Help Building a Computer

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Wingman

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I am considering building a computer. I am not trying to save money. I am just tired of getting lousy customer service from the "big" manufacturers or trying to find somebody dependable and honest to work on my computer. I would be building a basic home computer. I need to be pointed in the right direction. Can anyone recommend a place on the web that will:

1. Help me choose quality components.

2. Help me choose compatible components.

3. Offer step-by-step instructions on how to assemble the computer.

4. Give instructions on how to do the initial boot.

I have not attempted to build a computer before, and I do not want to just throw $500 down a "rat hole", so if you think this is a bad idea feel free to tell me so.

Thanks for any advice and guidance you are willing to offer.
 
Last year we built about 1500 mini Itx based desktop solutions.

What do you need it for? Any heavy lifting?
Advanced graphics? Data backup and redundancy? Home recording studio?
 
Originally Posted By: Wingman
I am considering building a computer. I am not trying to save money. I am just tired of getting lousy customer service from the "big" manufacturers or trying to find somebody dependable and honest to work on my computer.

Not trying to discourage you, but building your own will just make the whole support issue even worse because you will not have a single throat to choke. If something does not work correctly, you will have to now figure out on your own which particular component is to blame. And even when you do have a good guess, the manufacturer of that component may try to blame the issue on some other component in your system.

Which "big" manufacturers have you dealt with in the past?

Personally, I have been pretty happy with Lenovo support.
 
+2 on the newegg deal. Tigerdirect also has motherboard/cpu/ram/case combos.

I used to do this but got out of it around 2003 when I could get an emachines for $200 on black friday.

My latest computer is like this one, a boring business desktop I got used on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Compaq-8300-E...S-/152533561485

If you got this you could work out getting the OS going on it. I recommend ubuntu. It's possible that windows is half your non-specified problems.

On the contrary, the benefit of your own machine is getting a BIOS that allows you to make useable changes to how a machine runs. Contrary again, a prebuilt 'puter has more bang for your buck.

The nickel and dime stuff like power supplies, SATA cables, cases will hurt. And you'll have the tough choices like a 3 TB drive for $10 more than a $2 TB drive when you're already over budget.

cpubenchmark.net is a useful resource but don't get too hung up over those numbers.
 
I have to agree with Leo99--newegg.com is a great source.

I would strongly suggest that you look on the build as an educational experience. You're basically teaching yourself something here, so don't get discouraged when you hit a roadblock and need to change how you did something. Patience is king. When you're done, you'll have a workstation that beats the [censored] out of anything you can get from Best Buy, and if something fails you'll be able to replace it easily because you'll have built it using common components, instead of a bunch of Mickey-Mouse proprietary stuff like what's in this [censored] Dell I'm using at work.

If you're unfortunate enough to require Windows, don't overlook purchasing the license for the version you want.
 
Haven't built one in a while, but if you use standardized parts they are much easier to repair and upgrade than a lot of the store bought ones that use specialized form factors or unusual parts. It's not a bad idea, but it's not cheap, either. You may get tired of loading drivers once you get the OS loaded, and if you go with Windows, you'll be letting it simmer for an hour or more loading critical updates and patches and rebooting lots of times. Still, you will have something with better parts, and you'll get a lot of mileage out of it. I managed to upgrade my homebuilt from a Pentium II, to a Pentium III, and eventually an AMD Athlon simply by replacing the CPU the first time, and the motherboard, RAM, and CPU the second time. At different times I upgraded the video card, hard drive, and optical drive. Still used the same case and power supply for years, though.

Having had to buy Windows 10 for my aging laptop after the hard drive went kaput, I like that Windows 10 Retail comes on a USB stick and installs quickly compared to CD/DVD versions.
 
I've stopped building PCs these days. I can find screaming deals on refurbished Dell units that are only a few years old and have a lot of power. I'm talking under $250 for a pretty solid refurb PC.

I know that is not the point of your thread but to build an entire PC with good parts and a legit OS costs a lot of money.

If you do end up building, i'd get a LIAN LI case, a kaby lake core i3 chip and not skimp on the motherboard.

Check out You Tube Channel "Paul's Hardware" He has about 577k subs and makes some high quality PC hardware and build videos.
 
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I also recommend computers dumped on ebay when the lease has run out. The price is reasonable and the hardware CAN be a cut above consumer grade. You just have to know what fill your needs.
 
