Chupacabra Posted February 22, 2001 Share Posted February 22, 2001 Sorry if this isn't the right place, but I figured I'd get the most knowledgable responses here. It's computer upgrade time soon, and I'm looking to assemble a PC myself rather than buying a premade. I've never done this before, so I'm a bit apprehensive. Can anyone recommend a fairly step-by-step guide (preferably a book, rather than online) to putting the things together? Technically I am fairly so-so. I know a decent amount of terminology, but I have absolutely no hands-on knowledge other than popping in RAM and pnp peripherals. So ideally the guide would be, again, step-by-step and detailed - down to the point of "no, stupid, the plug goes in the hole." Any help would be appreciated. ------------------ Soy super bien soy super super bien soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juardis Posted February 23, 2001 Share Posted February 23, 2001 Well Chup, I've built one myself and learned a whole lot in the process because it didn't go well. Most of what I learned prior to the hands on experience I got from anandtech and reading CGW or PC Magazine. Little tidbits here and there. But since this is your first time, I would highly recommend you buy a barebones system. Go someplace where you can say I want this case with this motherboard, harddrive and cpu. That is what I did the first time (I have since replaced the mobo and hence the problems I alluded to above). It's usually worth the nominal fee for them to put it together for you. All you have to do then is add your memory and peripherals. Barebones is the way to go. It's the way I'll go if I ever decide to build a second puter. I bought my barebones system from a place called PCNut. Wasn't the cheapest, but the owner bent over backwards for me. I hassled him for days afterwards asking questions about this and that and he helped as much as possible. ------------------ Jeff Abbott 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJMello Posted February 23, 2001 Share Posted February 23, 2001 When I recently upgraded I had the the guy in the shop across the street do it for me. I probably would have screwed it up myself. My only problem is that I had to run from the store before I kept buying stuff to upgrade Only $30 bucks labor too. ------------------ War Is Heck !!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brooktrout Posted February 23, 2001 Share Posted February 23, 2001 Chupacabra, Try a keyword search at bn.com. It turned up two that I saw without looking thru the whole list. I've built quite a few over the years and definetly prefer that too buying a prebuilt. My first tip would be to pick out a good case since you will most likely keep swapping out parts in the future but keep using the same case. The better ones have a slide-out motherboard tray that make it much easier to work with. The mini-tower cases are so small that the power-supply is usually mounted over the memory slots making it a pain to upgrade. I'd go with mid to full tower. One option that I would recommend is to go with a SCSI bus for your CD's. SCSI hard drives are generally much more expensive than IDE drives. However, SCSI CD's are not that much more than IDE versions and you can buy a cheap SCSI-2 pci card and put a CD-ROM and CD-Recorder on it which leaves the IDE bus for one or more hard drives. The IDE bus allows only four devices while a SCSI can handle 7 (14 for wide) devices. I've got a CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD, Zip drive and scanner attached to a SCSI card. My IDE bus has 2 hard drives, one on the primary channel and one on the secondary channel. My point in this is to consider options such as these when building one. Good luck and have fun. To me, building and setting up a PC is as much fun as using it . 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted February 23, 2001 Share Posted February 23, 2001 Chup, Tryin' to build a computer eh ? Well, as the previous advice indicates it is a bit of 'trial and error' process. Typically assembling a PC itself really isn't that hard. Picking the right components and drivers is another matter though. As you've probably seen from the posts here, hardware and drivers sometimes don't work too well together. Small annoying glitches here or there and random lockups can sometimes be attributed to hardware components (and their respective drivers) not cooperating. If saving money is the primary object of buying a 'build your own', then you may be disappointed. By the time you've bought good, reliable, name brand components you'll probably find the price margin to be fairly close to a pre-assmebled name-brand computer. The big advantage is that you'll have assembled something that may have better performance than a majority of the name-brand systems or getting the specific components you want that may not be offered as an option for the pre-built systems. However, tech support will be limited to those you've bought the components from or the manufacturers (which is common for a lot of peripherals, but not much is available directly from motherboard manufacturers). You'll get quite a few opinions on what is best to purchase for your custom system. Some will offer high speed for a low price, while others will offer reliability (perceived or otherwise) for a higher price (sometimes with less performance). Overclocking and other options come into play (especially for Duron and Celeron systems). Don't rely too much on an overclocked system's performance to sway into purchasing those components. Often overclocking performance will vary with different manufactured lots of CPUs and video cards (and the various manufacturers making them) - and depending on who you're dealing with overclocking may void your warranty. Most of the books that you'll find out there are probably geared towards either explaining computer hardware (to various levels of technicality or completeness) in general or they may be dated for the particular info that you're looking for. Unfortunately there probably aren't any books that will cover the basics along with enough technical details to build a 'rig' that will be problem free. I've seen some PC gaming mags with some hardware articles on 'building your own'. One of the the major mags had an article on this within the last six months that you may find helpful (but possibly a bit too specific with the hardware that they're assembling). The technical and 3rd party websites will probably be one of the best places to find out about potential problems with certain hardware/drivers. Though some of these problems may be more geared to... "something sucks about Quake III and this card's drivers..." than issues with DirectX and CM. If you need any help let me know. Try to find out how much you want to spend as a max (and that should be an amount you'll plan on actually spending). OT - I was flippin' around the channels last week and came across something on the Discovery channel about the "Chupacabra". They had testimony from local residents and veterinarians about the the wounds this beast was causing. The artist rendition made it look like some sort of "3-foot monkey-alien with huge fangs". It could also "hover above the ground" according to one resident. The local mayor of the Puerto Rican area that has been attacked by the Chupacabra had based his election on locating and eliminating the beast. So far they've been unable to find it in their sweeps of the jungle ("it must be very intelligent..."). A lot of locals feel that it is a mutation/experiment gone wrong that has escaped from some sort of US Govt. facility. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 02-22-2001).] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanks a Lot Posted February 23, 2001 Share Posted February 23, 2001 I know you would prefer a book, but you might want to try this site first. http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/howtobuildapc1/ 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chupacabra Posted February 25, 2001 Author Share Posted February 25, 2001 Thanks for the advice all. I have a pretty good idea of what components I'd be using, really depending on price. Ie, I'm hoping that Intel will drop the price on the P4 chips by the time I buy, which will hopefully force AMD to drop the price on the 1.2 gig Athlons. Likewise I'm hoping that nVidia releases the Geforce 3 and that the prices on the Geforce 2s drop. I'm not hoping to save money in the short term, although I think in the long run I'll squeeze a few bucks out of it, especially when it comes time to upgrade, but I'm kinda sick of dealing with all the extra junk that comes pre-installed on most ready-made computers, and it's annoying to go to upgrade and find out that the graphics card is soldered to the motherboard or something. Anyway, thanks again for the help, all. I'm sure I'll be posting more when I actually get around to doing this. ------------------ Soy super bien soy super super bien soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wwb_99 Posted February 26, 2001 Share Posted February 26, 2001 Chup, one thing you might want to look into is local PC Users groups. I know the DC-area CPCUG runs a semi-annual build your own session, with mentors, etc. I believe at no extra cost to the builders. Also, check out www.tomshardware.com; they just ran a feature on building an $899 hi-powered rig. WWB ------------------ Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say, Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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