- Joined
- Jan 30, 2010
- Location
- La Crosse, WI
Went through this today for the heck of it to see how it looked. I must saw it's beautifully done I'm sure a lot of people can and have benefited from this.
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How to build a computer.
- Thread starter Joeteck
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2006
- Location
- Milwaukee, WI
Will definitely print this guide out to help me on my building tomorrow afternoon. Rest of my parts are coming in from NewEgg, cant wait to get this gaming machine up and running for BF3!
BoxingChaos2011
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2011
- Location
- Cali
Great visual thread. I can't wait to order my parts 
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2012
- Location
- UK
im about to do my first build tonight (hope all goes well) i was quite worried about not knowing what to do but now ive read this i feel alot more confident this is a great in depth guide and without it i think id be a bit lost lol. Thanks so much
newbanglamovie
Disabled
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2012
This thread is really helpful for me.. thanks everybody.
- Joined
- May 2, 2012
- Location
- Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA
This guide is quite nice, although, an update would be rather nice for it. With the USB 3.0 ports and things like that now. It's got a lot to give as far as information goes and I'm glad that I've found it.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2012
- Location
- Louisiana
Nice Joe, only comment I have is you forgot to mention putting the heatsink compound on the heatsink before putting it on the cpu, otherwise you could have a french fried cpu
Some of the new liquid CPU coolers come with a thermal pad, like the Intel sealed unit, and I've read where it is better to remove the pad and clean the surface using high grade rubbing alcohol then apply Artic silver since it is acclaimed to provide better heat transfer than the thermal pad, but then Intel says this voids the cpu warranty, so I am unsure which route to go.
As a noob builder from the ground up, I feel selecting a nice case can't be stressed enough, and tooless design is only getting better along with modular aspects such as removable motherboard tray/HDD, SSD racks, and quick latch PCI slots, Modular PSUs provide ease of working in confined spaces too where cables aren't getting in the way or pinched. Cable busses provide neat cable routing to components. It would be nice to see some good cable routing techniques. I've seen lots of videos and guides on the fundamentals, but little in terms of cable configs.
This is a great guide though and will surely help any beginner like myself.
Much thanks
Last edited:
Ground yourself...
What?...
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
- Location
- Manassas, VA
Static electricity can kill stuff pretty instantly, so make sure you touch the case every so often to discharge, or ground yourself.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2012
- Location
- Louisiana
Will this still be the same for me building a pc in 2012? Will the parts be all different connectors and stuff? I am also 15 so do you think I will manage with these instructions?
One thing about both old and new computer hardware components. They all have been designed with an industry standard so different and new hardware manufacturers products will be compatible. For example, cases and motherboards all have to comply with micro ATX, ATX, or E-ATX specification so any given motherboard will mount into its respective standard, though (as listed from small to large), the larger (E-ATX) will accomodate all others below the chain. Just like all PSU connections to their respective components, or VGA cards to the various PCI connections. You just have to be sure the components you purchase are supported on your motherboard, which is pretty easy to tell by the labeling of such products. Now if you want to move up to a hexacore processor anytime in the future, you will have to buy an X79 LGA2011 motherboard. As it stands, everything below that is becomming obsolete day by day. Within 5 years from now, you'll have to toss anything LGA 1155 since there will be no more parts, except on Ebay.
This is why IMHO, I believe if you're going to build TODAY, you might as well go with the newest technology out there, unless you're rich and build a new rig every year.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2012
- Location
- Louisiana
Hello Knufire,
Yeah, I always used to wear a wrist strap, but that got old real quick, so now....
I've got an issue here you might have an answer. I've got a Iomega Zip 100 SCSI drive I'd like to use with my new rig since;
1. Its much faster that any USB floppy drive.
2. Stores much more data on a single disk.
3. Is easier to remove and use separate data disk for different tasks.
4. Provides a more organizational method for me.
I've looked into several PCI cards by Adaptec, but its very difficult to determine which one will connect to my external 25 pin DB male connector (from the Zip drive) and will also be supported by Windows 7 Pro 64 bit without having to go into XP mode with VM (Virtual Machine), though that is an option if there is no other solution. I haven't found many articles on this with Windows 7, as most all only cover Windows XP, but I doubt the drivers will work in Windows 7. I had tried using my old Adaptec card (AVA 2903 B) but the native drivers in Windows 7 would not work, and I couldn't find a driver to download either, so I pulled the card out of my PCI slot, especially since I found out its a RAID card and my system is set up with AHCI.
What do you think? Any advice/help is appreciated, Thanks
Your best bet for a good answer is to post that in the proper section. How to build a PC, a fairly dead thread, may not yield the traffic you need to get an answer.
To give you a quick answer in the meantime however, I wouldnt go that route, but just buy a USB flash stick instead. They are cheap, have loads of space, and the USB3 ones are much faster than that zip drive.
To give you a quick answer in the meantime however, I wouldnt go that route, but just buy a USB flash stick instead. They are cheap, have loads of space, and the USB3 ones are much faster than that zip drive.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2012
- Location
- Louisiana
True, I guess there are several alternatives I could go with other than the Zip drive, and I already have a couple of flash drives, but the more of those one acquires, the easier it is to lose track of what data is on which flash drive, since you can't put a label on them like a nice square zip disk where you can write what is on them in a manner easier to read. I suppose I could just buy one of a different brand/color to make it easier to identify.
I'm just a creature of habit, and I hate to see all those empty zip disk I have go to waste, and they are 250mb disks (as well as some 100mb disks), and the drive is a 250mb drive, not a 100mb drive as stated before. I use the Zip drive exclusively for financial data, which is also backed up on an external USB HDD, so retrieving the data in the event of a zip disk malfunction is no problem, but the zip drive and disks have never failed to perform. I did manage to research and find a new Adaptec ava 2906 PCI card which is supposed to work with Windows 7 with an updated driver, which is available. For some reason, I feel my data is more secure through this method based on where the data is stored, but I could be wrong. I know the data gets stored in the TEMP file as it is read and used, but gets cleared (I hope) once disk cleanup is run and the system is powered down. Perhaps there are other method I don't know about which could also be implemented?
