Just how difficult is building your own pc?

[AirFlyer]

I'd say go with XP Professional. SP1, SP2, and SP3 can all be downloaded it so it's not important.

[RTHolmes]

I'd go for XP Pro, and if you're buying it together with other stuff (mobo, cpu etc) you can buy the OEM version ("for system builders") its alot cheaper.

[Ghosth]

The real key to building a puter yourself is setting yourself the task of finding out whats coming down the pipeline.
What does what best, whats compatible with what, what is good and what to avoid.

If you spend even 2 months doing a couple of hours a week research. By the time comes to order you will have a much much better idea of what will run slick and clean with no conflicts. What will work and is worth the money and what is hype and garbage and should be avoided.

I'll give you a freeby, stay away from SLI. Double the cost, requires 2 identical video cards, for 10 - 15% increase.
Hardly worth spending all those extra dollars on  SLI capable Mboard, and 2nd video card for that now is it.

Also I'd avoid the upgrade trap. Build it as it is for NOW, use it hard for 2 to 3 years, then build a new one.
Don't build it now planning on upgrading video 6 months from now unless you really have no other choice. Better to wait 4 months then build it.

http://www.anandtech.com


Last, if you buy a motherboard combo from Mwave.com they will assemble and test it for 9$.
So when the box arrives, the Ram is correctly seated in the correct slots. The CPU is correctly mounted, the CPU cooler is mounted. And you KNOW it all works. That confidence can make all the difference in the world. 

So all you have to do is read the motherboard manual, mount the mboard in the chassis, and start hooking things up.
Power in, power button, a few led wires, and your ready to drop drives and cards into it and fire it up.

To steal a line from Home Depot.
"You can DO it! We can help!"

[Tempest3]

Guides like "Building a PC for Dummies" are a good start. I knew NOTHING about computers before I built mine, and I built a killer for around $500 - $600. The biggest thing is never to let yourself get frustrated if something doesn't work quite right. With enough work the parts will almost always function together. Two sites I highly recommend buying from are www.newegg.com and www.tigerdirect.com . If you live in a state that tiger charges tax on you can use their sister site www.globalcomputer.com . Hope that helps some.

Also... DO NOT under estimate the fan needed for a dual core processor. Be certain to get one designed for cooling two CPUs or your processor will overheat.

Intel Pentium D 840 3.2GHz CPU
Intel 945PVs Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 512MB Video Card
@Power 500W Power Supply
20x DVD Burner
Windows XP Home Edition/Fedora 8 OS
Seagate 320GB Hard Drive
Ultra 1GB RAM

[BaldEagl]

Also... DO NOT under estimate the fan needed for a dual core processor. Be certain to get one designed for cooling two CPUs or your processor will overheat.

Unless your going to be seriously overclocking the stock fan that comes with (at least with Intel) the CPU should be fine.

I've got an Intel E6750 Core 2 Duo 2.66 Gig overclocked to 3.2 Ghz running with the stock Intel fan.  I idle at less than 30C and run ~50C under most loads (~60C under 100% load to both cores running Prime95).  The CPU is good for about another 0.5 Ghz in overclock speed (I've heard of people hitting 3.9 Ghz with this CPU) but at that amount of OC I'd need to upgrade the fan/heatsink due to the required additional voltage input.

[sethipus]

Ok, just let me state for the record that I've only ever bought commercially-made computers three times in my life.  They were two Macs and a Dell I picked up two weeks ago for my wife.  I've built probably 10 or 11 computers over that same time from parts, and my current computer is one I built from parts and upgraded multiple times over the last three years, etc.

Having said all that, a good friend of mine sells a lot of Dell computers in his business as a Windows networking and sysadmin consultant with dozens of clients.  Every time we talk about it he gets closer and closer to convincing me that I shouldn't even bother building my own machine anymore and just buy a Dell.  I'm not quite there yet, but I'm close enough I was willing to buy a Dell for my wife when that old AthlonXP 2800 system of mine that she's been using started having motherboard problems.

Here's the reason.  You spec out a decent machine, including every part you will need to buy to build it, and a legitimate copy of Windows XP or Vista or whatever, and then price it out on Newegg.  Chances are I can go configurate a similar box at the Dell website and be pretty much the same price, or close enough not to matter.

And the Dell will come with a minimum 1 year on-site warranty.  If something goes on the fritz, Dell will send someone out immediately to fix it.  For a modest price you can up that warranty to 2 or more years.  Not to mention the Dell cases are decent, and the fans are quiet.  My wife's new Dell is probably the quietest computer I've ever owned since the relatively quiet Mac IIsi.

