This is a weird question that was e-mailed to me a while back, but I thought it would be worth answering it since I actually see quite a few people searching for this on Google ... which confuses as scares me.

Anyway: how do monitors connect to gaming computers?

The answer is pretty simple: the same way they connect to non-gaming computers, either with a VGA or DVI connection. More than likely, this is going to be a DVI connection.

This gets a little more complicated as you get to very high end machines. Sometimes you'll actually run into dual-DVI connections: two DVI connections for one monitor. This is not very common; however, very high end graphics machines - especially workstations - will see multiple DVI connections going to one monitor.

The good news for gamers is twofold: there's only one unique connection that connects the monitor to the computer, and modern (post-2008) computers only really use one DVI connection.

Also, don't worry about SLI or XFire computers - if you have multiple graphics cards on your machine, only the main graphics card needs to be connected to the monitor, all of the other cards connect to the main card with a special cable internally, so you do not need to invest in a special "SLI monitor" to use an SLI gaming computer.

Check out how you can select a gaming monitor.

Click here if you want to learn more about computers, and even learn how to become the local "computer guy."