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Build Your First PC – Part 1 Handy with a screwdriver? Iain Laskey explains the ins and outs of building a PC Whilst it is always nice to unpack and plug in a new PC, there is a peculiar pleasure (and occasional crying!) to be had from building your own. There are many reasons why you might want to do this. Foremost is that you can choose exactly the specification and components that you want. You will also know how it was put together so if something breaks later, the chances are you will be able to fix it yourself even if it means pulling out one bit and replacing it. Related to this is much easier upgrading. Why pay your local PC store to add a hard drive when you can build a whole PC? You’ll also learn more about your PC, the components and how it all works. A final unexpected side effect is the occasional ‘free’ PC. After you’ve built a couple and gone through a few upgrades, you’ll find you have a cupboard full of leftover bits. I’ve managed to cobble together PCs from these bits for the cost of a new case and maybe a monitor switch. OK, they might be a bit slow but these PCs built from leftovers can be great for, say, Linux based firewalls, file servers, backup, web browsing or any other tasks that don’t need state of the art machines. One thing you won’t do is save money. At one time you could save a tidy sum building your own PC. The first one I built many moons ago was an AMD K6 (Pentium equivalent) based machine. I put the whole thing together for around £800 when off the shelf machines cost about £1000+. These days, the huge buying power of PC builders combined with direct buying means they can obtain all the bits for far less than you’ll ever find them outside a computer fair. Shopping List The basic list of components you’ll need is as follows:
You can of course add whatever other parts you fancy such as a CD burner, a webcam, a Video capture card, a network card and so on. However, it is usually best to build the basic PC first then add the bells & whistles once you know you have a stable system. Choices, choices Before you even begin to wave your credit card about, you need to sit down and plan out what you intend to buy and why. The first thing to consider is the machine’s primary use. If you want the ultimate games machine you’ll be looking at different components than if you wanted to edit video and different again if you just want to do some web surfing and light office duties. Once you have decided on the mix of components, you’ll need to choose which operating system you want to install. Windows XP is the latest version but do you really need that level of sophistication? (yes - ed) Perhaps 2000 or Me would do the job just as well? At this stage you’re going to have to do some research to work out what is best. This may seem a bind but whether you’re building 1 or 1,000 PCs, you need to be sure the bits all work together properly. Having said all this, in this series I’ll be looking at a fairly generic machine but I’ll be pointing out where you might want to deviate from the parts used and why. Research Assuming you’ve managed to get a short list of components you want to use, the next step is to make sure they are supported by your operating system. Check each one in turn by going to the manufacturer’s web site and seeing what operating systems are supported. Assuming support is available, it is probably a good idea to download the latest drivers, updates etc for each component as these may well be more up to date than anything that comes in the box. If you have the luxury, burn these to a CD-R for use later. If support isn’t available then you’ll need to reconsider which part to use. The next step is optional but worth it. There are many situations where a given component works fine but can get rather problematic when used with certain others. As an example, early VIA based Athlon motherboards proved very difficult to get working with certain sound cards. Later ones are OK but if you’d bought the wrong bits the chances were you would have had to give up and replace one of them. The biggest problem areas are motherboards, sound cards and graphics cards. I usually go to www.google.com, select the ‘groups’ tab and do some searches based around the model names e.g. ‘Asus AA33 ATI MadGfx problem’. If anyone has posted a message mentioning these two and the word ‘problem’, you‘ll be able to read all about it and possibly the solution as posted by someone else. The Google newsgroup facility is a fantastic resource with an almost complete set of messages going back to 1981 or so and is well worth browsing if you get an idle moment. With some judicious searching you can find the first rumours about the Apple Mac or the first time anyone had heard about Microsoft working on something called Windows. Once you have settled on the list of components, it’s time to start ordering. My usual starting point is www.pcindex.co.uk where you can look up the cheapest price around for each bit. It can be quite surprising the range of pricing on a single part. As postage can be quite hefty, it is often worth paying say an extra £5 for a sound card if it means you can save £10 postage by getting it from the same place as another part. Some suppliers have better reputations than others so again, a few searches on Google can reveal which ones to avoid. Once everything is on order, you can sit back and wait for a nice big collection of boxes to land on your doorstep. When it arrives, make sure everything is there and that the boxes show no obvious signs of damage. Assuming all is well, you are ready to begin.
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