When you are selecting the pieces of hardware that you are going to buy for your new PC, or when you want to expand or improve it to have better performance , you will surely have doubts about which components you should invest more in order for the PC to meet your needs. In this article we are going to tell you what are the hardware components that you should invest in depending on the type of use that you are going to give to the PC, in order to try to get you out of doubt.
The premise when mounting a new PC or expanding one that you already have is to seek that it has a balanced performance, without bottlenecks (although it is sometimes unavoidable on budget). In any case, depending on the use that you are going to give to the PC, you may be interested in investing more in a better graphics card, more RAM, better processor or more storage. Let’s see the possible cases.
Buy hardware depending on usage
As we said, a balanced PC is one in which all the components are of a comparable level. In a balanced PC, the system will not be affected by bottlenecks because one component is much lower than others, and we will obtain what we could consider the best performance for the investment made.
For example, there’s no point investing in a very powerful graphics card and then skimping on a low-power OEM power supply ; In the same way, it doesn’t make sense that if you have an older processor and motherboard, invest in faster RAM.
PC gaming
For gamers, the most important component will always be the graphics card because it is the one that will allow us to play at higher resolutions, with higher graphics, and at higher FPS rates. However, depending on the games you want to play, you will also need a powerful processor , especially if you are a fan of games with complex maps such as Civilization, Grand Theft Auto or Cities: Skylines.
In this case you will also want to have enough space on the hard disk, and that it is fast to reduce loading times. For this reason an SSD with a decent capacity should be another one of the hardware components that you would have to buy without a doubt.
Likewise, powerful hardware also implies greater consumption and heat generation, so you should not lose sight of a good quality power supply and with a power according to your hardware, as well as a good heatsink for the processor and a box that generates a good air flow.
Video or audio editing
In the event that you are going to use your PC for video or audio editing, then the components that interest you the most may be different. Although a gaming PC is generally valid for these purposes, in this case you will be interested in investing more money in buying a more powerful processor , followed by more quantity and speed of RAM , and ending with a good storage capacity with great performance , that is, an SSD .
And it is that unlike gaming PCs, where with 8 GB of RAM you usually have enough in most cases, for audio or video editing the starting line is 16 GB, and in this case configurations of 32 and even 64 GB are not exaggerated at all.
Productivity and office automation
Buying hardware for a PC that is going to be used for office automation and productivity (that is, for working on “light” tasks) has quite different requirements from the previous ones. Here the graphics card gives you practically the same, as well as the storage capacity. Here you are more interested in having a good processor, a good amount of RAM and a fast hard drive .
Multimedia
If the use that you are going to give to the PC is simply the reproduction of multimedia content, then the hardware requirements are much lower and what you should look for is a small and low-consumption computer. In any case, the most important component here will be the processor , followed by RAM and a dedicated graphics card (with an integrated one it may be worth but sometimes the performance will not be optimal). You will also be interested in having large capacity storage to store all your multimedia files.
Buy file server hardware
If you intend to use your PC as a file or application server, then there are two pieces of hardware you should invest in: first obviously storage, the more and faster the better, and second the processor. However, keep in mind that this also involves investing in a motherboard that has a good disk controller, and if possible with many physical connectors, although this depends on how many disks you want to install.
