thing with a cheap 70% efficient system, you get $248 annual cost which is $20.63 per month summertime cost. At a difference of $8, it does not take many months (of continuous on!) to make the more efficient PSU make much more sense.
The other topic I wanted to comment on is ESD. I am an engineer and work with ESD issues everyday. It is a very real an poorly understood issue by many because of the often hidden or delayed failures that it causes. ESD many time causes walking wounded damage without an immediate failure, which finally fails several months later. And if you look at websites sell PC parts, many people complain of DOAs. Many, many DOAs are caused by ESD. Memory, CPUs, motherboards, HDDs, and other sensitive systems are often returned as DOA, driving up the cost of the PC enthusiast market and adding frustration. In research texts, they estimate the global electronic failures due to ESD to be 40-60% of the total failures over product life.
So that little $5 ESD wrist strap is money well spent. Buy one and reduce your heartburn.
Charles
So that little $5 ESD wrist strap is money well spent. Buy one and reduce your heartburn.
Charles
The only problem with wrist straps is that most people don't want to be "tied" to anything. They're a great idea that's really rarely needed. Feel free to say otherwise if you live in the desert.