How (not) to build a computer from scratch
I recently had occasion to build a computer with my son, who wanted a computer that would be able to handle his 3D games and, eventually,
Spore when it comes out. Building one seemed to be, first of all, a fun idea, and, secondly, we knew it would give us control over exactly which components we used. Since our fruitless attempt to upgrade the video card on our Dell, we were loath to try that again.
We also tried to explain to the Man of the House that building our own would not only be fun, it would be cheaper than buying a brand new computer that could handle Spore, etc.
I had occasion to type up what we used for a friend of mine and then I decided that it might be of use to others.
Therefore I present:
What went into our (first) homemade computer.
> I am in the process of designing such a machine myself, so I am very
> curious as to exactly what parts you decided on, such as the
> motherboard, CPU, power supply, case, how much memory and what kind
> and brand, monitor (regular or wide screen?), sound card, etc.
Well, we had trouble with the accompanying documentation (and I use the term loosely!), but fortunately I was able to print out the motherboard documentation from a .pdf file on their website and that helped a lot. Now that we have done it, a second one would not be as difficult. Our main concern was to build a computer that was upgradeable and would be able to handle the games we want to play on it (Spore, Sims 2, and whatever those Opposing Forces type games are that Owen plays).
Some things we expected from reading the reviews: like being careful to buy a full-size (ATX) motherboard instead of a MicroATX so that our chosen video card, which has a fan on it, would have room. We also had to make sure the motherboard and power supply supported the video card not only with the PCIe slot but with a dedicated power cable. I was a little worried about DOAs, but what can you do? I knew if we bought it from
Newegg they would take it back without hesitation so we just went ahead with the pieces we wanted even if some of the reviews said "DOA."
We got a widescreen monitor, which we both hate; I am looking for a regular 19" monitor on sale or closeout now. It was a really good price, what can I say? But it makes all my Sims look fat! Also I don't think the refresh rate or the resolution or something is as good as my 3 year old Dell 17" LCD. We did not bother with a sound card for now; we can add one if Spore needs it, but the motherboard we chose ended up having onboard sound and since we have Macs for music that was pretty much all we needed.
Not counting rebates, which we are in the process of sending away for, we spent about $900 on the system, including (bad, cheap!) monitor but not including OS. I priced our system out with similar components at several "custom" places online. The most expensive place came out around $2800; several were in the $2400 range; and one place actually came out to about $1500, so if I ever have to buy a custom computer I will be shopping there, because clearly you get value for your money. Anyway, we think we did pretty good since our rebates should total about $100 or so.
Case: Rosewill R5601-BK 0.8mm SECC Screw-less Dual 120mm Fans ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - it was a really good price for a case with two fans included. It's easy to open and close and easy to move stuff around in. It's designed for ATX motherboards specifically. The edges are all rolled metal except for in the bays, where you shouldn't be messing anyway, so if you cut yourself (like me) it's because you didn't hook up the SATA drives before you installed the motherboard. Ask me how I know.
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - (came with heat sink and fan) - we knew we wanted Intel, not AMD (I don't trust AMD since our IT guy had a bad experience with three chips in a row); Owen had his heart set on a Core 2 Duo. We spent more on this than we planned but it ought to last a couple of years. At least. I hope. The comments said this was a good "mid-range" gaming processor, and we specifically needed gaming qualities, so we didn't even look at Celeron or P4s.
Motherboard: EVGA 122-CK-NF67-T1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i LT SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - I'm not a big nVIDIA fan but this is a good mid-range board, upgradeable to Quad Core and with the PCIe/power slot for the video card. Also it can take up to 8G RAM. The 680i was not much more than the 650i and it was more powerful, so we opted for that. We knew we wanted the 775 type because it gave us a lot more options for the processor and for upgrading.
One really big caveat: the SATA 1 and 2 slots are in the stupidest place
ever (I don't know if it makes a difference but I was careful to plug the SATA hard drive into slot 1) and you should check to see where your SATA drives plug in before you install ANY motherboard, because on some of them it's really hard to get them in afterwards. Also check for the pins: if the RAM is in the way, the pins for the hard drive/ reset/ power are really hard to attach on some motherboards, and this is one. Put the RAM in
last.
Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100196L Radeon X1950PRO 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - this was way more than I wanted to spend but Owen talked me into it, mostly because it's got 512 MB of onboard memory. (You've met Owen: he can talk a Vermonter into buying maple syrup.) I will admit that the video memory seems to make Sims 2 run faster - my computer has 4G of RAM, whereas Owen's has 2, but Sims 2 runs faster on his computer, and he says it's the onboard video memory (I think my video card has maybe 32 or 64MB). The X1950 was the "top of the line" a couple of years ago so it's well supported in the gaming industry and we figured it will remain supported for a couple more years at least.
I don't like nVIDIA graphics cards so although Owen pushed for the 8600 or whatever it is for a while, I put my foot down. According to Owen, nVIDIA cards work okay with nVIDIA motherboards but I have read of enough problems on Sims installations with nVIDIA graphics cards that I just wasn't even going there. This Sapphire card was a good card: clean install, decent price, and Sapphire is one of the better names in video card mfgrs. Plus it has an onboard fan but it doesn't take up half your motherboard. We also looked at the x1650 but then you hit that point where you're thinking, okay, the x1900 is $ more and then the x1950 is only $$ more, so why not just go with the 1950 and not have to worry about upgrading? *sigh* I am SO EASY.
Power Supply: Rosewill Stallion Series Dual Ball Bearing Fan RD600N-2DB-SL-BK ATX V2.2/SSI, EPS 12V 600W or RAIDMAX RX-630A ATX12V / EPS12V 630W Power Supply 115/230 V -These are the two power supplies I have on my wish list, watching for them to go down in price or on sale. I am not even giving you the one we got. It was okay (it was an Apevia 500W, on sale) but either of these would be better and really not that much more expensive, esp. the Rosewill, which is only $80 now. We knew we needed at least 500W. Now we know what to look for in terms of cables and power connectors too.
RAM: OCZ Platinum Revision 2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2P800R22GK - we went with more expensive RAM (2x1 GB) and decided to buy more when Spore comes out to go up to a total of 4G. The motherboard has four slots that can take up to 2G each. It is dual channel, though, so you have to put it in 2 at a time, you can't have 1 or 3. Note: we're running XP, not Vista, so I gather that even games like Sims 2 can only use 2G max. But XP takes memory too so we will probably need the extra 2G when Spore comes out. Newegg has some good "value" RAM but I'm kind of worried about cheap RAM. I didn't spend for the Corsair RAM, mind you, so I guess I thought the OCZ was a good compromise.
Drives: a Western Digital hard drive (500G, partitioned, although I'd rather have bought 2 250G); an ASUS DVD-ROM; and a Philips DVD-RW. Next time I wouldn't buy ASUS just because of my Sims 2 installation problem (see below). I would stick with Philips or Sony. For hard drives, the only thing I've heard that seems to be written in stone (I've heard it from several unrelated people I trust) is that Maxtor (internal) hard drives suck. So stick with WD or Seagate. (On the other hand, Maxtor makes excellent external HDs. Go figure.)
The motherboard was labeled pretty well but some of the diagrams, even in the larger printed-out PDF format, were reversed. Fortunately the power cords are more idiot proof than not, so (for example) while we had a motherboard that wanted an 8 pin supplemental power cable, the power supply we got only had a 4 pin. You had to look at the diagram to try to figure out which end of the 8 pin connector the 4 pin cable will go into and it just wouldn't fit into what the diagram seemed to show. But it did fit in the other end. So after studying it for a while Owen realised the diagram was reversed. Fortunately, as I said, the pin was idiot proof and would only go IN the "right" way.
The other big scary thing was the heat sink/fan on the processor. The processor itself was frighteningly easy to install but the instructions with the heat sink SUCKED. I wouldn't even call them instructions, myself. In retrospect, we would put the motherboard flat on a nice thick piece of cardboard, install the processor, then
try to figure out what direction the heat sink/fan is supposed to go, and install it all at once. The one we bought has plastic pins that push down and lock: you have to push down harder than you think you do, esp. if you are
STUPID and install the motherboard in the case before you do this *
coughcough* AND the diagram/documentation is pretty much
NO help with determining what the "front" of the heat sink is, so I just put it down and tried to see which way the power cable to the fan would fit best on the motherboard. So... if it had been on a nice thick piece of cardboard and I had had the sense to push down on the diagonally opposite pins at the same time, I bet it would have gone together much more easily than our amateur fumbling made it seem.
