Building a PC (for those that do)

[Rick Hughes]

Been a number of years since I have built a PC from scratch .. had to feed in loads of FD's to load Dos and W 3.1 :-)

I need a new PC at home, I have my spec sorted for a W7 64bit (apart from case), and just wondering whether it's worth getting all the parts and assembling yourself. Or buying form one place and get them to assemble ... (Overclockers assemble for £70 for example)

If they assemble .. at least you can be sure it all works together ... and guarantee result, views ?

If you think getting it pre-assembled, any companies particularly good price wise ? Overclockers, SCAN, Power PC ?

Spec proposed:

ASUS P87ZZ-V LE CPU Intel i5 3570K IvyBridge

16 GB DDR3 RAM (Samsung or Vengeance) PSU 500W modular (Corsair or CoolerMaster) GPU - MSI GTX560 Ti 1GB SSD - 120GB SATA III Corsair HDD - 1TB SATA III WD Caviar Blue PCI - 2 port FireWire 1 x DVD/CD ROM 1 x DVD/CD RW (BluRay RW to be added to future)

Undecided on CASE .. possibles are: CoolerMaster HAF 912 ANTEC 300 ANTEC 302

[newshound]

[The Natural Philosopher]

I gey a local man to do mine

thay are standard items, not weird gamers masturboards equipped with king sized dickchips and infeasibly large fans and heatsinks.

So it might not suit you.

[Nick]

You might try posting this to uk.comp.homebuilt. Many knowledgeable folk there.

[John Rumm]

The advantage of building your own is you get to control the quality of the small details... so things like selecting particularly quiet components, mounting chassis fans on rubber mounts, carefully cable tying stuff neatly, sticking noise dampening pads on the inside of the metalwork etc.

The advantage of pre-built is you get someone else to sit through the tedium of OS installs!

Not used any of them, so can't comment.

However one thing to keep in mind, is that even with a whole unit warranty, its not always cost effective to use it. I had someone bring me about a prebuilt system which had suffered a PSU failure. The company that supplied it were happy to fix it under warranty, but it had to be sent back at the customers expense, and also they claimed it would be restored to default configuration - hence the would need to do a full backup first and then restore it when the machine came back.

So their choice was jump through the backup and restore hoops, pay for sending it away, lose it for a few days into the bargain, and then doing a full restore on it after it comes back, or pay for me to swap the PSU for them on the spot! They decided the latter carried less risk and hassle (although I did persuade them to do the backup anyway!)

Not had many problems with ASUS boards in general...

[snip spec]

Looks fine, although fairly "normal" - so you would not have difficulty finding a supplier to flog you that spec.

[The Natural Philosopher]

not in my case. What I get is the guarantee that at least the assorted collection of hardware is plugged together correctly, and works well enough to boot a windows loader.

After that I spend ten minutes installing a linux bootstrap and let it chug through the installation whilst I have a coffee.

And if the hardware doesn't work IN ANY WAY the lot goes back to The Man who replaces the defective bit. No buck passing 'the problem is in the bit you bought from someone else, sir.

My builder just takes it all back no problem and makes it all work.

[Owain]

Are you compiling Gentoo from source?

Owain

[Peter Crosland]

Avoid Overclockers and Scan. It could be worth investigating any small independent local companies.

Peter Crosland

[Alan Deane]

I used to build a lot of PCs, mainly from computer-fair parts or ebuyer. More recently when anyone asks me for PCs I just point they at Dell's website, as for the price / warranty it's not cost effective to build them from scratch any more, and always a better looking end result IMHO.

They seem well built and I've not heard of a single hardware fault on any of them yet. Pity the OS is rubbish... (Prefer Linux or MacOS myself).

[John Rumm]

It was a slightly humorous comment, but there is the serious point that if you want a machine with windows and office on it, its potentially a couple of hours of waiting about getting them both installed and patched up to the current configuration. That may be enough to sway a decision where there is only a few quid difference in price between components and pre-built[1].

(patching speed being partly a function of your internet speed as well)

[1] When discussing pre-built, its also worth thinking about the big OEM built systems. With many of those, your software problem is the other way around - you spend hours uninstalling all the crapware they loaded for you!

[dennis]

I've done that, its pretty boring.

[F]

Have a look at CCL Computers. I've not bought a pre-built from them but have bought components and I've always been impressed with their attitude and service.

If you decide to d-i-y, Ebuyer are the ones I usually use. Decent prices, decent choice and quick delivery. Stick a 120GB SSD in to load the OS onto and the install and subsequent boot-ups and application loads are pretty quick.

[SteveW]

Large fans and heatsinks are good even on basic machines - it means low fan speeds and therefore low noise.

SteveW

[The Natural Philosopher]

well last one he built me has no fan beyond the one in the PSU..

Intel Atom board, no graffix at all :-)

Does a little bit of file serving web serving, dns, backups.. probably draws about 10W.

[geoff]

In message , Rick Hughes writes

How much more does a 2TB HDD cost? £20?

Does anyone still use firewire?

Why not just buy one, what do you really need two for? Make it a bluray RW and have done with it for £60

[SteveW]

I did look at one of those for my own server, but I decided that a more powerful processor made sense, as I could then use it for transcoding video on the fly for the kids' X-box while streaming music for my wife.

I agree that for many purposes an Atom based board is a great idea.

SteveW

[Rick Hughes]

wasn't aware of that ng ... will do so

[Rick Hughes]

The physical build does not worry me nor loading OS / Apps .. .in fact would order without OS as prefer to do this myself.

My concern was getting all parts that work together ... for example many posts in forums of guys having trouble getting multiple banks of RAM, is it a RAM strip fault a combination fault, a MB fault ... getting to bottom of that could be expensive & time consuming.

If they only charge around £75 for building it up .. maybe it's worth it for that.

Or I buy a MB + CPU + RAM bundle and at least the 3 core items 'should' be OK together and fully compatible,

[Rick Hughes]

Care to recc any ?

[Rick Hughes]

It's a DEll 9200 Dimension I have now ... just need to get a faster machine as it can't cope with HD video editing.

I bought it from Dell refurb stock (you can search on line) ... as to failures, had 3 HDD fail while under warranty ... bit worrying on WD Caviar Blue reliability.