BUILDING A CUSTOM PC.

[Diguelo]

IDEA

1. What do I hope to achieve out of this machine?

2. What do I want to do with it?

3. Is it going to get the use out of what I intend to do with it?

4. What kind of budget do i work to?

5. where do I get the parts?

Since I started messing around building my own machines back in the early 90's this has to be the number one thing I got asked and still do, is how do I build a computer? Is it cheaper than buying a prebuilt one, Hell Yeah. Is it hard to do, not hugely hard, my kids wanted PC's for christmas, one was 11 one was 8, they got the big box they thought was a computer in pretty wrapping paper on Christmas morning, turned out both had a case they had liked along with the components to build it themselves. We spent a few hours that day putting the machines together, I told them what to do, they built thier own machines.

What did this teach them:-
They built it, they looked after it more than most things they got out of boxes that day.
They used the machines pretty much every single day after the building session.
Both machines at the time were top of the line models, which of course gave exceptional bragging rights at school, with kids who had taken their new laptops out of the packet, left them on all day on the carpet and machines went back the following week for replacement or refund due to overheating issues.

So my two kids now know how to make their own machines. If you build a machine you respect it. They had WIndows 98 SE on thier machines. They also had whatever games they wanted for them as well as some custom DADWARE to keep them unruffled.

So the start of any build comes with the questions laid out. Have a good think about what you need your machine to do and then start planning what you need.

Take my dialy PC, its a work horse, gaming, office stuff, internet, coding and generally all in one. Is it top of the line, NOPE. Did I want top of the line, NOPE.

I decided I wanted a decent processing speed for working on Videos, high end gaming etc, So I bought a NEW ASUS STRIX ROG Motherboard, loads of onboard M.2 slots and the usual plugin wired perifferals. Processor, brand new, NOPE didnt need to be, got it second hand off ebay, half the price of a new one. Motherboards get the main wear in a pc so always buy new. They dont travel well in repacked boxes. Graphics card, I got a new 3060 GTR and a second hand GTX 1060. 30 to play games an do the processing work with on one monitor, 1060 browsing monitor and desktop work. Memory is 4 x 3666 DDDR5 Crucial total 64GB. You dont need these monster 5090 cards unless you require the "Pay to WIN" philosophy to run your games with. They only give you a more stable frame rate. I get a flat our 60 fps on every game I have, no exceptions. I have BLU RAY rewriter that does DVDs and CDs too. More USB Sockets in my system than British Telecom, most on external hubs.

So all this wonderous tech, completed the build with a very noce ASUS Sound card with my highly recommended THX surround sound 7.1 system along with a nice set of Headphones to use the surround sound on. Normal speakers AIWA 2 Kw Digital Amplifier, coupled to 2 nice speaker towers 100W each, cant go around upsetting the neighbours in the next village can you.

Drives were my upper quality choices. Main M.2 3TB WD balck 6 GB/s transfer. Second M.2 holding the games 3TB WD Black as per the main drive, Third M.2 2TB Crucial Blue label for working, coding and video work, slightly slower data rate but its good. Mass storage 2 x 4 NES 4TB Hybrid drives with 512Mb cache on each.

And running the show, a Corsir 1000 Gold spec PSU.

Ok so I got the system of my current dreams, all my games at max setting on video give a standard 60fps never budges. FUR Test runs my machine up to 65-70 deg C depends on room temp, fans run all day in Silent profile, never gets hot regardless of the use profile. I can process videos on it and paly games and neither affects the other.

For the sake of the house insurance I got quote to make this identical machine and ship it to me from 4 major custom build suppliers in the UK, ALL of them quoted a minimum of £1850 plus for the build. I know it cost me under 4 figures by a good margin to build.

Can you save money building your own, YEP

Do you get what you want froma prebuilt system, Nope you get what your given and it takes work to make it do what you want to achieve

Bottom line is, do you need what you think to do what you need. The latest stuff is for people who like to have the latest stuff for bragging rights, then start swapping stuff out when newer stuff is available.

My machine I expect at least 10 years of use out of it, not like having a new machine every year. I know that some of my early 2000 builds are still in use today and working just as well as they did when they were new. Keep them dust free or clean out once a year and they will work.

