Computer Mania Goes Live with its Custom PCBuilder Site

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Gaming in South Africa continues to rise. Whether it’s the eSports scene, laptops, peripherals, consoles, or PCs, the landscape has a lot to offer for all involved. If you’re new to gaming, however, things may not always be so simple to get started. That’s where Computer Mania comes in. The brand recently launched its PCBuilder site, catering to gamers across varying backgrounds to build their customised PCs.

The new site was developed as an innovative tool, allowing users to create their own custom PC, with components available through Computer Mania. Unlike other sites that allow for custom builds, PCBuilder strips it down to its most basic, which means that almost anyone can make use of it. It does this by creating a customised selection based on three easy steps:

Select Your Games
Set Your Budget
Start Gaming

Computer Mania Goes Live with its Custom PCBuilder Site

By starting with the games you have in mind to play and setting your budget accordingly, you simplify the journey to the end goal. The site has also been successfully piloted through the Game Tester platform, which also includes its design and ease of use.

PCBuilder utilises 3DMark benchmarking scores to determine its recommendations for your rig. Once you have selected the types of games you want to play, you can then set your budget accordingly. Each of the options provided then also includes scores to assist you in making your choice. These scores are based on FPS of the game you wish to play at the various resolutions and graphics settings (low, medium, high, Ultra).

Jandre De Milander, Chief Executive Officer of Computer Mania, had this to say about the launch of the platform:

“Computer Mania is committed to providing excellent service and efficient turnaround times to all our customers. The addition of PCBuilder to our platform, provides an opportunity to serve the gaming community and ensure that custom build PCs are accessible to a wider audience. With more than 30 years experience and 32 retail stores in South Africa, Computer Mania provides peace of mind to all customers, being able to provide support online or in-store when required.”

Table of Contents

PCBuilder – How It Works

When kicking off the process, prospective buyers are presented with six games to select from. These aren’t necessarily the games you’ll be playing but rather the type of game or similar type of graphical requirements. The titles added to the selection include Apex Legends, Call of Duty Warzone, Forza Horizon 5, Fortnite, Minecraft, and Elden Ring.

Immediately thereafter, you’ll set your initial budget for the build. This starts at R11,999 up to R49,999. However, you will be able to fine-tune this further down the line.

Once these first two steps have been completed, PCBuilder will create a list of suggested options. If you’re satisfied already at this point, you can choose to ‘Preview Build’ and then proceed to the checkout. If not, you can proceed with the ‘Customize’ option instead. Here you will be presented with each of the components added to the rig.

Customising Those Initial PC Suggestions

This next section may be a little daunting to many and requires a lot more time to run through each of the components to build your custom rig.

When reaching the ‘Customize’ page, you’ll be able to choose each of the components via the menu on the right-hand side of the screen. This includes options such as the chassis, motherboard, CPU, RAM and so much more. The centre of the screen gives you a view of each of the different products available for that specific component.

During this process of selecting the different components, PCBuilder provides a real-time price increase/decrease from your current budget price, which is always visible at the top. At the same time, the performance scores are also still being tracked on the left-hand side for the games you selected at Step 1.

One Site for All Skillsets

PCBuilder provides an excellent experience for customising your own PC, irrespective of the level of skill you have in this area. Even if you’re not familiar with all the components to complete the build, the preselected recommendations assist you according to your budget to facilitate an easy build process. This also includes a list of parts that are compatible, which is important for the motherboard and CPU combination, RAM and the likes.

The site gives users a streamlined tool, being able to add or remove components as you choose, especially if you already have some of the parts own. However, in doing so, you won’t be able to successfully track the benchmark scores for the selected games.

Another interesting addition to the custom builder view is the power consumption indicator. As you add, remove or swap out components, the energy requirements are also being provided in a live view. For those running batteries, inverters and the likes during loadshedding, this is a great tool to calculate your average power consumption of the build.

Lastly, once you’ve completed your customised build with PCBuilder, you can also add in a number of peripherals, including a mouse, keyboard, monitor and other essentials. Before reaching the conclusion, users can choose to create a quote for later use, or head straight over to the checkout page.

When selected from the preset recommendations, Computer Mania will be able to ship those PCs within 24 hours of your purchase. However, for the more custom rigs, completed orders will be ready within a 72-hour timeframe.