My friend the consultant just bought himself a new Dell XPS 730 system with butt-kicking Core 2 Quad cpu with the 12mb cache, 4 gb of DDR3 ram, Geforce GTX 280, Xi-Fi sound card, dvd burner, 750 gig hard drive, and Vista Home Premium, and a same-day onsite four year warranty.  He priced out all the parts at Newegg and figured out he came within a hundred bucks or so of the do-it-yourself price, and unlike the home system builder he's got the four year freaking onsite warranty.  His machine can, um, break in 3.5 years and Dell will fix it or replace it with a current model.

Oh yeah, and if you buy when Dell is offering specials, you can get good deals on monitors and whatnot.  When I bought my wife's new Dell I was able to throw in a 22" Dell widescreen (non-Ultrasharp) lcd for $110 over just the computer alone.  That's like a $280 monitor.  I bought my wife a 22" Dell lcd a year ago to use with her old computer, so she didn't need another monitor.  I paid the $110 and got the 22" lcd for myself.  I plugged it in next to my 24" Dell ultrasharp lcd and now I've got them both running side by side.  Great deal.

[Ghosth]

I guess to me the difference is if I built it I own that machine. I have the drivers, I know whats in the box. If there is a problem I can fix it. I'm not tied to someone else's customer service.

If a virus hits me hard I know I can boot from the windows CD, repartition, reformat, reinstall and get everything back loaded in half a day.

When you buy a machine you don't always get to make all the choices you want. And your depending on someone else to fix any problems.  How many different motherboards does dell really offer? 3? 4?

Go take a look at the motherboard list on Mwave or Newegg.

I see your reasoning, and if thats your choice thats fine. It just won't be mine any time soon.

[Fulmar]

Dell

The only time I would consider buying an extended warranty on a computer is for a laptop.  Mainly because if the motherboard goes, I'm up a creek unless I want to shell out a lot more than what the computer is worth.  Some plans include free batteries which is also nice.

For me, buying an off the shelf computer is like having a mechanic take his car into get his oil changed.  Doesn't make sense.  When I build a computer, I know what parts I put into it, who made the parts, how well each part operates in benchmarks and is reviewed.  My customization options are far greater than anything I can custom order.

However, I am my own warranty.  Yet, the last part that failed me in under a year was probably some cheap 56K modem I bought 7-8 years ago. $10 and you get what you pay for there.  And extended warranty longer on that?  I generally swap out parts as an upgrade within a 3-4 year span either way.  *Knock on wood*  The only hardware pieces that worry me and have failed me in the past are PSU's and hard drives.  These parts out lived their warranties, but eventually failed.  My 1 VC that was dying was replaced under its lifetime warranty.

I have only once taken something to a computer repair shop and that was for my wife's laptop.  The solder on the power plug had developed a loose connection.  What I thought was an easy fix became unreasonable after I checked out the disassembly instructions for her Toshiba just to get to the plug.  I probably could have down it, but she's the type of person that likes things in mint condition and had kept her 3+ year old laptop in almost virgin condition.  So as complicated as it was to take apart the whole computer I gladly forked over the money to a local service shop.

Granted I buy 98% of my parts online, I do try and support local shops over Best Buy as much as I can if I need a part ASAP, or they offering a sale.  I loved it the last time I was in Sh*t Buy and saw a sales rep talk someone into getting 'Geek Squad optimization' done on their brand new PC they're buying.  Commission sales in atmospheres such as that are the root of all evil IMO.

For someone with not a lot of time on their hands, and off the shelf computer probably works best for you.  But then again, you probably didn't get enjoyment out of building it in the first place, or lost interest.  Even small upgrades I still get giddy as a little girl when the UPS man comes.

Computers are my main hobby.  If you want to buy one off the shelf, that's your own right and I won't argue with you.  But IMO, the technical experience gained in building one is well worth it.

[BaldEagl]

You spec out a decent machine, including every part you will need to buy to build it, and a legitimate copy of Windows XP or Vista or whatever, and then price it out on Newegg.  Chances are I can go configurate a similar box at the Dell website and be pretty much the same price, or close enough not to matter.

And the Dell will come with a minimum 1 year on-site warranty.  If something goes on the fritz, Dell will send someone out immediately to fix it.  For a modest price you can up that warranty to 2 or more years. 

Probably true at the low end.  Not true at the high end.

I built my new machine in March all inclusive (box, monitor, speakers, etc.) for just under $2000.  I just went to the Dell site to test your theory and a similar machine priced out at just over $3400 and that was without the extended warranty.  Worse yet, I don't know exactly what's in that Dell machine.

$1400 is a lot to pay for a one year warranty IMO.

[Fulmar]

$1400 is a lot to pay for a one year warranty IMO.

If he works for Dell, I'm sure he got a sweet deal on it and paid nowhere near that.