 

[Yobbo]

IDEA

1. What do I hope to achieve out of this machine?

2. What do I want to do with it?

3. Is it going to get the use out of what I intend to do with it?

4. What kind of budget do i work to?

5. where do I get the parts?

Since I started messing around building my own machines back in the early 90's this has to be the number one thing I got asked and still do, is how do I build a computer? Is it cheaper than buying a prebuilt one, Hell Yeah. Is it hard to do, not hugely hard, my kids wanted PC's for christmas, one was 11 one was 8, they got the big box they thought was a computer in pretty wrapping paper on Christmas morning, turned out both had a case they had liked along with the components to build it themselves. We spent a few hours that day putting the machines together, I told them what to do, they built thier own machines.

What did this teach them:-
They built it, they looked after it more than most things they got out of boxes that day.
They used the machines pretty much every single day after the building session.
Both machines at the time were top of the line models, which of course gave exceptional bragging rights at school, with kids who had taken their new laptops out of the packet, left them on all day on the carpet and machines went back the following week for replacement or refund due to overheating issues.

So my two kids now know how to make their own machines. If you build a machine you respect it. They had WIndows 98 SE on thier machines. They also had whatever games they wanted for them as well as some custom DADWARE to keep them unruffled.

So the start of any build comes with the questions laid out. Have a good think about what you need your machine to do and then start planning what you need.

Take my dialy PC, its a work horse, gaming, office stuff, internet, coding and generally all in one. Is it top of the line, NOPE. Did I want top of the line, NOPE.

I decided I wanted a decent processing speed for working on Videos, high end gaming etc, So I bought a NEW ASUS STRIX ROG Motherboard, loads of onboard M.2 slots and the usual plugin wired perifferals. Processor, brand new, NOPE didnt need to be, got it second hand off ebay, half the price of a new one. Motherboards get the main wear in a pc so always buy new. They dont travel well in repacked boxes. Graphics card, I got a new 3060 GTR and a second hand GTX 1060. 30 to play games an do the processing work with on one monitor, 1060 browsing monitor and desktop work. Memory is 4 x 3666 DDDR5 Crucial total 64GB. You dont need these monster 5090 cards unless you require the "Pay to WIN" philosophy to run your games with. They only give you a more stable frame rate. I get a flat our 60 fps on every game I have, no exceptions. I have BLU RAY rewriter that does DVDs and CDs too. More USB Sockets in my system than British Telecom, most on external hubs.

So all this wonderous tech, completed the build with a very noce ASUS Sound card with my highly recommended THX surround sound 7.1 system along with a nice set of Headphones to use the surround sound on. Normal speakers AIWA 2 Kw Digital Amplifier, coupled to 2 nice speaker towers 100W each, cant go around upsetting the neighbours in the next village can you.

Drives were my upper quality choices. Main M.2 3TB WD balck 6 GB/s transfer. Second M.2 holding the games 3TB WD Black as per the main drive, Third M.2 2TB Crucial Blue label for working, coding and video work, slightly slower data rate but its good. Mass storage 2 x 4 NES 4TB Hybrid drives with 512Mb cache on each.

And running the show, a Corsir 1000 Gold spec PSU.

Ok so I got the system of my current dreams, all my games at max setting on video give a standard 60fps never budges. FUR Test runs my machine up to 65-70 deg C depends on room temp, fans run all day in Silent profile, never gets hot regardless of the use profile. I can process videos on it and paly games and neither affects the other.

For the sake of the house insurance I got quote to make this identical machine and ship it to me from 4 major custom build suppliers in the UK, ALL of them quoted a minimum of £1850 plus for the build. I know it cost me under 4 figures by a good margin to build.

Can you save money building your own, YEP

Do you get what you want froma prebuilt system, Nope you get what your given and it takes work to make it do what you want to achieve

Bottom line is, do you need what you think to do what you need. The latest stuff is for people who like to have the latest stuff for bragging rights, then start swapping stuff out when newer stuff is available.

My machine I expect at least 10 years of use out of it, not like having a new machine every year. I know that some of my early 2000 builds are still in use today and working just as well as they did when they were new. Keep them dust free or clean out once a year and they will work.

