Building a computer

I'm currently in the process of buying parts to build a new computer. Does anyone have any good resources or info, like a tutorial or step-by-step on going about doing this? Or any advice? I have a few friends who have done it before, so I can get them to help me if I get really stuck. But this is something I want to learn how to do, and any help I can get would be great. Especially some kind of good, up to date walkthrough.

Tom's Hardware Guide has a pretty good walk-through guide. The one at PC Mechanic is OK, but a little dated.

Good luck with your project.

I googled it & came up with this. It seems to be a comprehensive guide on how to build a PC.
www4.tomshardware.com...

I've never used guides & have learned from experience on how to build a computer. Putting together the computer is the rather easy part. Picking the right parts is the difficult part. You need to decide first what the primary purpose of this computer will be. Is it for gaming? Is it for video editing? Will you be doing a lot multitasking? Because there are two main brands of processors out there. Intel which I would assume you heard of. Then there's AMD. Intel is great for multitasking because of its hyper threading technology. But AMD runs single threaded applications better. For example a game is a single threaded application.

So let me know what you want to do with this PC then we get into further detail.




[Edited on 21-7-2004 by oconnection]

I've been building computers for years and own my own shop.

So if you need any help or suggestion in what parts to buy Im here for you.

This may seem to be a silly suggestion, but really it's for the better.
1.)Always touch the case before installing any parts.
2.)Make sure that the mainboard is *not* touching the case. This one is a big gotcha for many beginning system builders. (the plastic pins are fine though lol)
3.)Don't mix Gold and Tin (contacts) Ram. This will corrode contacts by creating Tin Oxide.
4.)Red stripe of Data cable for Hard Drive faces the Power Terminal. (That is where *pin 1* would normally be marked if it isn't, also applies to CD drives too)
5.)Always enable LBA(Logical Block Addressing) when you are partitioning a Hard Drive. (for many that is a duh... lol)

hope this helps...

Places to buy hardware:If
If you don't mind rebates now: www.tigerdirect.com...
www.pricewatch.com... - that's a good one
www.z-buy.com...
www.geeks.com...

How could you forget NewEgg! Blasphemy!!!

Check out www.newegg.com for some of the best prices around.

Hey thanks a ton for all the input guys. I've already priced out a system and found the parts I want to buy, for now I'm just buying a couple pieces a week. I'm gonna be running some hardcore games on it, as well as doing video editing and graphic design. So I figured out something that was cheap, and the best of both worlds.

Here is my parts list:
RoseWill case
Asus P4P800SE motherboard
Intel Pentium 4, 3.0ghz CPU
Western Digital 80gig harddrive
NEC DVD/CD-RW drive
couple of Antec case fans
Corsair Value Select Dual Channel Kit 184 Pin 1G(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 RAM
floppy drive
56k modem
ATI Radeon 9600se vid card (I've had this for a while, I'll prolly upgrade it around Xmas)

As well as a new LCD monitor and a Logitec Duo keyboard/mouse combo.

Again, thanks for the advice and links. I'll keep you guys updated once I start building it, and if I run into any problems I will definitely ask here. ATS is great, thanks guys

Oh and I forgot to mention that all my parts have been bought from Newegg. They're the best place around.

Originally posted by Faisca
Oh and I forgot to mention that all my parts have been bought from Newegg. They're the best place around.

Just curious How much you planning on spending on that system?

[Edited on 21-7-2004 by Ocelot]

It comes out to be around 750 all together. Which I think is a good deal. It's a lot better than the one I have now, or other ones that I could buy for over 1,000.