Building my own PC

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m certain this has been covered before, but I don’t know how to search for words with less than 4 characters in them.

So, here it is. I want to build my own PC. I did a google search and obviously thousands of sites came up. I spent several hours reading through some of them, and I did get lots of good ideas on what else I need to research, but a few questions came up.

I’m looking to put together just a decent machine. I’ll have a 60 Gig hard drive, 512Meg Ram, and probably an Athlon 1.4GHz processor. Decent sound and video, but nothing spectacular. This is not going to be an ‘ultimate gaming machine’.

The components I think I need are:

  1. Case

  2. Motherboard

  3. Memory

  4. CPU

  5. Video Card

  6. Sound Card (maybe, I might just go with built in sound on the motherboard)

  7. NIC

  8. DVD player

  9. CDRW

  10. Power Supply

  11. Hard drive

  12. Floppy drive

  13. Monitor

  14. Keyboard

  15. Mouse

  16. A CPU connector? Not sure about this.

  17. Fans? CPU Heat Sink?

  18. Anyone know of a reliable web-site for building your own PC?

  19. Where can I find good recommendations for motherboards? It seems like video and sound cards are fairly easy to find reviews for… but I know NOTHING of mother boards so knowing one good brand from another is tough.

  20. What is a good place to purchase these components?

  21. In one of my readings, someone was talking about having to purchase a heat-sink kit for the CPU. Is this standard?

  22. What other components am I missing?

Thanks for any and all advice. Any rough estimates on the cost of the above components would be great, too. Remember, I’m looking for relatively standard stuff… My guess is that I’ll spend around $1200 to $1500 building this.

2

If you buy an OEM AMD CPU, you’ll need a CPU heat sink fan combo. I believe all retail CPUs come with HSFs, but you might want to use thermal grease (e.g., type-44 or arctic silver) instead of the thermal pad. Depending on your tolerance for noise, it might be wise to invest in at least one case fan. You might need floppy, ATA100, and ATA33 cables if your motherboard/OEM equipment doesn’t come with it. You’ll also need an operating system, which many people tend to forget, and speakers/headphones. A surge protector or UPS is also a good idea, as is a printer (+ printer cable).

As for building guides, pretty much any one will do. I didn’t use one to build my first computer – building one nowadays is extremely straightforward. Just follow the instructions that came with the motherboard manual.

Search on Google for “motherboard reviews” and you’ll come up with plenty of hits.

3

I use tigerdirect.com for parts…they got tons, they are nice.

ebay.com is cheap too, auction format.

computers are so much cheaper these days that its much easier to buy one already made
then put it together yourself. a decent dell p1.8 can get to around $380 or so with free
shipping with XP on it (you need an operating system too) (no monitor). try matching that
with you parts list…

4

http://www.tomshardware.com/
http://hardforum.com/index.php
http://www.motherboards.com/catalog/
http://www.pcworld.com/

5

Does anybody know of anyone who makes a case that looks more like a piece of AV equipment (e.g., a DVD player) than a PC?

6

handy - I looked around about 4 months ago for a new PC and $380 wasn’t anywhere near what I would have had to pay… not for the essentials I wanted (40Gig hard drive, 512meg, DVD, CDRW, NIC, 1.4Ghz Athlon or better - Pentium would be okay, but not a celeron).

One reason I want to build my own is the ease of upgrading later. With Dell, HP, Gateway their stuff is usually pretty proprietary and upgrading can be tough.

Thanks to sailor and Ian Fan for the other tips, as well.

7

If you are building your own hardware to save a bit of money, why turn right around and put $199 worth of OS on it? Because that’s what WinXP Home Edition costs. Linux costs much less.

Cheapbytes has user-friendly Mandrake Linux for $5.99. With S&H, that’s a total of $10.99, plus however much it costs to ship 3 CDs by mass.

