Info on building your own computer

CD Fleischer

CD Fleischer

Joined
Oct 12, 1998
Messages
2,036
Thinking of building my own PC so the wife and I are not always competing for the same one. Also, so I can make it into a killer gaming system.

Any recommendations about components, vendors, etc.?

Thanks!

Clay
 
How much experience and knowledge do you have in this department?

Swapping out old parts for new ones, or never opened the case?

I've built three systems for friends. No matter how you cut it, you will always end up at least a little bit over the store price for a run of the mill computer. IOW -- if it's just something for a casual user for e-mail, solitaire and papers save yourself a week and get something from Bestbuy, circuit city, etc.

However, if you want quality, something that will be upgradeable for the next four or five years, building it yourself is a pretty good route.

Re: components. I've been out of things for about four months now, but AFAIK there is still no reason whatsoever to go for an intel processor. AMD's wares have them blown out of the water in terms of performance and price. Get a decent heatsink and fan (not the $3 cheapies) and you'll be good to go.

Vendors, sources: I've had extensive dealings with tigerdirect(.com) and Newegg (.com). In short, do not deal with tiger.
Newegg was great to me.

Pricewatch.com is probably the best source to compare bits and pieces for price, if you need a few widgets to complete things it's the place to go. However, there's little sense in running yourself ragged trying to save $2 on every piece only to eat it in shipping....find someone with most parts in stock, get the lion's share from them.

The crew at http://anandtech.com is great for current news, new stuff on the market, reviews, and general tech support.


These are just my random thoughts on the subject. Good luck.
 
I agree. If you don't need anything fancy, you can get something decent for about $600-800, minus taxes & shipping, if they're applicable. An idea is to, let's say, go to Dell's website, for example, and price something similar to what you want, taking note of what brand of parts they're using and what features they're offering. Then, price similar items on the web or at local shops, and if you can't build a computer for about the same price, buy it readymade. Why spend a few hundred dollars more just to build it yourself, unless you want to really customize it [you did mention gaming].

Also, a pre-built computer usually comes with a warranty and some amount of tech support, whereas building your own leaves you as your own techie, not always the best thing if your not familiar with pc's, but not too bad if you don't mind the occasional troubleshooting headache, and want to learn a thing or two.

Frank
 
Thanks, guys.

I guess I should have let you know that I was a computer tech from '95 until this Feb, when I moved into the Networking world.

Still, the home computer thing is a different animal, and I have been spoiled by the resources of an Enterprise environment, with servers to copy data too, images, etc.

I had looked last year at building one, and ended up with a P600 Emachines refurb. Yeah, I know its crap but it was $200 and it was worth that for the parts alone. I put a Voodoo3 card in it and a NIC, and just removed the SCSI Card and external burner to replace it with an internal burner. It only has PCI graphics though, and the Voodoo3 is showing its age.

Mostly I just want a spare system for general use BUT, I do plan on making it a gaming monster.

Will do some comparison shopping and see what I find.

Benjamin, thanks for the info on AMD, etc. That's exactly the kind of info I was fishing for...
 
Oh, ok. If that's what you need, I'd offer a few more comments on parts.

Motherboards -- I have used the Extreme Computing Systems K7-S5A two times. Both times it worked great. It's a cheaper model (US $ 55 as of december, probably lower now) but has nice features and makes good general purpose machines up to 1.2 GHz (if I recall correctly...it may be up to 1.4 GHz. Uses AMD chips)

The wiring diagram is drawn incorrectly. You will never need to know this unless you set up the BIOS wrong...they said one switch is a different switch. Long story, hope you never do that.

Some people on comp geek BBS's have reported trouble with the K7-S5A, but I expect that it's the normal few lemons in a run of several hundred throusand. Everyone has a few.

Fans/Heatsinks -- cheap insurance for your 'spensive parts. Get good ones.... Look at the CFM (cubic feet per minute) rating on prospective parts. More is better. If you're concerned about noise...well, that's another bag and it'll probably double the cost of fans (up to, say $35-50 for really good, quiet ones. This comes up when someone with money to burn wants a *silent* system for their bedroom, or as a dedicated MP3 player)

Heatsinks......don't rely upon the thermal pad included with the heatsink. Get some thermal grease, either at McMaster-Carr, Grainger, Radio Shack.....anywhere. It works better.

Again, spend some money on the heatsink. You can put a $4 one made out of tin on a $150 CPU and maybe have it work. You can also put a good $20 model on the same one and be pretty sure that it won't fry.

If you're buying from Newegg, or comparing parts there, check the user ratings. Dozens of geeks who actually have this stuff reporting on it. Usually just a brief writeup (it works good; it's crap; noisy but cheap, etc.) but helpful.

Operating system. 95%+ of US PC's use some variant of Windows. Chances are, you do too.

If you're a Unix/Linux user, you can skip this section, you already know what you're going to do.

Otherwise, the operating system is where you may get screwed, price wise. If you buy a computer in a store, it will have some variant of windows installed. It cost the manufacturer somewhere between a few cents and $20.

You can't get a legit copy of windows for under $45.
You CAN save a good deal, legitimately, by buying from a college bookstore (educational version...usually the same as the professional editions), or an OEM copy from Newegg or other vendors. They can only sell this with hardware, so buy some screws or a RAM chip in the same order.

You can also use a disc from another computer, or borrowed from a friend or the CS department. This depends upon your circumstances.

Again, good luck and have fun.
 
