I've always wanted to build my own pc just out of creativity. Share your PC's and provide some general insight on the best way to build them. Anyways, I want to build one, but I have no money, so should I go about making a budget?

Definitely make a budget unless you're super rich.

The best way to build one is to first know what you're going to do with it. If you're just going to lerk VR and play a few casual games, then you can settle for a relatively cheap machine with low-powered hardware. But if you're going to be playing the latest games on the highest settings for hours a day, you might have to spend an arm and a leg for the top parts.

I made an essay on this, so I'll attach it here for you. I hope that'll help. But my essay is mostly for a gaming rig, so I'll need to know what your use will be before I can help you further.

1 attached file

JaredResearchPaper.doc

As long as you are not rendering Toy Story 3 in 3D you don't need a powerhouse. I have an old laptop. I edit HTML listen to music and run remote desktop client plus at least 5 tabs open at all times and don't have issues.

Make sure you have a dual core computer at the minimum, Newegg has an AMD quadcore @ 2.7 or somwhere around there for a little lass than $90. Make sure you use a 64bit OS with at least 2gb of dual channel ram and you would power through just about anything. Of course if you upgrade the ram you will have a little more speed. More latter when I'm on an actual keyboard.

Ninjaedit:

@AshArmy:Agreed. And video editing takes quite a bit of memory, so you should get 4-6 GB.

@ButcheredFormOfBuizel: I doubt a quad will be necessary, but for that price it's definitely worth looking into. Is this Athlon or Phenom?

"Butchered form of buizel??

Okay person with lots of letters after recognizable word

Its a AMD Athlon II X4@ 2.6GHz for $89.00 on Newegg. I found a decent Biostar Mobo for $39 real quick. 4GB of dual channel DDR3 RAM for $70.00. I've seen a 1TB 3.5" HDD at the local Office Max for $80 last week. If you have not found a case yet, power supple, or DVD drive add ~$70,~$20, and ~$20 in that order. A totoal base price of just under $400 for the above mentioned setup. + OS cost.

Your specs would be this:
AMD Athlon II Quadcore @ 2.6GHz
4GB DDR3 Dual Channel RAM @ 1333MHz
1TB SATA HDD
+ what ever Power Supply, DVD drive, and or Case that you choose.

If you are going to be building this yourself, I assume that you know to make sure that everything you buy is compatible. If you don't, feel free to ask questions as I do know how. (I'm in CompTIA A+ classes)

Which version of 64-bit Windows 7 would you recommend? I don't really want a buttload of programs with my OS, just really, really, clean.

If you're really hurting for cash on an OS, you could always drop to XP full-out.

Q: D:! Tech, did you just recommend a Microsoft product?!

A: Yup.

I don't count on you to know how to script Linux, or have any familiarity with it. If you feel like experimenting and having compatibility issues until you can register the proper drivers with associated programs, I say go Linux. But, since you noted a desire for a Gaming machine, I would suggest XP. It's very stable, it can handle almost any power level of a medi-core machine, and it's still serviceable. 7 is a tad expensive right now, and not all games/apps/programs work with it quite yet. Save your cash, get XP. Although Linux or Ubuntu is free from the developers themselves, since they don't believe in marketing software everyone deserves...

Also, sorry to pick at your Buoysel, but a single Tera- isn't really necessary. My wife's Asus has twin 320-gigs, and as the regular user, she's barely managed to bite ten gigs off yet. Unless you're planning on doing malicious things with your space, like I do, a little 120-gig, or even a 80-gig will work just fine. One could even go as far even as decide to use a smaller HDD, say, a high Ghz-40gig, which are only about fifteen bucks if you know where to look, and blow the rest on externals. Ooooooooooooooooooor you could use that money you saved, if you budgeted like everyone has been saying, on a nice shiny 18" flatscreen LCD. :3

Another thing to consider is customizing the machine you have right now, if it can take it. As long as it's less than ten years old and able to accept optimized hardware, you can slap anything in a machine that was made after 2000. This is considering the machine you have right now is under your ownership, and your family approves, should they find tinkering evil in some way.

One more thing. Remember to budget in peripherals. Your new kitcar is useless without a steering wheel, shifter, ect. A straight-on, no frills keyboard and mouse should cost around fifteen bucks [Sets tend to be less expensive... If you have the cash, Logitec sells a Keyboard/Mouse/Webcam three-fer for around twenty American]. They'll be corded, so don't get down on yourself. Upgrade later on.

One more thing. Remember to consider compatibility. Soundcard A and Graphics card A might act differently together than Soundcard A and Graphics card B. Do a little research before you go buying the newest, shiniest budget hardware: manufacturers rarely test for compatibility. Users and parts reviewers are the test market.

One more thing. Congratulations on considering building your own PC! You're much braver than most people, and you save tons by not buying pre-built. Many well wishes to you. ^.^

This thread is relevant to my interests.
At school last week a few friends and I opened a club for messing around with computers. A few people who have now left donated their home-built computers to the school, so that future students could have a look at them. So I now know how to install a HDD, PSU, Motherboard, Graphics Card, etc., how to ground myself (srsly I didn't know how to do that before ), so I could now build my own machine if I wanted. Techno knows that a while back I was going to have a go at building my own cheap computer, and I think I might start that soon.