Plus, if you have any trouble, there are plenty of friendly Linux users online. :slight_smile:

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Derleth - I’m doing this to save money in the long run, not up front. I’m guessing this will cost me slightly more to build than an off the shelf computer, but I should be able to upgrade a piece at a time, unlike the off the shelf stuff which I had the impression was relatively proprietary and not well suited to upgrades. As it stands, I bought an HP Pavilion about 4 months ago with a 17" monitor with all that stuff I have listed for $1000. But, the machine is being repaired as we speak and I personally would rather just build my own for a few hundred more.

As for the OS, I would much rather not support Mr. Gates, but given the options on software availability, there isn’t a whole lot of choice. I will likely setup the machine to dual boot, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get away with not having XP on it. Correct me if I’m wrong on this…

What do I think I won’t have access to? For one thing, the VPN software I need for work access. For another, money management software (Quicken, Microsoft Money). E-mail wouldn’t be a problem, I don’t think. Nor should web surfing. But I know NOTHING of linux, so I have a hard time knowing what IS available. I would also guess games are more difficult to find. As I said, just a smaller option pool for other software available.

9

If you want to “build your own” to gain some experience and learn more about pc’s, go for it.

However, if your goal is to save money, Handy is correct. About six weeks ago I purchased a new pc to almost your exact spec, including WIN XP but not the DVD player for $450 after rebate. I’d really like to know whether you can even come close to that price after purchasing all your parts including OS.

Upgrading a pc is somewhat of a myth. The motherboard pc socket and bus speed limits the amount of CPU upgrade available. The ram slots on the motherboard limit the amount of ram. Unless you add a SCSI card, you are limited to four IDE devices, i.e. one dvd, one cd-rw and two hardrives.

10

Why don’t you go to a store that builds their own computers? I work at such a store and we can usually build a computer with any specifications you want and we give one year warranty on it. Ours are clones so you can later upgrade them. I do belive if you buy everything seperate it will be more expensive then buying the computer from a store. I am not a technician but I am the one that orders the parts so I know about prices. I am sure there is probably such a store in your city, you just have to look for them. I also recomend the AMD XP 1600, in our store it is almost the same price as the Athlon 1.4 and you will have something faster.

11

There is a surprising amount of software for Linux out there, and nearly all of it is freely downloadable. The GPL, the license most Linux software adheres to, does not restrict distribution as long as the source code is available (not necessarily downloadable with the main package, but freely available). This means that getting new software is trivial. Check places like SourceForge and Freshmeat for things you need.

There didn’t used to be any real financial software for Linux. That has changed, due to the massive development ongoing for open-source OSes. Freshmeat has a great accounting (heh) of personal financial software for Linux. Most of it free.

I don’t know about the (probably proprietary) VPN software your business uses, but Linux does have (probable) equivalents. Virtual Private Networks aren’t the most popular things in the world to write, but here are some VPN clients Rice University offers for various platforms, including Linux.

You’re right that email and Internet browsing are not problems. Linux has Evolution, an email client that rivals Outlook, and numerous browsers (Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, Konqueror, Galeon, etc. etc.).

Linux has games, but you’re right that MS-Windows has more. Quake exists on Linux, as well as more than a few natively-produced (but smaller) games. I’m not a gamer, so I don’t keep up with these things. Check around SourceForge and Freshmeat (and Google) for the latest updates. Probably the best bet to game on Linux is the WINE Project, which aims to create an MS-Windows compatability layer on top of Linux. Wine may well also solve some of your other problems.

As for not knowing anything about Linux, that’s why I pointed you to Mandrake. Mandrake is very newbie-friendly: Easy to install, easy to configure, easy to use, especially if you already know MS-Windows. There are a ton of books available to teach you Linux (many of which come with installation disks for one distro or another), but the most important resource you can draw upon are your fellow users. Those who use Linux tend to help others, and plenty of Dopers are Linux users. As something of an aside, most Linux applications come with rather good documentation in the form of info files and manpages, so you can read up on an application as you use it (or right before).

Dual-booting is a good option if you have software that only works in MS-Windows and does not exist in Linux, but that software is getting harder and harder to find. Spending $199 for an OS when Linux is available for less than $50 and equivalent software for free does not make sense.

