<p>I’m building myself a new PC! Just purchased all of the parts and they should come in about 2 days!!! SO super excited, it’s going to be amazing! I’ve never built a whole PC from scratch before so this will be new!</p>
<p>Have fun and be sure to take all appropriate precautions ranging from electrostatic discharges while handling RAM, video cards, PCI cards, etc to basic electronic safety hazards.</p>
<p>I just built my own about a month ago as well for the first time. I followed Newegg’s YouTube video on building a computer and it helped me a lot. Make sure you have enough cable ties for cable management and ground yourself frequently. And when you’re all done give yourself a well deserved pat on the back. Good Luck! </p>
<p>Sent from my ADR6400L using CC</p>
<p>once the configuration is done, put parts together is not much efforts. But to debug hardware conflict is fun. You may end up paying more, but you will feel the achievement.</p>
<p>I wound up getting far more PC for far less the price. I got some really great deals. Super excited!</p>
<p>I went with the new ivy bridge 3570k intel chip with a new z77 gigabyte motherboard, 8 gb ram, and a 90 gig SSD. Computer will have windows 7 ultimate as I have an extra license from MSDN for it. </p>
<p>All my parts added up to about 500 bucks, and I will get 40 back in mail in rebates.</p>
<p>Can’t wait!</p>
<p>I built my first last January though I’ve done lots of work on desktops and laptops before including surgery on an old MacBook Pro (those things are really tight). I had help from a very experienced builder and it made it go smoother and faster and I avoided some problems with him around. He was also able to help me through the firmware upgrade process which was a real pain - sometimes the motherboard makers skip on the website and process for upgrades.</p>
<p>Unfortunately I got one of the bad chipsets last year that eventually fried the SATA ports so I had to take it apart and put it back together again after doing a motherboard exchange. Bad parts do happen sometimes.</p>
<p>I loved the idea of being able to pick the quality components that I wanted along with way overbuilding it in case I want to add or modify the system in the future. The case, power supply and many other components should last a few motherboards.</p>
<p>Exciting stuff.</p>
<p>I built a windows machine years ago with so-so results. I didn’t have the technical knowlege to resolve a bunch of hardware conflicts. When it finally gave out, I decided to henceforth buy name brands second hand and upgrade them as necessary. These days I imagine it’s easier to self-build a solid and long lasting PC.</p>
<p>I built a machine around 13 years ago out of old motherboard/parts my more well-off…but with less techie sense friends were discarding in favor of upgrading to Socket 423 Pentium 4s with RDRAM…Bwahahahahaha. </p>
<p>Turned out the Pentium II/III* box I ended up building was only marginally slower than their Pentium 4s…and ran a heck of a lot cooler. Especially considering RDRAM ridiculously expensive due to their IP trolling/monopolizing and slower than expectations. </p>
<p>By the time they tried to cast off their socket 423 RDRAM based Pentium 4 parts…already had a bunch of socket 478 Pentium 4s machines using cheap SDRAM or DDR1/2 RAM, much faster, and gotten free from the street or dumped on me by friends and relatives. :D</p>
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<li>Slot 1 CPUs. A PII-350 followed very shortly by a PIII-700.</li>
</ul>
<p>I’ve built many many PCs. There’s not really that much to it - it’s not really ‘building’ so much as assembling a handful of major pieces (put the motherboard in the case, plug in ram, install the drives, plug a few cables, plug in add-in cards, power it on, install the OS, and voila). As long as all of the pieces are compatible it should be very straightforward and anyone who can operate a screwdriver s/b able to put one together in a couple of hours. Making sure the components are compatible up front when buying the parts is the key.</p>
<p>At the end of the day it’s sometimes better and not much more expensive to just buy a brand name already assembled that comes with a warranty that covers the whole unit.</p>
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<p>If you just need a basic internet/office machine, I’d agree.</p>
<p>If you need something to play bleeding edge games and/or to do something really specialized…you may be much better off building your own machine to suit those requirements. </p>
<p>Moreover…considering what I’ve observed from many OEMs/bigbox stores…sometimes…the warranties aren’t worth the paper/pixels they’re written on.</p>
<p>i couldn’t even buy a pc that had what I wanted on it for even close to the price.</p>
<p>I made sure to buy everything on my CC that extends the warranties automatically with no questions asked.</p>
<p>My D bought an HP laptop around this time last year. She had to replace the hard drive last december, the keyboard earlier this year, and the battery this month. We are not sure what will be broken next. Is this considered “build your own laptop”?</p>
<p>it’s considered ‘don’t buy a laptop from hp’.</p>
<p>kidding (kind of - they have the worst reliability ratings of all laptops… but any system can have problems)</p>
<p>i am hoping hers was under warranty?</p>