You might find some interesting reading at http://www.tomshardware.com

I just put together a new computer a few months ago. I decided I didn't want the hassle of installing the motherboard and CPUs (I have a dual), so I bought a system with just case, motherboard, CPUs, memory, and floppy and installed RAID card, drives, sound card, video card, etc. myself. Here's the guys I bought the bare system from: http://www.micropro.com/home.htm
 
Checkout www.newegg.com

I've had 3 orders from them delivered in a timely manner with great prices.

The OS is where you get screwed on a build it yourself machine. Windows XP requires to register a key and whether it takes you 3 times to get it right or you install it on 3 machines, you get 3 shots and then you deal with their software piracy prevention folks.

I'm on a ECS-K7S5A motherboard with an Athlon XP 1800+. For $160 delivered, this system ROCKS. Newegg came through again. The Enermax Full Tower case with Enermax power supply is a good option. I got the Maxtor ATA-133 Liquid cool drives which are great performers. Grab a $20 CD-ROM some memory and few other odd parts and you're good to go.
 
I have built every pc I've ever owned except the first one (Packard Bell). I guess I'm up to about 10 machines by now. As I am at work now, I can't go into too many details but I can HIGHLY RECOMMEND the following sites in addition to those already listed above to get you started:

Building and Hardware Buying guides:

www.sharkyextreme.com They offer very good gaming pc guides based on price.

www.sysopt.com general pc\hardware information including 'build it yourself guides'.

www.pcmech.com More building guides and good hardware information.

All of the above have forums available to ask specific questions etc.

Purchasing Sites\tools. These sites will help you find pricing AND VENDOR RATINGS (very important).

www.pricewatch.com Very comprehensive pricing tool.

www.resellerratings.com Offers ratings on thousands of pc part vendors.

Online vendors I can heartily endorse:

www.newegg.com I have purchased over $2000 worth of stuff from them in the last 2yrs. I have not had ANY problems whatsoever with them.

www.techonweb.com Very good for monitors especially, but they have many others parts and equipment also.

That should keep you busy till I get home and can get into a bit more detail :D

Good Luck-remember building a PC is not that difficult! Take your time do your homework.

Mongrel
 
another vote for newegg and AMD. I build computers for myself, friends, and the company I work for. buy all the parts [less monitors] from newegg and have done so for the past two years or so....not a single problem yet. Had one HD that had to be returned and it was replaced very swiftly.
 
Thanks for all the great info, guys!

Am thinking the Bare Bones system looks like a pretty decent idea. Have been looking at newegg and micropro (Ewok -- did you have good luck with them?)

Thanks again guys, will let you know what I decide.
 
Yep, everything was nicely packaged and they made sure to give me every last thing that came with the components, including the original boxes.
 
I love Newegg.com for ordering my parts. usually the cheapest prices and they have good service.

as for know-how and which components to buy, you can't go wrong with www.tomshardwareguide.com this guy rates like everything and can be trusted to give accurate ratings.

I'm not so sure about AMD right now. They are definitely best performance for the price, but intel's new chipset which should be coming out soon is definitely the fastest. of course you can get a duron 1 ghz from newegg for ~40 bucks and you can't beat that price/performance ratio with a stick. if you spend enough time at tomshardwareguide.com or anandtech.com you will find some stellar deals.
 
Ended up buying a complete system over the weekend as I was able to take advantage of some special offers to get a great deal.

Here is the system:

Processor Brand
Intel® Pentium® 4 processor

Processor Speed
2.0GHz

System Bus
400MHz

Cache Memory
512KB L2 cache

System Memory (RAM)
512MB

System Memory (RAM) Expandable To
1.0GB

Type of Memory (RAM)
266MHz double data rate (DDR) SDRAM

Hard Drive Type
Ultra ATA/100 (7200 rpm)

Hard Drive Size
100.0GB

Video Memory
64MB DDR SDRAM

Graphics
nVidia GeForce2 GTS-V

MPEG
Yes

Audio
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! 5.1

Modem
56 Kbps* ITU V.92-ready PCI internal fax/modem *Capable of receiving 56 Kbps downloads. However, current regulations limit download speed to 53 Kbps.

Network Card
10/100 integrated NIC

CD-RW Drive Speeds
32x12x40

Maximum DVD-ROM Drive Speed
16x max. DVD-ROM; 40x max. CD-ROM

Diskette Drive
Yes

Diskette Drive Type
3.5" 1.44MB

Total Expansion Bays
External: 2 (3.5"), 3 (5.25"); Internal: 2 (3.5")

Available Expansion Bays
External: 1 (3.5"), 1 (5.25"); Internal: 1 (3.5")

Total Expansion Slots
6 PCI, 1 AGP

Available Expansion Slots
3 PCI

USB Ports
6 (2 front, 4 back)

Parallel Ports
1

IEEE 1394 Ports
3 (back)

Serial Ports
1

Keyboard Description
Logitech 104 Internet PS/2 keyboard

Other Control Devices (mouse, etc.)
Logitech USB/ PS/2 optical scrolling mouse

Operating System
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

Software Included
Microsoft Works 6.0, CyberLink PowerDVD

Product Height
16.5"

Product Width
7.75"

Product Depth
18.31"

Product Weight
40 lbs.

Manuals Included
Yes

Warranty Term — Parts
1-year limited

Warranty Term — Labor
1-year limited

Will build the next one probably when my p600 won't make it up the hill anymore. That one is now officially the wife's so she will be happy and I won't get calls at work asking me why it won't print (usually because I didn't plug it back in after working on it)

Thanks for all the advice, fellas!
 
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