As a final note, Windows XP is hostile to incremental hardware upgrades. Product Activation means that whenever you change more than six devices at a time, or the network card with more than three other devices, you have to get a new Activation ID from Microsoft. You have to wait until Microsoft processes your request, hope they believe you, and hope they don’t forget about you. You have to rebuy XP for each PC you plan to use it on. That’s $200+ per machine. It ain’t worth it. Buy a copy of Win95 or WinME.

12

This is a new one to me, I have always thought that PC components were pretty much interchangable. Granted, you need the right type (speed and such) of memory and parts that fit the available spots in your case and MB, but other than that, your options are open. I have an IBM Aptiva and added new cards and features, no problem whatsoever.

What sort of upgrading are you thinking of that you can’t do on a Dell?

13

Check out Amp’s UGM thread.

I know you said you don’t intend for your machine to be ultimate anything, but if you’re willing to spend over $1,000, and as much as $1,500, you might as well. Hell, with that kind of money to blow, you could probably build yourself a nice little dual Athlon MP setup if you wanted to…

For the setup Amp posted in his thread, I’d guess that it came in under $1,200, and that’s with a $400 video card! :eek:

You did have a monitor on your list, though, and that’s sort of a puzzling thing. You said you got a 17" with your last computer. What happened to it? Is it dead, or do you just want something better?

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      • My opinions, in no particular order:
  1. Building your own PC won’t save you money, but you will be able to avoid generic/proprietary parts, which can cause mysterious, untraceable problems later. For that reason alone, it’s a good idea.
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  2. Remember the Holy Trinity: Motherboard, Videocard and Soundcard. These three things must work well together. Consider only name-brand, retail parts. Before buying, check online reviews for compatibility problems between the hardware you think you want and revise as necessary.
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  3. The processor almost doesn’t matter; just get whatever speed you want (and make sure it fits inna 'board you bought :smiley: ).
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  4. Motherboard: if you plan on installing some high-end audio soundcard later, then try to avoid buying any motherboard with on-board sound. Just get a cheap $20 soundcard to run with at first. -In fact, try to avoid buying any motherboard with built-in anything: sound, NIC, firewire, etc. BIOS’s tend to give assignment priveledges to on-board hardware and that can cause problems when you add stuff later on.
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  5. Memory: get something with DDR memory or faster, 256M will do well enough to start.
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  6. Some places sell motherboard/CPU+heat sink+fan/memory bundles, and for a small fee, they’ll test the stuff together. Buy from somewhere that does this, and do this. Pay the extra money and have them test it all together before shipping it to you.
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  7. Linux is not a substitute for Windows. Linux is geting better, but it still lacks device drivers for most computer peripherals out there. Running it as a dual-boot is fine, but any hardware you have that Windows needs a driver for may very well not be useable with Linux at all, except in a generic capacity (my own experience: CD-RW drives only read CD’s, DVD drives only read CD’s, videocards and soundcards can’t use hardware accelleration). Windows software may not run under Linux also. A Linux installer that doesn’t automatically install a default GUI will be a colossal pain in the rear for you to learn to use, and probably to no real benefit.
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  8. Win98 is old. I still run it on my main PC, I have no problems with it, but there’s now a few products (videocards and motherboards) out that have new features which are not supported at all in Win98 and earlier. So I don’t know if I’d pay OEM price for it now(~$100), much less the ~$200 retail. I don’t like a lot about WinXP though, so I dunno what I’d do. There’s also Win ME and 2K to consider.
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  9. The other things, like disk drives (any type), NICs, monitors and keyboards/mice, you can probably just go with whatever you want or can afford that got good reviews. All the LCD screens I’ve seen are still blurry in fast-action, so they’re poor for action games or movies. Normally, when you buy a case, the power supply comes with it (Antec makes good cases).
15

For what it’s worth, Dell is pretty much off-the-shelf parts and easily upgradable. I know from experience that Compaq isn’t, and I’ve heard Gateway has gone the way of the proprietary-hardware demon as well. But you’d be safe with Dell.

