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"The trials and tribulations of building a PC."

My name is Notorious Biggles, this is my story.
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So after several years of not being able to play PC games made in full
Technicolor 3D, I took the plunge. I was going to build my own PC from
scratch. And I did.

Maybe to someone who has done something like this before it would be a
whole lot easier, more automatic, with less thought required. But this
was my first time. Sure, I had upgraded before, pretty much everything in a PC. But never a whole new PC from the ground up.

First of all I had to figure out what I wanted in the computer. Then
after figuring out what I wanted I then had to figure out what I could
get for a sensible price. Much shopping around ensued. Trawling the web
for an hour here, an hour there.

Eventually I was ready.

I started off nice and prepared. I cleared a nice big space on the table like you should. Apparently. I gathered all the components around me. I had a guide from a magazine. I had manuals and instructions and the computer on the net for any desperately needed information.

I grabbed a beer and turned on The Thomas Crown Affair. I really like
that movie and it was on TV that night. The time was around about 23:30. I thought maybe an hour at the most.

First things first, install the processor and heatsink onto the motherboard. Well thats simple enough. A quick check with the magazine
and I remember that I have to put thermal paste between the heatsink and the processor. So with another beer in hand I messed around for half an hour until I mustered up the courage to do something that could have such lethal consequences, at least for the processor. Eventually I thought what the hell and broke open the packet for the thermal paste.

And lo and behold, inside are nice wee templates so you put the paste on the right bit at the right thickness. Of course talking of thickness, guess who put some thermal paste on the processor as well as the heatsink? In my defense the magazine did say to do it like that. Of course they hadn't banked on the aforementioned wee templates now had they?

By this point I was getting rather anxious. I was getting wound up and
letting the fear of breaking a machine get the better of me. When with
another beer in hand I realised this, I bunged the processor into the
socket on the motherboard and clamped the heatsink on top.

Mind you, getting the heatsink and fan out of the plastic box was a
challenge in its own right. that stupid moulded and sort of welded shut
stuff is almost impossible to open. I stabbed it with a screw driver
and pulled it apart with my bare hands. Made me feel more manly. I got
blood all over my jeans.

By this time Rene Russo is well into the swing of things in the Thomas
Crown Affair. Stockings are one of the best inventions ever.

Next step according to the motherboard manual and its rather interesting Taiwanese to English translation, was to attach the motherboard, with the processor and heatsink on it to the case chassis.

What made it even easier in my case was that I had a really cool little
tray thing that came out the case to put the motherboard on easily. So I start screwing away and all seems well. Then I put the tray in case.

Well eventually I did, but with the stupidly large clip on the heatsink
getting in the way and the stupid socket on the motherboard being turned round to DELIBERATELY CAUSE AS MUCH HASSLE AS POSSIBLE.

Finally it gets manouvered in. Only for me to realise at this point that there were extra studs that you were supposed to fit for the motherboard to attach to that stupid wee tray with. So out comes the tray, off comes the board and on go the studs. Then on goes the board and in goes the tray. At roughly the same time in goes Rene Russo to Pierce Brosnan's bed. Not bad for a woman in her forties. Most other 40+ year old women look a bit ropey naked, not her.

Next part: connecting up the power button to the motherboard. Dead easy
the way the manual describes it. A 2 minute job. Oh no. You see my
first problem stemmed from the fact that I had a lot more wires to plug in than the manual suggested. 4 of them even now lie loose inside the case because I didn't know what to do with them. After deciding to
ignore all the wires that didn't have things like "power" or "HDD LED"
stamped on them, I prepared to connect them. And then I looked again at
the manual. And I saw that they had to be done to a correct polarity.

But no one thought to indicate which went in the positive and which the
negative. Sure the wires were coloured, even more so than Joseph's dreamcoat. But it didn't say which was which. So in the end I took a gamble. Seeing as everything now works I must have been right.

From there on it was simple though wasn't it? Well yeah, mostly. I
decided to fit the drives at this point so as to have fewer delicate
components to knock inside the case as I put the drives in. So after I
wrench off the metal blanking plates with a flat headed screwdriver I
realise that if I want to keep the really really bright LED on the
front of the case then I could only use two 5 1/4" drive bays. So I
bung in a fancy Coolermaster Musketeer thing which doesn't really do anything other than have more blue lights on it. The DVD burner fits nice and easily. So far so good. By this point the movie is nearly over and Pierce Brosnan is putting the painting back in the gallery.


Bung in the floppy disk drive. Unwrap the hard drive and figure it should be just as easy. But oh no no. First I have to grab a pair of pliers to bend bits of the case for hard drive to fit. Once that gets done I bung the hard drive in and grab another beer.

RAM fitting time. As usual the slots are so tight I worry about
physically snapping the motherboard in trying to fit it. However after a few minutes pushing it goes in.

Next up we have fitting the video card. Surprisingly that went fine
actually. You just bung it in the slot like it tells you to.

The sound chip was on board. A decent one mind.

So lastly case fans. Should be easy really. Well no. You see, I got an
LED fan. And it was fine. But the screws just would not fit. Simply too
big for the screw holes. Which is a shame. So I decided that I would
borrow some off another case fan. And these ones fitted great into the pre drilled hole. Which was nice. But it did leave me with the dilemma, how do I attach that other case fan?

