unfunnyryan Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 (edited) I saw a lot of threads recently relating to building or buying PCs, so rather than taking the time to reply to them, I'm making a thread with a lot of useful information. Part 1: Things to buy Processors: I hold no bias against AMD, but right now, the only processors worth a damn are all made by Intel, so thats all I'm going to list. Low end: Intel E7400, Socket 775. It is a bit over $100, runs at 2.8ghz, and has great performance for the price. Midrange: Intel i5 750, Socket 1156. $150 at Microcenter, and uses more affordable DDR2 memory. High end: Intel i7 920, Socket 1366. $200 at Microcenter This is honestly the best processor for the money. There are faster ones, but the price increases are not worth it. The 860 is a newer processor, but it doesn't support triple channel memory like the 920. Motherboards: There is a lot of choice here. You need to make sure the motherboard you choose has the same socket as the processor you buy. I'm going to leave this up to you. For the socket 775 systems, anything with a P43 or P45 chipset is ok. For 1156 and 1366, just about anything running the P55 chipset will work. The big difference here though between running a i7 and i5 system is the memory. i5 boards run dual channel while most i7 boards run triple channel memory. Check www.newegg.com for motherboard reviews and find something in your price range. Regardless, look to spend $75 to $200 for a good board. Memory/RAM: You are going to want a MINIMUM of 2GB for Vista/Win7, although you should really go with 4GB. If you are building a system that uses a Socket 775 or 1156 processor, you will be using DDR2 memory. This stuff is plentiful and cheap, so theres no reason why you shouldn't go with 4GB. For 1366, you have to go with DDR3. Prices have dropped a LOT recently, so it isn't that bad anymore. If you are going for a performance system with a triple-channel board, go with a 6x2GB Triple Channel kit. Memory speeds are another thing to be looking at. If you are going with DDR2, buy DDR2-800 at a MINIMUM. Anything else will give you a severe bottleneck. With DDR3, you should really just go with DDR3-1600. You'll be happy with it. Video cards: This is a bit of a diffcult area, and depends if you are a ATI or Nvidia fan. I like them both personally, but I haven't kept up to date on the very latest cards, or the lower end cards. In any case, you should get a card that uses the PCI Express interface. Make sure your motherboard has a 16x PCI-E slot. Lowend systems: Go look on craigslist for a Nvidia 9600GT or 9800GT. These are good cards that support HDCP, and can be found pretty cheap. If you don't want to use craigslist, you can get one of the newer low-power cards like the GT 220. Newegg has a sale on the ATI 4550 right now, which also looks like a winner. Midrange: ATI: 4850 or 4870. Nvidia: GTX260. All these cards are capable of some brute gaming power, so if you aren't looking to play games, go ahead with the lower end. Highend: You probably know what you are looking for. The latest cards haven't had much of a price drop yet, but so far the ATI 5970 and Nvidia GTX295 are powerhouses. Harddrives: I'm biased Western Digital and will shun you if you buy anything else. I do not believe any other manufacturer matches their reliability. Good buys right now for any system are 750gb drives. Its important to note the differences between SATA and IDE drives. IDE is the old interface with big ribbon cables. SATA is newer, faster, and easier to work with. Buy drives that use SATA by all means, if you can even find IDE. If you are looking for a bit more performance, get a Caviar Black edition, they have 32mb cache. Optical Drives: Get something with a SATA port to make your life easier. DVD burners are like $25, and I haven't found brand to make a huge difference. A lot of the really cheap ones tend to die though. Cases: The case you buy can really make your life easier. Brands like Antec have nice cases with good airflow, and are usually free of any sharp edges that will send you to the emergency room. They also include all the screws you will need, and look nice. The Antec 300 is a nice looking case, and can be found on sale for pretty cheap. Power Supplys: This is a BIG area. 500watts from one brand is not 500watts from another. Again, there is a lot of choices in this area, but you REALLY need to look into reviews and make sure you buy a powersupply that won't kill its self and the rest of your system. For a low end system, I'd say a 450w powersupply from a good brand will hold you off just fine. Higher end systems should look into something around 650watts+, since the video cards can really put a beating on them. Another thing to make sure of is that the powersupply is ATX 2.0+ compliant. This will assure all the connectors will work fine with your board. Optional: Additional Cooling There are far better heatsink/fan combos available then what Intel includes with their processors. While processors like the E7400 run quiet cool and don't need it, a Core i7 920 may produce a tad more heat. A good CPU cooler to look for will be large, and made of all copper. There is a lot of heatsink/fan combos out there, so just look for something that is rated highly. There are some excellent very quiet coolers on the market. (Updated: More on ports/slots and installation) Part 2: Port Identification/Installation Heres some images I stole off the internet. To save space I'm not going to embed them. Computer parts are just like big oddly shaped legos, they all just snap into place. If you can work on a car, you can build a computer. Motherboard expansion slots (Hopefully you'll never have to see AGP or PCI-X, they are worthless now.) http://i48.tinypic.com/2i0acf8.jpg http://i48.tinypic.com/2n8vlp3.jpg A cool thing about PCI-E is you can use smaller PCI-E cards, like 1x, 4x, or 8x, in a 16x slot or any other slot the card fully fits in. PCI and PCI-E are not the same thing. Power supply connectors http://i50.tinypic.com/149xvr6.jpg