Hi Diguelo,
I enjoy very much reading your and other members contributions.
Actually I love reading them. All you members who can code and make new PC'S I envy and highly respect your special talents.

 

[Diguelo]

Many Thanks,.

Answer me this if you will. Again this is a common thing I come across. Upgrading a PC you own,
Do you own a cross head / philips screwdriver?
Do you know how to take out a screw and put one back?
Can you plug in and unplug a card.

Now all you need to do is to work out what each part and card in a machine actually does and is.

Granted I have spent many many years since the 1980's studying mnumonics, machine code and most forms of programming right from the days of FORTRAN the first major programming language invented in the 1950's,

I was born a child of the 60's, I was dyslexic when I was at school (they called it "Thickies disease" back then) so consequently I had a head for numbers, they made sense and I could beat anyone at school even the teachers sometime in Maths. First book I had as a child at 8 that I could call my own was a FORTRAN manual given to me by a neighbour. He knew of my love for numbers. As soon as the first HOME computers came out my Grandparetns bought me one, much to my parents disgust. And so began the Zilog 80 programming on the Sinclair ZX81, I spent months writing things on that pocket sized 1 Kb machine. The neighbour always interested in what I did, asked me if I could come to work with him and take a look at their computer setup as is wasnt working right. HELL YEAH !
After a week I had the things all doing what they should and able to work through each machine setting up what needed to be done after a couple of days of manual reading. The programs given to me to get working were more or less Database stuff and needed to be linked to warehouse, office and storage system. Took me a 30 days of messing around and working out the whys and where fors of the network (hundreds of yards of wiring in the buildings. Then I got a surprise, I was given a computer and monitor to take home and study, obviously a loaner they cost a fortune back then. I kind of decided the thing and the system using Fortran was a slug that was tied up in its own issues, nothing seemed to flow freely without having to be stopped checked, double checked and then lost in a system crash. I rewrote the program in a (to my mind ) in a more efficient way from scratch. I didnt have much network skill and the porting on that thing was a set of jumpers, but once I figured that out it was all uphill after that.
Anyhow at the end of it all, I decided that the machines the company had bought werent fit for purpose, so I made each talk to the others and that seemed to solve most issues. The neighbour asked me if I wanted a job with them, but I already had one just about to start underground, digging coal. It paid really well and after the first 2 months I had enough savings to go and buy my own first PC, an 8086 computer with a magical language called DOS, the mnumonics engine in them and assemblers were so wonderful to paly with. My old ZX81 was consigned to the cupboard and this kind of took over my life in my spare time. The motherboard had a Turbo mode, but the memory wasnt able to keep up. Silicon chips soldered into boards had to be swapped out and all the spare slots were soon filled up with shiny new silicon



This Amstrad one os similar to the one I had just not enough RAM points. This one has a massive 8MB of ram and no Co Processor to be seen or massive cooling fans. You wanted to Mod this one you got out the silicon makers manuals to find what you wanted to do.

The big black bars on the board are ISA slots for plugging in daughter boards, like disk drive controllers.

10MB disk drives, OMG, I almost wet myslef the day I saw this advert in an electronics magazine.


Made this Behemoth of a drive almost redundant overnight and the 5.25" media disks it used werent that wonderful
So anyway my first PC was so damn big when I had put it togehter the case was made for me by a kind mate in the Coal Board workshops out of sheet steel we lined the doors in the works with. Only weighed a mere 8Kg, Once I had the machine running, and this DOS, as well as a copy of Fortran the neighbour kindly allowed me to have after his company made the swap to PC .

Since then I went into one or two other variants of work, National Service in the RAF 5 years at the time of the Cold war. Always messing around in one computer type or another, nothing was standardised back then.

So after leaving said force, I went into job after job, till I was given the oportunity to go play with a few new computers. After that is what pretty much my life working as a programmer, Consultant, builder, installer and so on.

I dont expect every computer user to have had my upbringing and life style. But as said, if my kids could build there own machines on Christmas Day it is merely a matter of get the parts you think you need and have a go at putting it all togehter.

Modding a desktop computer is easy to do and all you need is a screwriver and be bale to unplug a card and plug in a new one. Just take your time and be gentle with it.