Christ Centered Gamer

Hi everyone! I need some advice:

I have been thinking that I would like to assemble my own computer as a summer project this year. However, I'm not sure how to go about it. I've done some research, but I'm looking for some other information as well.

1. Have you assembled a computer?
2. Did you enjoy it? That is, was it fun?
3. Where did you get your parts?
4. What parts did you use?
5. How is it cooled?
6. How long did it take?
7. What operating system did you use?
8. About how much did it cost?
9. Are you happy with the end result?

If you have any other information that you feel would be helpful, post that too! Thanks a ton!

I build PC's on the side if you want a system quoted or advice out let me know.

http://www.progresssystemsinc.com is my website. If I don't buy parts from my vendor Newegg is great to do business with.

Basically here's your choices on CPU's AMD or Intel. AMD's are typically cheaper but Intel's are slightly faster. Don't skimp on the power supply a crappy power supply will be under rated and will blow out on you sooner or later. Antec, PC Power and Cooling make good power supplies. Make sure your case has a couple of fans in it. If not, buy some for it. A stock CPU cooler is sufficient if you don't plan on over clocking your CPU. Get Windows 7 64 bit and 8GB of memory. The cost depends on how good of parts you want in it. Solid state drives are getting cheaper..having one for an operating system and a bigger cheaper drive for everything else will make a screaming machine. My system is booted up and logged in and ready to use in 20 seconds, no joke.

check this out 600 Watt Power supply with a free DVD writer $49 after mail in rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 17-341-017

LegoFan560 wrote:Hi everyone! I need some advice:

I have been thinking that I would like to assemble my own computer as a summer project this year. However, I'm not sure how to go about it. I've done some research, but I'm looking for some other information as well.

1. Have you assembled a computer?
2. Did you enjoy it? That is, was it fun?
3. Where did you get your parts?
4. What parts did you use?
5. How is it cooled?
6. How long did it take?
7. What operating system did you use?
8. About how much did it cost?
9. Are you happy with the end result?

If you have any other information that you feel would be helpful, post that too! Thanks a ton!

Me and a friend built my new one. Yeah it was fun. A little bit difficult if you don't know what your doing, but I think I could have taken it on myself without him. We bought the parts from Newegg.

My suggestion to you would be to get an up-to-date motherboard and a Solid state drive just for your Operating system and then go with a standard hard drive for your games. The solid state drives are more expensive, but I can restart my pc under a minute. My solid state is only 64Gigs and its packed, so you might want to get a bigger one. My regular hard drive with my games on it and programs is a 1TB though.

I bought a Radeon 6900 for a video card, and so far so good. If you can, I'd probably recommend a Nvidia card, they are a little more expensive, but I would say they are a bit more solid than ATI Radeon cards, but I have had no problem with mine. The motherboard we bought is made by ASROCK and it's Fatal1ty's motherboard. It supports both SLI and Crossfire and you can combine the two as well.

Windows Vista Ultimate (my friend had a copy). We had it setup the same day the parts arrived.

I wanted to put a cooling system in it, but my friend talked me out of it. I may end up doing that later though. The case is a Cooler Master HAF case (lots of room inside and 4 fans).

I invested 1,400 in mine and it was worth every penny. My xbox 360 is at a friends house and I haven't had the urge to play it since I bought this thing. Except for when the new SSX came out, I'm hoping it comes out for PC though. Sonic Generations did and that is a great game.

ccgr wrote:I build PC's on the side if you want a system quoted or advice out let me know.

http://www.progresssystemsinc.com is my website. If I don't buy parts from my vendor Newegg is great to do business with.

Basically here's your choices on CPU's AMD or Intel. AMD's are typically cheaper but Intel's are slightly faster. Don't skimp on the power supply a crappy power supply will be under rated and will blow out on you sooner or later. Antec, PC Power and Cooling make good power supplies. Make sure your case has a couple of fans in it. If not, buy some for it. A stock CPU cooler is sufficient if you don't plan on over clocking your CPU. Get Windows 7 64 bit and 8GB of memory. The cost depends on how good of parts you want in it. Solid state drives are getting cheaper..having one for an operating system and a bigger cheaper drive for everything else will make a screaming machine. My system is booted up and logged in and ready to use in 20 seconds, no joke.