[sethipus]

My friend doesn't work for Dell, he works for us own consultancy, but he has a Dell reseller account that he uses to sell Dell machines to a lot of his customers when they ask him to hook them up with new systems.  He does know how to find the deals, discounts, etc.  I was surprised that he came as close as the Newegg price on his new machine, but he did.  I haven't tried to replicate his success at the high end, but I did do it for my wife's new computer, and I'm satisfied that I got a good deal on a good, solid, fast machine.  With its integrated graphics and sound, my wife's machine isn't a gamer box, but it isn't intended to be.  And with its great cpu and RAM, it wouldn't cost me that much to get it playable for most games including AHII.

I sympathize with the comments others have made about knowing what's in your box, the mechanic taking his car in for an oil change, etc.  That's why I said I'm personally not quite ready to abandon my own self-building for my own personal computers.  I'm just thinking about it and considering my options, and I'm warming up to the idea.  I can't say whether I'll build my own when I finally replace my AthlonX2 4400/geforce 8800gtx machine or not, but at least for the first time in my life that is even an option I'm considering.  I've only ever bought one commercial system for myself (the Mac IIsi back in 1992), the other two were for my wife (a G4 iMac in around 2000/2001) and this new Dell.

Here's the thing.  Modern-day PC components generally suck.  Back in earlier days computers seemed more reliable to me.  That Mac IIsi ran for freaking ever until I finally just threw it away - it still ran fine, I just had no use for it anymore.  But I've had a lot of problems with components and whatnot in recent years.  Having a good onsite warranty for most people would be a Godsend.  You guys know what a PITA it is when something goes titsup on your machine and you're stuck either making a long drive to the nearest Fry's or else ordering online and waiting a couple days for it to arrive.  Meanwhile you're offline.

In the end, the OP has never built his own computer.  He hasn't got years of experience doing this, like me and you guys who are commenting on this.  I'm not sure it's really worth it to people anymore to actually put the time and effort into becoming the hardware hound that people like us are, and dealing with all the hassle.

[sethipus]

By the way, here are some problems I've had in the last few years with components.

My ABIT BP-6 motherboard fried one day when I was changing over heatsinks on my two Celeron 400 cpus.  I was careful about static and whatnot and the only thing I could figure out might have been the culprit is that the motherboard flexed a non-trivial amount from the pressure of hooking those metal clips from the heatsinks down onto the plastic cpu sockets, and a trace somewhere broke and the thing never worked again.  Crap.

The onboard network controller of my 1 ghz Athlon system stopped working one day, causing a spontaneous system reboot, and that onboard networking never worked again.  I went and bought a cheap 10/100 ethernet card and put it in and got it back online, but it was a bother doing it.

I had the onboard sound of another motherboard go out in the same way, by the way, and had to add a pci sound card to get sound working again on that machine.

A year after the onboard ethernet went bad the rest of the motherboard went titsup and I had to replace the whole motherboard.  This was a Gigabyte brand motherboard.

A year and a half or so after building my Athlon64 3000 system in the spring of 2005 my Asus motherboard went bad.  I actually got Asus to replace the motherboard under warranty (with a "refurbished", not brand new board) but it was a huge PITA dealing with them and I was offline with my main computer for several days.  This Athlon64 3000 machine, btw, was the one I'm using now but upgraded to an AthlonX2 4400 cpu a year and a half or two years ago.  Oh yeah, and I put the machine in a different case as well, and added three more hard drives, upgraded the video card, etc.

I had an eVGA video card go bad on me and get replaced under warranty.

I've had two power supplies go bad on me in the last few years.  One of them was on my AthlonXP 2800 system that I turned off one Christmas vacation for about a week, and when I tried turning it back on when I returned home it simply never fired back up, and the power supply was tested and was certifiably dead.  That wasn't my main box by that time so I let it sit for a while, then replaced the power supply and gave the machine to my wife along with a 22" Dell widescreen to replace her ages-old G4 iMac.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the old Geforce 3 card on that system was flaking out and I replaced it with a newer but still cheap and good-enough-for-my-wife ATI card.  She used that machine for another year or two and then the machine started experiencing random reboots.  Recently the reboots had gotten pretty bad and it would often do it while she was still using it.  I ran some tests to confirm that it wasn't the RAM that was bad, but that it was definitely a hardware issue.  It had to be either the power supply, the motherboard, or the cpu.  I replaced the power supply and the system still failed the tests (the OCCT tool and rebooting from a memory test cd and running the memtest), so I returned the power supply to Frys and bought the Dell.  This is because it was either the cpu or the motherboard, and this was an ancient system by now and not worth trying to replace a 5 year old cpu and motherboard.

And what's my point?  My point is that this kind of crap happens in the computer world nowadays, and not everyone knows how to, or is willing to, deal with it themselves.  Since the OP has never done this before, obviously he's not really a hardware hound, and I'd really hesitate to recommend that a hardware non-enthusiast get into assembling their own machines from parts, because when trouble happens, they're going to be frustrated and be without their machines for a while.