As someone who’s built many a computer in her time, I’d like to say that I’m never gonna #@! do it again. It’s fun the first time, OK the second time, and it sucks balls after that. Give me a pre-built computer and a warrantee any day of the week.

16

KKBattousai is correct, even with the $400 GeForce 4 video card I was able to build my own PC for $1100. I knew I wasn’t really going to save any money, I mainly did it for the experience.

17

pricewatch is a great site for buying cheap components.

I would agree with the others that you should be able to build that machine for less than $1000-1500. More like $800-1200, IMO.

Couple of options with Windows: Use an old version that came with your old PC. Or, install any old version of windows, then install the Windows XP Upgrade, which I believe costs less than $100.

I would recommend getting a cheap sound card, and a mid-range video card. Those $400 vid cards go obsolete pretty quick just like the $50-100 ones.

The idea of buying from a local store is a good one. There is a little place in my neighborhood that will throw a pc together to your specs for basically the same price you can build one for. Because they get the parts cheaper than you can.

Also, you can buy “bare bones” systems from pricewatch and other places. They have motherboard, chip, case, and sometimes soundcard for very cheap money. Then you just buy and install HD’s, CD burners, RAM and stuff. Not only might this be a good move money wise, but it’s a little less difficult than building the whole system from scratch.

18

All the responses are great, everyone! It would seem the overall consensus is to buy off the shelf. So… I’ll probably just keep the PC I have. I’m not looking for an experience, just a reliable PC that I don’t have to throw away every 3 or 4 years. I’m still not convinced that off the shelf would let me do that, but I’ll dig around a little more and see.

One more question - XP needs to be registered with Microsoft.
Why? Will it not run if I don’t register it? What is ‘activation’?
Lorenzo - Where did you get your PC? I looked at Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq, etc. but couldn’t find anything near that. They had systems that started low, but they were stripped down systems.

LucChiq - I did go to a local store here called Bellevue PC that will build to specifications. The PC burned up in 2 years. Their customer service pissed me off, although that might have been my frustration over having lost my entire PC (see my thread elsewhere). That aside, I could see no reason to pay them to build a PC when I can do it myself. I didn’t think they stood behind their work very well, and I don’t trust them anymore. Others in this area might do it, but at this point I think I’m a qualified as they are as long as I do my homework.

Derleth - Everything you say about Linux is what I’ve always kind of thought. I just don’t have the time to spend really digging into it like I’d like. I should, but too many other things going on. I’ve played around quite a bit with cygwin and trying to get that going, and quite frankly while I could do it, the time investment was more than I wanted to give to it. I have a feeling Linux is a major project. So… I’ll go the dual boot route and try to get my feet wet. That way, I have a stable (if you can call XP stable) OS that I can go to when I fry something in Linux.

cheesesteak - upgrades I’m not sure I’d be able to accomplish would be things like the motherboard/CPU in a few years. The other peripheral stuff I can deal with. I don’t know how standard a footpring the cases are, so I don’t know of a motherboard upgrade to a generic brand would work.

KKBattousai - The PC and monitor came as one unit. If I return the PC, I’d have to return the monitor with it.
I had read Amp’s thread, which is kind of where I got started. There were some good insights in there, but nothing about how to research the information nor price information per component.

DougC - Thanks for the great tips, especially about the heat sink/fan/cpu. I hadn’t even known such options were available.

Athena - Thanks for the tips about the manufacturers. This is always the tough part… which computer will meet my future needs as well as what I need now? I had one custom built two years ago, only to have it burn up. So I never did figure out just how well the upgrading thing would work.

Amp - I’m assuming the $1100 doesn’t include a monitor. I’m guessing a good monitor will run in the $300 range, so that would put yours right in line with what I thought I’d spend. Then again, there ain’t no way I’m spending $400 on a video card! So I guess I can save a little there, if I still decide to build one.

19

Well, you could just plug in an IDE adapter, and double the number of drive connections - but first you have to make sure you have room in the case.

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      • Usually, if they won’t tell you which one they use or let you choose which motherboard you want, that’s because they use a generic/proprietary motherboard.
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