Computers are at a point where you can buy a nice used off lease workstation laptop with an i7 and a Quadro class graphics card for a few hundred. Toss an SSD in there and you're stylin'.

(I built computers since 1998.)
 
I do like the used Dell or HP business small form factors because they're, well, small. They are built of specialized parts though so if you did have a failure of the mother board or power supply, it may be money ahead to replace the whole box rather than parts.
 
Quality power supplies are hard to tell from cheap ones. Query at the forum at jonnyguru.com and tell them the CPU, HDD, video and M/B and desired use (approximate terms OK) and price range and they'll recommend a P/S for you. Or, read through their many reviews. Avoid the enthusiast sites for power supply "reviews", they tend to plug things in and call them good. They don't do tear-downs and evaluate capacitor quality, for example.
 
To answer questions you have asked:

I need a computer for word processing, picture, music, and document storage, email (yep, still use Live Mail and like it), and surfing the web. No gaming. I just want a dependable and reliable machine that I can expect to last many years and that I might be able to fix myself in the event of a problem.

I have used HP and Dell in the past. When I have had problems with them, I end up trying to communicate with someone that is difficult to communicate with (non-native English speaker). The amount of help I get is worthless. When I have tried to get help locally, the prices are sky-high, long delayed, and undependable.

I need to learn how to do this myself (educational experience), because I don't see a better alternative.

Thanks for the New Egg site. I will be looking closely there.

Several of you mentioned off-lease business computers. Where do you shop so you don't get ripped off? Even buying a used machine, it seems that I would need to know how to assemble a computer to fix things that might break.

At this point I need reputable sites, like Newegg and others you guys might recommend, where you know I can get good hardware and guidance. Once I have done the research, I will decide if it is something I want to try.

Thanks for the replies so far!
 
Most dell outlet pc's come with 3 years on site support. Several are under 300-500 dollars.

Look at the business line.

By the time you buy a legit OS, you will have spent too much trying to build a standard pc.
 
As far as where to get one, we have gone straight to Amazon and only certified refurbished models. They have given us no issues at all and often arrive with even better specs than the listing. We bought an I3 machine, it arrived with an i5 CPU in it and the SSD was 2x the size. It takes some shopping around to find the better deals but its so cheap these days.

One example, on amazon, ASIN B01MTO38MQ a pretty decent modern PC for $219 shipped.
 
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I've built a few home PC's in the past. I didn't really save much money, but, felt I had a higher performance system.
Sites like tomshardware.com and anandtech.com have tons on info on available quality components to buy if you are looking for performance. If better performance is not your goal, then you are probably better off buying Dell, HP or Lenovo. Check techbargains.com for deals on these systems

By the time you buy the below components it's hard to beat the big name manufacturers:
Case, Power Supply, Processor, Memory, Graphics Card, Disk Drive, DVD drive?, Operating System
 
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I have a Micro Center close to me. A competitor of New Egg. They have refurb units or parts to build computers. I have bought a Dell from them. It was older and needed a graphics card and the last desktop I bought was from Ebay like Eljefino, but older. I use it daily with Mint. It is my favourite. Well built, and fast with Mint without a Solid State drive. I did install a graphics card. If money is not an issue a newer Dell or HP off lease. I tend to read reviews online and check part prices on Ebay and tend to buy ones that have a lot of used parts available.

I built one computer from parts with help of my friends here. I just put together all the parts I had plus some. It was a good learning experience. Off lease commercial computers have served me the best. If I want Windows I tend to buy ones with the version I want installed. My tech support is mostly from this website. A lot of smart people hear that know a lot.
 
+1 for newegg.
Compose a "draft" of all components, look at the spec/price. Make up another, and look at them both. (often AMD vs intel, radeon vs nvidia).

I've been looking to build another one, but costco has a tower that is pretty close to what I was looking for and is for much less. With that in mind, look at finished products and compare against what you have in mind for a build, you may be saving by not building, that is if a tower matches your requirement of your build.
Good luck, easy job to do, don't fret. And if you have a Fry's electronics near you, they often have deals that match newegg, without the hassle of loosing on shipping in the event of returns.
 
I studied this option a few years ago and the best advice I found was that building your own is for people that actually can and want to spend more for high quality parts. This makes the computer more expensive and can take several days IF everything goes as planned.
I think it is more of a hobby for people who have money and time to build a cutting edge machine.

Now that I am retired I make this this over again.
 
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