I also read a lot of advice that said the thermal paste either would not come with the heat sink/ fan or, if pre-applied, was not adequate for the processor we bought. Since we had so much trouble getting the heat sink/fan attached, and I was so worried about the processor overheating (dire warnings of computers catching on fire!), I did go ahead and buy a tube of thermal paste. It turned out that the heat sink/fan had mfgr-applied thermal paste on it (contrary to some of the comments on Newegg), but I wiped it off with rubbing alcohol and applied the stuff I bought with an old credit card. So far the computer hasn't caught on fire... Anyway, I have a whole tube of barely-used thermal paste I can send you. The amount you need is about the size of a grain of rice so it seems to me that a 5 gram tube is overkill...
The case we bought came pretty highly recommended on Newegg according to comments and after working with it, I was favourably impressed. All the inside edges are rolled so it's hard to cut yourself unless you're messing with the drive bays. It also came standard with two 120 mm fans and a filter on the front. Since we have cats, that was a huge selling point for me (the filter) while the two fans were a big selling point for Owen. Another fun thing was that you only really needed a screwdriver to attach the motherboard and a couple of minor things. It came with "rails" to attach to the various drives, which then slide into the drive bays, and the expansion card slots are also screwless (if you get a Rosewill case, just remember: you can unfasten anything that's purple: it's either a latch or a pull or a slide). Another plus to it was that it was designed for ATX motherboards specifically so you didn't have to install standouts if you had an ATX board which, coincidentally, was what we had!
One other newbie mistake we made was, again, related to the power supply mostly but also to the motherboard. I got an IDE DVD-RW instead of an IDE hard drive, and I got a SATA hard drive and a SATA DVD-ROM. (Okay, I plead ignorance but also I thought that the IDE DVD-RW would be fast and stable. At least theoretically...)
Well. The SATA cable that was included was set up in a way that expects your SATA drives to be next to each other in the bays; the case, however, had the 3.5" drive bays at the bottom, for the hard drive(s), so the hard drive and the DVD-ROM drive were too far away from each other for the SATA cable, which had 2 connections about 4" apart. Owen had the brilliant idea to stick the hard drive into the (unused) 3.5" floppy bay at the top of the computer. We had extra screws from the DVD drives since the rails came with the motherboard case, so we took out the floppy bay cage, screwed the hard drive into it, and stuck it back in. It's not very pretty - you can see the grille that we didn't remove (partly for stability so the drive couldn't slip forward either) from the front of the computer if you bend down - but it worked. We plan to replace the power supply anyway so it works for now.
I was afraid also that the motherboard would not recognise the SATA hard drive as the master, and I didn't even try to find or set the jumpers for any of them. But interestingly enough my guess as to which of the cable connections was the "master" for the SATA cable was correct and the motherboard is reading the SATA hard drive as a master as well as the DVD-RW (the IDE drive) as a master. Since it's working, it's not a concern, but in retrospect I wouldn't secondguess the motherboard like that again: I would get an IDE hard drive (for the default master) and SATA drives for the DVD(s) and/or secondary hard drives.
Also interestingly, I was not able to install Sims 2 on the new computer past the 2nd expansion pack. After doing some research (and updating XP, the video drivers, etc.), I uninstalled all of it and tried reinstalling it from the DVD-RW drive instead of the DVD-ROM drive. It installed flawlessly from the DVD-RW drive. I have no idea if that's because the DVD-RW is a quality drive (Philips vs. ASUS), or if it's because the DVD-RW is an IDE drive (*
sigh*) or if the gremlins of Micro
$oft were just messing with me.
Oh! We had a cable for the case that wanted a speaker connection on the motherboard. HA! There was no such thing. There were plenty of fan connections, but no speaker. So we were pretty sure that the whole thing about onboard sound was just a lie. On the other hand, we went ahead and plugged in the speaker cable from the motherboard to the monitor. (In monitors, by the way? You get what you pay for! Don't go super cheap. We did. We are already sorry. Look for a ViewSonic on sale or something and you should be okay.) And then when we installed the motherboard software and drivers, lo and behold there was an audio driver. So the sound is definitely onboard and it definitely needs a driver to run. DUH!
Labels: computers