Hard drive/DVD/SATA http://i49.tinypic.com/1973aw.jpg SATA power on left, data cable on right. Your motherboard will usually include a bunch of SATA data cables. Memory slots http://i48.tinypic.com/33pcwmb.jpg Memory snaps into place. It only goes one way, and lines up with a notch. If your memory doesn't line up, you bought the wrong memory. The details between a DDR3 and DDR2 slot are minor, but they ARE different. I don't want to go into processor installation because it is something you have to be very careful with. I would recommend you have a experienced friend do this for you if it is your first time. Part 3: System assembly. Nothing indepth here. This is just the order I usually build my PC's in. Start with the powersupply, since its big and heavy. Once its screwed in, just toss all the cables over the side of the case to get them out of the way. Next is the motherboard. Before you put it into the case, install the processor and the fan. For intel motherboards, you have to deal with intels shitty push-pin fan sockets. You will need to hold on to the back of the motherboard while installing the fan to prevent the motherboard from shattering (not really) Make sure you have the motherboard standoffs in the right place and place the motherboard onto them. Check and make sure they line up, then screw it in. Now is a good time to put in any CD/DVD drives and hard drives, before other things get in the way of them. Install your ram, video card, and anything else you may have. Following that, run any data cables (SATA, IDE, Case buttons) Last of all is the power cables. Always start with the big motherboard power, and try to tuck it out of the way. It will make your life easier in the future to organize cables neatly, and also help to improve case airflow. Edited December 17, 2009 by unfunnyryan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Removed Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 waiting to see others opinions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Karacho1647545492 Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 good guide for tech n00bs. its worth mentioning that everything nowadays is plug & play, very little experience necessary. also, invest in one of those wriststraps to ground yourself... its not much of an investment anyways. this should be stickied Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fubar231 Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 also, invest in one of those wriststraps to ground yourself... its not much of an investment anyways. You talking about the ones to prevent static shock? I just wear rubber gloves when i work on my computer. Static shock = bye bye computer part Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted December 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 If anyone finds something wrong or wants to add in a section let me know and I'll edit it in. Tomorrow I will add in some pictures about identifying different connectors you run into when building a PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fubar231 Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 Maybe add a DIY on how to add more ram / graphics card. Stuff like that? Or throw a few pics out there or something. Once they get the courage to open the comp theyll realize its all plug and play and stupid easy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russian rocket Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 you should mention cooling for the higher end systems Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaSSon Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 FYI, not all Core i7's are triple channel memory. Socket 1156 boards are dual channel, while Socket 1366 supports triple channel. Also worth noting: 1156 boards support dual channel @ 1333Mhz, 1366 boards support triple channel at 1066 Mhz. The bandwidth differences are negligible, and not noticeable to all but the nerdiest of nerds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeitgeist57 Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 For tech nOOb's looking to upgrade a house PC, what sort of cost savings might there be by building ourselves over buying? I realize it costs more, but will you get a lot more speed/storage for the buck? My wife and I have a lot of personal and business-related data that we store on laptops, but seeing as how we also have wi-fi I would like to look into a desktop PC that acts more as a media server/data storage device for easy access from anywhere in our house, as well as a place for backing up our data (should laptops fail, which has happened before). Thanks for this, BTW! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orion Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 For tech nOOb's looking to upgrade a house PC, what sort of cost savings might there be by building ourselves over buying? I realize it costs more, but will you get a lot more speed/storage for the buck? My wife and I have a lot of personal and business-related data that we store on laptops, but seeing as how we also have wi-fi I would like to look into a desktop PC that acts more as a media server/data storage device for easy access from anywhere in our house, as well as a place for backing up our data (should laptops fail, which has happened before). Thanks for this, BTW! If I had purchased my computer from a store as it sits, it would have cost me around 2 grand. Letting some of the good people on here help me build it though, I paid around $800. Seriously, Clay, I'll likely never buy a desktop from a store again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted December 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 For tech nOOb's looking to upgrade a house PC, what sort of cost savings might there be by building ourselves over buying? I realize it costs more, but will you get a lot more speed/storage for the buck? My wife and I have a lot of personal and business-related data that we store on laptops, but seeing as how we also have wi-fi I would like to look into