<p>It was under warranty but she did not have time to deal with it. You have to backup the system, spend time with support technician (they usually go by the book and ask you do a lot of unnecessary things), ship the PC to HP, wait for repair,… A lot of hassle. She just went to BestBuy or eBay to buy the parts to replace within a few hours.</p>
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The vast majority of PC users don’t need or use bleeding edge gaming or a highly specialized system. Those systems, not just a basic internet/office system, can be purchased already built as well but if I wanted an expensive one I’d probably consider building one and comparing the costs. </p>
<p>On warranties - I haven’t really had an issue with warranties. One can buy various levels of them. Even if you buy the HP or Dell at a big box store the factory warranty still applies so I don’t get your point on that.</p>
<p>I actually haven’t built one in a while (after having built hundreds - not all for my own personal use) because it got to where the prices in the PC market got so competitive that the margin wasn’t high enough to bother building it or having to take it apart and get the individual part warranties (like a motherboard or a DVD drive or memory) taken care of. It’s a lot easier to just get the whole box covered under a single warranty.</p>
<p>But fendergirl is excited to build hers and I don’t want to take anything away from that. It’s a good learning experience and if she saves money and can be proud of her work then I’m all for it.</p>
<p>I do some graphic and web design and run quite a few large programs concurrently - so I needed something decently robust. It’ll be a great welcomed upgrade from my hot pentium 4 as referenced above by cobrat!</p>
<p>The funny thing is i work in IT and today my boss (and his boss) and I were totally geeking out about my new system - lol!</p>
<p>I built one last year ( Intel i7) and enjoyed it somewhat, but don’t think I’d do it again and don’t think it was worth the time and effort. I don’t feel I saved all that much, and there are a lot more compatibility issues than you might imagine. I’ve had several new BSOD instances that seem to occur while the system is asleep.</p>
<p>I think Gladgraddad is on point. Dell and others can buy more efficiently and they work out some of the bugs along the way. You can get an idea of this by reading the forums that are frequented by those who build their own. They are filled with “issues” that are tricky to diagnose. </p>
<p>I did recently also upgrade my macbook pro memory and double my hard drive space and so far that has worked out very well. I recommend that to anyone who is handy and could use 8GB instead of 4 and 750GB of hard drive instead of 360.</p>
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<p>Hope it was a Socket 478 Northwood or even a Prescott using inexpensive industry standard PC-133 SDRAM or DDR1/DDR2 RAM rather than the RAMBUS jobs/jokes. :D</p>
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<p>Only reason why I have a bunch of dell machines at home is because they were either dumped on me by friends or in the case of a Dimension 4600…found abandoned on the street with a dead power supply unit(PSU)…a common problem with that model due to their use of substandard weak PSUs. There was a reason why that very model was named one of the top 10 best and subsequently…one of the top 10 worst PCs by PC Magazine in 2005. </p>
<p>Fortunately, dell had moved over to industry standard ATX power supplies by then so I swapped in a spare reliable 300 watt PSU.</p>
<p>Also have 2 latitudes dumped on me by a friend’s company due to unresolved issues that shouldn’t have been unsolvable by Dell’s corporate support and an Inspiron 1100 that a friend grew fed up with after having too many problems with it.</p>
<p>I’ve had no problems with the two Dells I’ve owned. But I have always been annoyed that, after a couple of years, there was no satisfactory way to upgrade by simply replacing a motherboard or processor. That was one of my reasons for going ahead with a build instead of buying an assembled machine. We’ll see in about 3-4 years whether that motive is satisfied or not. </p>
<p>Cobrat…is there a manufacturer that you think is satisfactory, or better than the others?</p>
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<p>Many OEMs like Dell don’t want their end-users to be performing CPU/motherboard upgrades because they’d rather those users buy new machines from them instead. </p>
<p>A reason why some used really weird proprietary power supply/motherboard standards(Compaq) or switched seemingly industry standard OEM atx power supply connector wires so if you plugged it into an industry standard motherboard…or OEM motherboard and industry standard atx PSU…you’d get one nice mass of smoke or even sometimes an explosion (Dell up to the early '00s PIII machines)*. They also worked with CPU manufacturers to ensure motherboards don’t provide as much/any flexibility for CPU upgrades. </p>
<p>A friend’s old compaq seems to be having this very issue. He wanted me to give it a checking over and to see if it can be upgraded to a higher end slot-1 PIII processor (700 Mhz or greater) so he can give it to a child for basic office/internet usage. After looking through it and tech manuals…seems like it is restricted to being a high-end PII/extremely low PIII machine(PIII-550 max). Hope that kid’s extremely patient. :(</p>