Building your own computer

[TheOneFreeMan]

Has anyone ever done this for themselves? Me and my dad are thinking of putting together a little gaming rig for my birthday, going halves on the price of the components. The fact that my birthday is in February, when so many quality games are set for release, is a factor in this.

What's your experience of doing this? Worth it?

 

[Krynn72]

Pretty much everybody who is going to post in here has built their own PC and will recommend it for several reasons, the biggest being the fact that you get the best bang for your buck. Its easy, its cheap. and it gets you a better PC than any similarly priced pre-built.

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Totally worth it of course. Putting aside the fact that it's usually much cheaper and you'll get what you want, it's also really easy, but you still get a nice sense of accomplishment from building something.

 

[Robbo]

If you can be bothered then go for it!!
Personally I'm too lazy and have it built for me, it usually adds about $50 onto the price if you get a computer shop to build it for you (in Australia anyway).

Good luck

 

[Barney Fife]

Pretty much everybody who is going to post in here has built their own PC and will recommend it for several reasons, the biggest being the fact that you get the best bang for your buck. Its easy, its cheap. and it gets you a better PC than any similarly priced pre-built.

I couldn't say it better.

Building your own PC is also great way to spend time with your dad.

This is the time to teach your dad a thing or two about life.

Good Luck.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

It's awesome to build your own rig! I've been building mine for ten years running. What's the budget?

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Building a rig is fun, but unfortunately I haven't built a rig in years... Last purchase was a dell laptop 3 years ago, and before that I found a killer deal on a dell desktop that I couldn't really refuse.

You will love it though. It's good fun trying to play around with a budget and get the most bang for your buck, especially if you can find a good deal (newegg + bing cashback is your friend here especially).

Be sure you've checked everything in your rig to make sure it will work together (ensuring sockets line up, you have enough physical space, how much power it will draw on load, etc)

 

[kupocake]

I recommend it, but I've always been thoroughly too scared to sort out mounting the heatsink/fan to the processor. Have a friend I trust to do that bit

 

[CyberPitz]

It's a horrible idea. You have so many chances of breaking something if you don't know what you are doing, and if you hire someone, how do you know THEY know what you are doing.

You get shitty warranty from most places you purchase from, and if they do have a warranty, it's nothing compared to big retail outlet computer sellers.

This is a sarcastic reply, and I agree with everybody else in this thread.

 

[Qhartb]

It's surprisingly easy. You should do it.

 

[TheOneFreeMan]

I couldn't say it better.

Building your own PC is also great way to spend time with your dad.

This is the time to teach your dad a thing or two about life.

Good Luck.

My dad's been an IT manager by trade for 25 years, so I think he'll probably be teaching me a thing or two :-P.

Thanks for the encouragement guys. Closer to Christmas I'll be deciding how much I want to spend and trying to figure out how powerful I can make the rig on my budget. Quite looking forward to it actually.

 

[hool10]

Yeah pretty much everybody here will say they built theirs (including me and I payed for it 100% :cheese. I mean how many times do you hear your friends TheOneFreeMan say they built their own computer? Usually they say a friend built it for them or they just bought one. They usually make an excuse saying "they don't know how" or it's "too complicated to build one". Classic example is:

If you can be bothered then go for it!!
Personally I'm too lazy and have it built for me, it usually adds about $50 onto the price if you get a computer shop to build it for you (in Australia anyway).

Good luck

That $50 can be used to buy a video game to play on your new computer.

It just generally feels better to boast that you built your own computer and you have every right to boast.

Keep us updated.

 

[VirusType2]

From what I've seen, pre-built computers cut corners on every single part.

If you really want performance, you will end up replacing just about everything in the long run.

It starts with the mouse, then keyboard, sound card, RAM, video card, Hard drive, Optical drive, case, power supply, things like that. Regardless, after personally upgrading all of that, you end up bottle necked to shit with a low end CPU and a motherboard that might not even support the latest technologies.

Particularly you have to watch for expansion slots. I think many pre-builts still only come with PCI expansion slots, which is like 20 year old technology.

 

[Ennui]

Yes. Build your own PC. Only then will you learn the true power of the Force.

 

[Dinnesch]

Another great con is the harddisks. Companies like Dell and HP usually put very slow harddisks in their computers, resulting in slow Windows performance and app loading.

Never put your first computer together on your own, the first time I disassembled a PC I scratched the mobo with the cpu heatsink rendering it useless.

 

[Barney Fife]

Yes. Build your own PC. Only then will you learn the true power of the Force.

Amen!