How We Built Dehradun’s First PC Builder

A shopper picks a processor, then a motherboard, then memory. Somewhere in those picks is a mistake they can’t see: a socket that doesn’t match, a memory generation the board doesn’t take, a graphics card longer than the cabinet. Before the builder, Best Computers caught those by hand, and some still reached customers. Since launch, none has.

Here is how the builder works, and why the same shape fits any product sold with options that depend on each other.

Start with the rules, not the screens

The first deliverable wasn’t a design of the builder. It was a list of every way two parts can be wrong together. That list became 50+ compatibility checks, run across every component pairing:

• Socket — the processor fits the motherboard.
• Chipset — the board actually supports that processor generation.
• Memory — DDR4 or DDR5, and what the board accepts.
• Graphics — a processor with no integrated graphics needs a card.
• Power — estimated draw stays inside the power supply’s rating.
• Clearance and connectors — the cooler and the card fit the cabinet, and everything plugs into something.

Written down, the rules decide the screens. They decide the order of the steps, what each step needs to know, and where a problem can be caught earliest.

Every rule reads data

A check is only a comparison: this socket against that socket, this length against that clearance. So every part in a 6,000+ SKU catalogue has to carry those facts as structured attributes — socket, memory type, wattage, dimensions — not buried in a product title. That work is less visible than the builder, and it is most of the job. A configurator is exactly as good as the data behind it.

The order of the steps is a design decision

The builder walks through nine steps: processor, motherboard and memory first, then graphics, storage, power supply, cooler, cabinet and accessories. The processor comes first because it narrows everything after it. Each pick is checked as it is made, so a problem is flagged at the step that caused it, while a running total — prices including GST — keeps the budget in view.

The rule that matters most is the last one: no invalid build can reach the basket. A warning a shopper can click past isn’t a check.

One inventory, not a separate catalogue

The builder isn’t a standalone tool with its own product list. It sells from the same inventory as Best Computers’ retail store and its B2B platform for 300+ dealers — one backend runs all three. A part that sells out on one sells out on all of them. We wrote about that side of it in One stock count, two storefronts.

The same shape fits other configurators

Swap PC parts for furniture modules, industrial components or a B2B quote, and the work is the same:

1. List the ways options can be wrong together — before designing a screen.
2. Turn those into attributes every product carries, as data.
3. Order the steps so the choice that narrows the most comes first.
4. Check as people choose, and make the final check one nobody can skip.

That’s the method behind every configurator we build. You can try this one at buildmypc.in/pc-builder.