[Fulmar]

In the end, the OP has never built his own computer.  He hasn't got years of experience doing this, like me and you guys who are commenting on this.  I'm not sure it's really worth it to people anymore to actually put the time and effort into becoming the hardware hound that people like us are, and dealing with all the hassle.

Without having a time machine, I can safely say that 40 years ago, there were a lot more average car owners that did maintenance on their vehicles.  However, the components were no where near as complex as they are today (with the addition of multiple computers, sensors, and the world's dumbest design engineers).  So, we're faced with taking it to the mechanic.  And that can be no fun.

Now if I were to compare building a computer today as compared to building it 15 years ago, I can only say that it is easier.  We have a much larger aftermarket supply than we did back than (by leaps and bounds).  Most drivers and BIOS settings are auto-configure, no more jumpers or dipswitches to mess around with.  I remember my dad buying his first home computer, an IBM Aptiva 120mhz.  It came with about 5 or 6 large (100+ pages) manuals IIRC.  He just bought a new HP machine (1/4 the cost of that Aptiva) and it had a fold out map to show connections and had 1 or 2 10 page brochure size registration stuff.  Granted the Aptiva stuff was mostly fluff and the new HP had the manuals stored on a cd or hd.

I would encourage the home build because your off the shelf computer (especially Dell's) are using proprietary parts.  That is, a custom layout motherboard.  Proprietary connections for the PSU and motherboard.  The aftermarket world in comparison is more standardized.  ATX board have been around for 10 years and still dominate the vast majority of the market.  Case and PSU connections only have varied slightly.  Motherboard still offer IDE connections along with their new SATA connections.  My dad's HP only had SATA (which is good in a sense).  So if you're not under warranty on your off the shelf PC, you could get bent over a folding chair and be taken to town.  So I'm gonna spend how much on a warranty over the one year period?

Aftermarket parts generally come with decent warranties by themselves.  And by building your machine you can become more attuned to what is going wrong with the PC.  My video card has a lifetime wararnty.  Processors are 3 years IIRC (but when was the last time you had to warranty a processor due to it being at fault).  Hard drives can have up to a 5 year warranty.  Motherboards generally a year.  Ram?  Lifetime on almost every brand.  CD/DVD drive?  They're only $20-30.  PSU's can be a deal breaker however.

The more you're going to invest your time on a PC, the more knowledgeable you're going to get, period.  You're going to learn the proper procedures on how to keep that machine going, data back up etc etc.  It hurts me to think about how many times I've known someone that lost their family photos because they didn't know the dangers of not backing anything up.  (Sorry this section is off track).

To sum it up, if his interest is there, he has the pocket book to do it (not on the cheap), and the patience....the rewards can be very good.

[Fulmar]

I would rather be the person that knows what is going on, than rather say "I don't have the time or patience for this, do what you must."  My wife, God bless her, has zero to no patience.  And when she doesn't understand something and it's not working, I've seen her blood boil (maybe a little exaggerated).  She is the exact reason I do not work in the customer service field.  Thankfully for her, she married me and if something is broke or goes wrong with anything, I'm there to fix it for her.

The less middlemen you have, the happier the world is.

There isn't a person that builds computers that hasn't run into problems before either.  I had built my wife a computer but developed problems 6 months down the road.  I learned A LOT from those headaches, especially in quality of components.  Turn around time to fix it was about a week, but she survived.  I myself could compile quite the list of problems I've had over the years.  I'm not sure what I could tell you if I had never cracked open the side of my computer.  Calling for tech support is NEVER any fun.

Having the skills I have in building computers has allowed me to help myself save money, aid coworkers and family/friends in their computer needs/troubles.  The headaches I've gone through were far outweighed by my own enjoyment doing it and the many thanks I received for helping a person in need.

However, there is a need for a market of onsite repair.  There are mission critical things that people and businesses need down ASAP to keep them running, no matter what.  I won't argue with that.  But it depends on your needs.

[Getback]

Unless your going to be seriously overclocking the stock fan that comes with (at least with Intel) the CPU should be fine.

I've got an Intel E6750 Core 2 Duo 2.66 Gig overclocked to 3.2 Ghz running with the stock Intel fan.  I idle at less than 30C and run ~50C under most loads (~60C under 100% load to both cores running Prime95).  The CPU is good for about another 0.5 Ghz in overclock speed (I've heard of people hitting 3.9 Ghz with this CPU) but at that amount of OC I'd need to upgrade the fan/heatsink due to the required additional voltage input.

You guys know I'm not one to stir the pot.  But-t-t-t One AH pilot sent me a screen shot of his comp clocked to 3.8 ghz using a e6850. I omitted his name since it was a private message.