a desktop PC that acts more as a media server/data storage device for easy access from anywhere in our house, as well as a place for backing up our data (should laptops fail, which has happened before). Thanks for this, BTW! Its very cheap. You could use a Intel Atom based board, which has a Atom processor built in. These are very low power processors used in netbooks, but make great data servers as well. You can get one of these boards for $80 (microcenter). For a data server, I'd recommend getting a PCI RAID card. RAID - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks - allows you to do some cool things with hard drives, depending on the RAID level. RAID-1 for example, copies the same data to multiple drives in real time, so if one drive were to fail, you have another with the exact same data. It appears as one working drive to windows. Many motherboards have RAID built in, but the board above doesn't. I have a $25 Raid card in my dads system, and it works great. You could probably complete this system, along with ram, a case, 2 hard drives, and a light powersupply for around $250. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally Pat Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 Also sometimes called Redundant Array of Interconnected Disks, depending on which A+ textbook you read Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted December 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 FYI, not all Core i7's are triple channel memory. Socket 1156 boards are dual channel, while Socket 1366 supports triple channel. Also worth noting: 1156 boards support dual channel @ 1333Mhz, 1366 boards support triple channel at 1066 Mhz. The bandwidth differences are negligible, and not noticeable to all but the nerdiest of nerds. I see how it was slightly misleading in my post, I'll change that on my next big edit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally Pat Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 BTW this thread isn't just good for newbs, it's good for people like me who are not completely up on the newest processors and such. Very good info. Been looking at building myself an iX machine to replace my C2D E4300 machine, even though she's overclocked pretty good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 www.apple.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 I did a thread like this a few months ago and wrote a word document. It was a lot more broad and not as detailed as this. Let me see if I can find it. edit http://www.columbusracing.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1025163#post1025163 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 For tech nOOb's looking to upgrade a house PC, what sort of cost savings might there be by building ourselves over buying? I realize it costs more, but will you get a lot more speed/storage for the buck? My wife and I have a lot of personal and business-related data that we store on laptops, but seeing as how we also have wi-fi I would like to look into a desktop PC that acts more as a media server/data storage device for easy access from anywhere in our house, as well as a place for backing up our data (should laptops fail, which has happened before). Thanks for this, BTW! As a general rule building yourself is cheaper then buying a pre-assembled machine. Depending on your hardware options it will vary in the amount of money you save. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fubar231 Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 As a general rule building yourself is cheaper then buying a pre-assembled machine. Depending on your hardware options it will vary in the amount of money you save. Almost every computer ive built i always went and looked for one similar, and most of the ones i built were top end gaming machines at the time. I think the MOST expensive computer i put together was slightly over 1,000$, and we compared it to alienware's gaming computer which was 4,000$. We had more ram, more graphics card power, better processor, (We DIDNT have 4tb's of space but who needs that much). Granted the Alienware 4k$ computer came with keyboard/speakers/monitor etc and this was a bare machine, but still none of that can cost more than 1,000$. So all in all you generally save MINIMAL 50% on building it yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 Almost every computer ive built i always went and looked for one similar, and most of the ones i built were top end gaming machines at the time. I think the MOST expensive computer i put together was slightly over 1,000$, and we compared it to alienware's gaming computer which was 4,000$. We had more ram, more graphics card power, better processor, (We DIDNT have 4tb's of space but who needs that much). Granted the Alienware 4k$ computer came with keyboard/speakers/monitor etc and this was a bare machine, but still none of that can cost more than 1,000$. So all in all you generally save MINIMAL 50% on building it yourself. Alienware always overcharges. That is like buying Air Jordan shoes you are paying for the name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fubar231 Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 Alienware was the only place that had a computer similar to the one i was building though. This was also like a year and a half or two years ago. Its hard to find pre-built high end gaming pcs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 17, 2009 Report Share Posted December 17, 2009 Its hard to find pre-built high end gaming pcs. That is exactly why I will make my own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaSSon Posted December 18, 2009 Report Share Posted December 18, 2009 www.apple.com I'll agree with this half way. The build quality and engineering that go into all apple devices is top notch, however they usually use 2nd rate/obsolete parts. Also Performance/dollar is really low. If you want to run OSx, Hackintosh is the way to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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