If you're going to do some Video Editing, you're gonna need a heck of a lot of Memory. I've got 4GB and Vegas is often freezing or running slow (Don't even get me started on Movie Maker). For gaming, though, my computer's able to run most games at highest settings: ATI 8000 series Graphics Card, Intel Centrino processor, 4GB RAM. And stuff.

I think that I may have a slight idea that I know a bit about what I'm saying.

By the way, the homebrew computers at school suck - The best one has 256MB RAM, and can just about run AoE II.

Tech, coming from someone who has had to suffer with an 80GB HDD for the last year and a half I would not recommend it. Today file sizes can get rather large rather quickly. I'm only using 34gb of my 250GB HDD, but I have the space if I deiced to download a large file, or if I accidentaly set the image with to 1.9 million pixels in GIMP (actually did that once. XD) I understand why you said that, however if you are building a computer, if you can buy a 500 GB for $70, or a 1TB for 80, which are you going to buy? Which is the better deal (price per GB)

Magnetic HDDS are cheap now that there is a newer technology (solid state). I have a 250GB HDD on my laptop, a 1TB external HDD for backups, an 80GB HDD on my server+ an 80GB external (my old laptop HDD XD) that I store the actual data for my Server. In the end, look at whats cheap and available. (I do recommend Seagate though, have had 3 Western Digital HDDs fail on me.)

BTW, General rule of thumb when it comes to computers. Go big or go cheap, and if you go cheap, make sure you buy something you can upgrade down the road if you find that the cheap wasn't such a good idea.

Buoysel's right. o3o

I made ends meet with an old '95 Compaq tower. I modded that mother as far as specs would allow, and it was still only pushing 314 Megs or RAM, and a 40gig HDD. Saved up a redonkulous sum of cash, and bought all my parts en masse, then continued to upgrade over time. At full capacity, my machine is probably the greatest piece of technology one can own without a special license.

Go cheap, or go full-out. Just like cars and food. :3

Something occurred to me as I read Buoysel's post... You could also look into used HDD... o.o; Yeah, it's weird to think what could have been saved on it, but they're relatively cheap, they usually come loaded with an OS, the drivers can always be updated and reconfigured for your tech, and you don't have to go through an initialization process. >.>; Just make sure who you buy it from is trustworthy; last thing you need is being locked out via admin passwords and other such nonsense.

It's a blurry line when it comes to how many PCs I've built. I've changed motherboards twice, memory a large number of times, processor two times, and hard drives 5 times. I have a rig I keep upgrading and removing older parts as I see fit, never changing the ENTIRE machine at once, so I guess the question becomes, if the machine I have now is the same machine I first built, and at what point it stopped being the same.

Building PCs for the first time can be very stressful, especially when you have so many components, all expensive, and you're concerned about not messing up. The first most immediate thing to understand about this is that 95% of the time a component will not be pluggable into the wrong socket, eliminating some of the risk of shortcircuit from misconnecting. Make sure you have no static charge when you touch them. Hold on to the computer case and avoid grinding against carpet to make sure you are at zero potential from the components you handle. Although electrostatic discharges have very small aperage, they can carry between 3000 and 10000 volts, which can damage components. There are also special wristbands with grounding, but you shouldn't really need to worry too much about keeping static potential at zero. Just make sure you touch stuff before handling them. If you have a static charge, you will lose it in those items.

The risk is not completly eliminated however. One very important thing to know is that the motherboard must NOT contact the computer case, rather be suspended at some distance from it. If all that underside circuitry is touching metal, electricity will just discharge into all the circuits without order or meaning and kill your motherboard. It's not hard to safeguard against this, ALL you have to do is make sure you have some special distance screws to put space between em. They almost always come with a newly purchased computer case.

The other serious issue that needs to be addressed is wattage. Make sure your PSU is at least 450W capable, REAL watts, as most noname PSUs have less wattage than they advertise, so get a good brand.

Any other concerns might include making sure the power connectors don't touch the case, and the cables don't rest on components, especially on fans, which could prevent cooling. Also take note not to plug a firewire cable into the motherboard if it isn't supported.

The manual will help with all of this a lot. Instructions of the motherboard manual will guide you through all necessary steps to getting your PC set up. The more important part is that you buy compatible components and know how they fit together, and what goes where. If you know this well, you've already got nearly all the training you need to buy pieces and assemble a comp.

And now my junk... Note this is a slightly older pic and doesn't include the new HDD or the extra fan suspended over the gfx card with legos. Yes legos. Oo;

I've built one before, four years ago in fact. At the time it was top-of-the-line (best dual-core processor, best mobo, best memory, one of those fast raptor hard drives, etc). It definitely wasn't cheap ($1500 for the system and extras).

Four years later it's showing signs of age, several of the motherboard components failing (last thing that failed was one of the SATA channels.

I should be thinking about building a new one, but lack the funds. Guess I need to start saving again...