One of the reasons that the standard IBM PC became such a success story was the fact that it was essentially put together with fairly generic components. This made it easy to clone and produce when compared to the more proprietary produced computers available at the time.  Essentially you could source all the components you needed and assemble your computer and sell it. New companies were born who built either the computers or the individual components. You still needed the operating system and software and hence Microsoft and others were also born, but that is another story.

This is of course a bit of an over simplification of the history of the PC,  but the point being that because all the components were available to buy off the shelf, building your own PC also became a realistic proposition too.  I talked a little bit in a previous post about my geeky past when I used to build and tweak my own PC’s.  Well I think quite a lot of other people are also into the same thing, since the individual computer components such as power supplies, disk drives and memory are consistently some of the most popular and highly rated computer products on PriceGrabber.

I thought I would start a series of posts on the important components that you need to build your own computer.  I  will  start with the shell or case which seems like a basic component but actually does need some thought, but thats for the next post. A case does provide good potential for showing off a bit though, have a look at the Thermaltake Armor Black tower case which looks like a serious bit of kit!

Are you interested in building you own computer?