Wire for tying up cables. Fed it though the screw hole and through the
case. Amazingly difficult to get it to loop through the holes in the
case. Not being able to reach it any other way meant I had to curl the
wire and sort of twist it as I put it in. Eventually I got it through.
A few tight twists and that fan was in as well. It doesn't even rattle or anything.

So at this point it is built. So I screw the sides on, put it in place,
connect everything up and hit the on button. Nothing. Zilch. Then I
remember the switch on the back of the PC, on the PSU. When I turn it
on and then hit the power button it works.

Cue a big sigh of relief and another beer.

Amazingly everything in the BIOS is set up fine from power on. Nothing
to tamper with. So I bung in the Windows CD and wait for it to start the installation process. But oh no, it couldn't go that well now could it?

Wouldn't recognise the stupid hard drive. I look into the PC (clear side panel) and see that the hard drive is connected up properly. And then I remember, the bit where it says did I have any SCSI drivers to install. Of course I didn't so I ignored that bit. Later on after yet more beer, probably whisky by this point as well, I thought to shove in that disk with stuff for the hard drive on it at that point in the installation procedure. And what do you know, it works.

After that, just wow. It all goes fine. And I had built my PC from scratch. The first time I had ever built one totally from the ground up. The time I finished: 05:45 Boxing day.

But I had shedloads of booze in the process, watched one of my favourite films, saw Rennie Russo get naked, and built a stupendously
fast PC. I once more have full Technicolour 3D for games.

Well worth it!

I take it you mean space on the hard drive. Yeah, that is stacks and will last for ages. Unless you decide to do video editing or something.

Yeah, more RAM would be a good idea. 256 Mb is pretty low these days. You would likely notice a difference in performance, especially when you run lots of different programs.

Notorious Biggles wrote:
> To be honest I don't know. Most motherboards nowadays have built in
> sound chips. In the past this was done to cut corners and save money,
> generally meaning that the quality was not very good. Now however the
> quality is every inch as good as most soundcards.
>
> A rough guess for prices for the main parts of the system:
> £50 for an Abit NF7 motherboard (onboard sound)
> £50 for an AMD 2500XP Processor (can be overclocked to 3200XP
> speeds easily)
> £50 for 512 Mb of DDR 400 RAM
> £100-150 on a mid range graphics card
> £60 120 Gb Hard drive
>
> Floppy, DVD, CD-RW, all those things could be kept over. As could the
> hard drive. Even the RAM etc. You have an alright system at the
> moment to be honest, some simple maintenance would probably speed it
> up a bit.


Might just install some more RAM. Is 111 GB enough space on the Motherboard? And I've only got 256 Mb Ram.

Should I get an extra 512 and install it? Because I reckon that's the only problem. Graphics card can come later. :).

I found it quite enjoyable building my first computer (last summer) there was a little planning. I was more concerned about making sure all the parts worked together. The most difficult thing for me was choosing the right motherboard (and the right memory for it) the rest was really easy. Of course I did have the one panic attack, it would power up but only for a second. Then after a few days of pulling my hair out I calmly went through and found I didn't connect the PSU to the motherboard, well it was something as trivial at that. So yeah I'm still very happy with my little machine. It's nice to build your own, although one thing that annoyed me was that now most of the parts are either a lot cheaper now or I've found a new supplier and could have saved several hundred pounds. Oh well, I am looking forward to doing my second computer though. With some experience and a lot more planning it'll be so much easier. A lot more easier than it was putting these desks together, I hate DIY furniture.

To be honest I don't know. Most motherboards nowadays have built in sound chips. In the past this was done to cut corners and save money, generally meaning that the quality was not very good. Now however the quality is every inch as good as most soundcards.

A rough guess for prices for the main parts of the system:
£50 for an Abit NF7 motherboard (onboard sound)
£50 for an AMD 2500XP Processor (can be overclocked to 3200XP speeds easily)
£50 for 512 Mb of DDR 400 RAM
£100-150 on a mid range graphics card
£60 120 Gb Hard drive

Floppy, DVD, CD-RW, all those things could be kept over. As could the hard drive. Even the RAM etc. You have an alright system at the moment to be honest, some simple maintenance would probably speed it up a bit.

Hmm... Good good. :). How much do sound cards generally cost. (And speakers.)

All sorts of places. I use www.ebuyer.co.uk and www.overclockers.co.uk mainly.

If it is a PCI soundcard you would just take it out the old PC and plug it into the new one.

You would be better off with an ATI Radeon. Higher the number the better the card.

Good good. Also, where is good to buy parts. SR do some, but other places too? (I want VALUE for my dosh.)

Also... How could I preserve my sound card. It's not bad. I don't think. Sounds good anyway, and I really don't care.

Also, Intel(R) Extreme Graphics aren't any good, right? I was thinking more nVidia or wassit called. Hercules or Prophet or something o.O.

Hmm I suppose there isn't that much you need a steady hand for, we're not talking about soldering anything.

Eye, instruction is my second name.

My hand ain't that steady though, and I'm terminally afraid fo breaking stuff if it doesn't work first time. Or click first time. That's why I like lego :P.

It's not really hard.

For me it was expensive seeing as there was nothing I could keep over from my old system. I spent about a grand on it. But that does include the 19" monitor, speakers etc.

You could build something decent for about £500 if you could keep the monitor. For something pretty powerful it would be £700 or so if you could keep the monitor and the like.

The more you can keep the cheaper it becomes.

A 14 year old could do it, if he had a steady hand and could follow instructions properly.