Great! Is it ok if I send you my tentative specs once I figure them out to see what you think?

ccgr wrote:check this out 600 Watt Power supply with a free DVD writer $49 after mail in rebate

I'm not ready to start purchasing stuff, but if you see any more specials like that, let me know! I'm on a somewhat limited budget...

Syxth wrote:My suggestion to you would be to get an up-to-date motherboard and a Solid state drive just for your Operating system and then go with a standard hard drive for your games. The solid state drives are more expensive, but I can restart my pc under a minute. My solid state is only 64Gigs and its packed, so you might want to get a bigger one. My regular hard drive with my games on it and programs is a 1TB though.
<snip>
I invested 1,400 in mine and it was worth every penny. My xbox 360 is at a friends house and I haven't had the urge to play it since I bought this thing. Except for when the new SSX came out, I'm hoping it comes out for PC though. Sonic Generations did and that is a great game.

Thanks! Since your solid state hard drive is full, what size do you think you should have gotten? How full is your 1TB one? Thanks for your help!

Sure I can look over your specs. Don't worry on hard drive space, if you go the SSD route you'll have to treat that space like gold and learn to install stuff to a bigger drive by default. My SSD is 120GB. I would say if money is tight stick with a 500GB drive. Drive space depends on what you do with it. Figure that the OS and Office software will take about 20GB. New games these days are roughly 10GB in size so take that into consideration as well.

ccgr wrote:Sure I can look over your specs. Don't worry on hard drive space, if you go the SSD route you'll have to treat that space like gold and learn to install stuff to a bigger drive by default. My SSD is 120GB. I would say if money is tight stick with a 500GB drive. Drive space depends on what you do with it. Figure that the OS and Office software will take about 20GB. New games these days are roughly 10GB in size so take that into consideration as well.

Great! Our most recent game is Minecraft... Other than that, the newest is a used copy of Battlefront II... Plus Kindergarten games and RollerCoaster Tycoon. I don't think those would need a lot of space. XD

LegoFan560 wrote:

1. Have you assembled a computer?
2. Did you enjoy it? That is, was it fun?
3. Where did you get your parts?
4. What parts did you use?
5. How is it cooled?
6. How long did it take?
7. What operating system did you use?
8. About how much did it cost?
9. Are you happy with the end result?

1. I built my main desktop/gaming machine
2. Loved building it. Always happy to upgrade it too.
3. Frys Electronics, mostly. I shop at Newegg.com and Tigerdirect as well.
4. Asus mobo, Intel i5, ati radeon hd 4k series. got a 120gb Crucial m4 SSD, definitely worth it. I have my OS and some select applications on it, and run everything else off my secondary HDD. If you do get a SSD, and it's worth investing in, make sure to look up how to install it (partitioning, enabling TRIM, etc). Little things like that let you pull more performance from it and help keep it from running down.
Also, be sure to back up your SSD regularly; we're still not fully in the know on their lifespan and the more they get written to, the faster they run out. Don't let that deter you, HDD's run out too. Just backup, that's all.
For a HDD, get a big one. They are so cheap nowadays, you're skimping on $20 for 500 extra GB. Of course, you can always throw a new one in whenever you need it later down the line.
5. Normal heat sink. If you get a spacious enough box with good fan ventiliation, no need for a water cooling system unless you OC.
6. It took long to shop for the parts than to put it together. Not long at all. Got it all done in a night with spare time to game.
7. Windows 7. Do NOT go with XP, and do NOT go for 32 bit installation, unless you want to throw away all that extra ram.
8. Skated by under 1k. (not including later purchases).
9. Love it. I don't think I'd ever buy a premade desktop again.

Are you planning on assembling piecemeal, or all at once? If all at once, you have the advantage of being able to send in for replacements if a particular part isn't working (I had to return my first SSD (Corsair Force) because it was absolutely junk). You might not be able to do that if you found out it doesn't work a month later after buying. On the other hand, if you keep eye on sites like SlickDeals.net, you can found some amazing deals to help cut down the cost of your computer.

Vendors cannot even sell Windows XP anymore and why would you want to with 32 bit memory limitations.

Oh good.

For 32 bit, I've heard cases for low-end hardware systems, it runs a little faster; but there is no reason to use it on a new comp.

