This page shows users how they can build their own powerful server or gaming workstation for home office use. We build our own servers and wanted users to be able to find their own components to build an ideal machine that is a step above the off-the-shelf desktop, yet comes close to the cost of a decent off-the shelf desktop.

It is always difficult for the average home office user to identify individual components for an install, and going to a power-geek usually means $$$. This page tries to eliminate that lack of information.

Here are the following components that you will need to construct a home server:

1. Chassis - The computer case that will house your components
2. Motherboard - The Main Circuit Board which houses all the individual components
3. Power Supply - A SMPS (Switched Mode Power Supply) that powers the motherboard and all the components
4. Processor - The CPU (Central Processing Unit) which is the brains of your machine. You will use one or more, depending on your configuration
5. Processor Cooling - The Heatsink + Fan unit that mounts atop the processor to cool the processor
6. Memory - The Memory is needed for the CPU to have fast access to the data that it is processing - also called primary storage (transient)
7. Hard Drives - The Hard Drives are persistent storage for your programs and data. Data stored here is your file data and the operating system software along with data from any programs that you install
8. Optical Drives - CD Rom Drives, DVD Drives, Blue Ray Disk Drives (BD), or Drives that can both read and write CD's, DVD's and BD's
9. Video Card - Most decent motherboards have on-board video. Modern Video cards have lots of on-board memory and even a GPU (Graphical Processing Unit) that will share or even own the load of processing power required to render images to the display for some graphics intensive tasks.
10. Audio Card - Most motherboards today also have on-board audio. But some users with enhanced gaming and audio/video editing requirements may need to purchase both a compatible audio card and a video card, especially if you have specific requirements.
11. Accessories - Apart from the above, you may choose to have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, usb cards, usb hubs, card-readers, printers, scanners, etc.

We show multiple components (processors, memory, etc) on the various pages under the "Build your own machine" category. Our selection is specific to a particular architecture. We emphasise more on powerful configurations rather than simple home user PC's, which are cheap off the shelf anyway, and not worth the effort building yourselves today. If you can, thats good (we know all about the pride that comes out of building your own) but warned that you'll find that you almost break even or find your system more expensive than an off-the shelf system with the same features. This is because computer manufacturers select a configuration and mass-produce it, obtaining components at cheap wholesale rates - something that an ordinary individual cannot do. But if you have specific workstation or server processing needs, you know what these pages are designed to do. And you're not throwing in cheap off-the shelf components.

Have fun! and do drop us a line if you have comments or suggestions.