ArchAngel wrote:<snip>4. Asus mobo, Intel i5, ati radeon hd 4k series. got a 120gb Crucial m4 SSD, definitely worth it. I have my OS and some select applications on it, and run everything else off my secondary HDD. If you do get a SSD, and it's worth investing in, make sure to look up how to install it (partitioning, enabling TRIM, etc). Little things like that let you pull more performance from it and help keep it from running down.
Also, be sure to back up your SSD regularly; we're still not fully in the know on their lifespan and the more they get written to, the faster they run out. Don't let that deter you, HDD's run out too. Just backup, that's all.
For a HDD, get a big one. They are so cheap nowadays, you're skimping on $20 for 500 extra GB. Of course, you can always throw a new one in whenever you need it later down the line.
<snip>
Are you planning on assembling piecemeal, or all at once? If all at once, you have the advantage of being able to send in for replacements if a particular part isn't working (I had to return my first SSD (Corsair Force) because it was absolutely junk). You might not be able to do that if you found out it doesn't work a month later after buying. On the other hand, if you keep eye on sites like SlickDeals.net, you can found some amazing deals to help cut down the cost of your computer.

How long has your SSD lasted so far? How often do you back it up? I'm going to assemble all at once, but I didn't think about getting replacements. Thanks for your help! I'll check out some deals sites.

Another question for everyone: What type of monitor are you using? Would it be possible to connect my computer with HDMI or RCA cables to a TV?

Thanks so much!

Oh, we're talking years and years.

Don't bother with a TV. HDMI is terrible for computers, you can't get max resolution out of it. Stick with a DVI port. Currently my wife uses a medium sized 1080p HDTV (do not go lower for a computer, you'll never get a crisp image) which has an VGA in to use as a monitor, and it works, but seems like the Monitors handle screen resolution better. Also, some TVs give you a glaring blue screen when the computer turns off, instead of sleeping. Small inconveniences.

As for RCA, you'd have to get a special video card (ATI has video cards that have TV Tuners in them) or purchase some $100 converter. Not worth it, not for bad clarity.

ccgr wrote:Sure I can look over your specs. Don't worry on hard drive space, if you go the SSD route you'll have to treat that space like gold and learn to install stuff to a bigger drive by default. My SSD is 120GB. I would say if money is tight stick with a 500GB drive. Drive space depends on what you do with it. Figure that the OS and Office software will take about 20GB. New games these days are roughly 10GB in size so take that into consideration as well.

Yeah, I definitely agree. Treat the SSD space like gold. ^_^

ArchAngel wrote:Oh, we're talking years and years.

Don't bother with a TV. HDMI is terrible for computers, you can't get max resolution out of it. Stick with a DVI port. Currently my wife uses a medium sized 1080p HDTV (do not go lower for a computer, you'll never get a crisp image) which has an VGA in to use as a monitor, and it works, but seems like the Monitors handle screen resolution better. Also, some TVs give you a glaring blue screen when the computer turns off, instead of sleeping. Small inconveniences.

As for RCA, you'd have to get a special video card (ATI has video cards that have TV Tuners in them) or purchase some $100 converter. Not worth it, not for bad clarity.

Ok. When you said that you're not sure how long SSDs last, I got worried for a bit... If I would be replacing it in a month, it's not worth it. I'll skip the TV, then. It was just an idea to allow me to wait a bit on the monitor, since I'm on a limited budget.

Syxth wrote:Yeah, I definitely agree. Treat the SSD space like gold. ^_^

It's really that much better than a standard drive? I'll be careful how I use it, then. =)

When I first built my computer, I had the SSD that eventually I had to return. It was so fast that I didn't even have time to see the progress bar for various installations. When I had to return it, I was a little depressed every time I turn my comp on after I had to switch back to a HDD. But now I have an even faster SSD

When looking for an SSD, (and CCGR can verify this), OCZ, Kingston and Crucial are best. I got crucial because it looked a little more stable than the others. Also, go for one with the ~500mb read/write speed, like the OCZ Vertex/Agility III.

Don't let our comments about gold scare you from using it. Just understand what it is, and it's advantages over regular hard discs.

Alright, In the case I was overstating my case with the HDMI, it might have just been my monitor and how it handles hdmi input. If you have an extra hdmi cable, give it a try. If you don't have an extra cable, do NOT get it at best buy. Get it, like, $6 online. Brand really doesn't matter... it's a cable.