Building your dream PC. What the experts don't tell you.

The first thing to do is to make it clear that we are talking about a USEFUL PC for a NORMAL person. By a normal person, we mean someone of average intelligence, and someone who has no patience with technological obfuscation. Someone who can program a VCR but who has no desire to take it apart to see if they can get it to rewind faster by replacing the drive motor with the larger one they removed from their kitchen blender. In short, if you are a habitual reader of sites like these, or if you look anything like this or this then this guide is not for you. Please look elsewhere.

We will not be talking about overclocking, FSB speeds, thermal compound, so-called 'alternative' Operating Systems or any of that elitist BS. After reading this jargon-free guide your eyes will not glaze over as you fall into a boredom induced coma. You will not tear it up in frustration at all the complex indecipherable acronyms. You will however, be able to build a perfectly functional PC, that will do what you need it to. No more, No less.

So without further ado, let's get you started on your exciting PC-building adventure.

First, you will need to buy some components. (If you have an old PC, you can probably save a bit of money by cannibalizing some parts from it, but its better to get new components since they will last longer).

It is important not be intimidated by the salespeople. Remember, they know little more than you do. And you have this guide to fall back on. So call a few suppliers with your credit card at the ready. Here is your 'rocket scientists' shopping list :-) You will need to buy the following components:

A PC Case - simply the cheapest one you can find. Do not pay more than $15 including PSU and fans. They are pretty much all the same, unless you are a web-savvy geek who wants to build a 'server farm' or a small-penis compensating wiener who wants to build a 'beowulf cluster'. A good brand is Globalwin or Lian-li, but its best to stick to the absolute cheapest generic case you can find.

A motherboard - This is technical jargon. It means the bit that it all plugs into. Again, as with the case, it doesn't really matter what motherboard you buy, they are all basically identical. It is difficult to see why the propellerheads get their panties all in a bunch about such arcane features as dynamic aperture allocation, raid level 5 anti-virus lockout, xga pallette snooping or bios shadowing stealth protection - but they do. Adequacy.org suggests you waste your time on something more constructive (like maybe getting laid!) and leave the tedious motherboard feature comparisons to the so-called experts. Since all motherboards are the same, it doesn't really matter what brand. Go for the cheapest. Probably something like an Abit KT7 Raid. It is as good a choice as any.

A processor - or 'CPU' as the jargon-addicted poorly socialised hackers like to call them (anything to obscure a simple concept). The best processors are obviously made by Intel. Other companies make processors too, such as Sun and AMD, and while these are OK, they are not guaranteed to be Intel-compatible. adequacy.org tip: Ask for the retail-boxed pentium 4 1.4GHZ.. This will include a free cooling fan and fitting instructions, and is the fastest commercially available processor on the market to date.

Hard drive - This is exactly like your VCR or cassette deck at home. It uses magnetic coated surface to store digital information. the best price/performance hard drive on the market is the IBM DeskStar 75GXP. There are other manufacturers and types of drive, but you don't need to know about them. (leave the futzing to the nerds) Order one of these, but make sure you don't pay over the odds.

Memory - You need a maximum of 128MB of ram. Again, as with the PC case a lot of nonsense is talked about memory. What you need for your functioning PC is 1 generic 128MB 168-pin PC-100 DIMM. Do not fall into the trap of learning lots of details about CAS levels or RDRAM vs DDR etc. This is simply an expensive waste of time and money. (which seems to be an ever-present feature of the home-built PC world). Avoid at all costs. We've given you all the info you need right here in this paragraph. I've even highlighted it in bold to make it easier to read, and added a hyperlink for you in case you cannot locate a supplier.

Graphics card - Simple. You need to get the cheapest generic GEForce2 Non-ddr 32MB card you can find. Sparkle makes a good one as do plenty of other Taiwanese manufacturers. Don't waste any more of your life reading reviews of superfast GeForce3 cards with emoticon engines or any other marketing garbage. A GeForce2 is sufficient for all but the most demanding of applications, and you don't plan on operating a CAT scanner with your PC or performing remote keyhole surgery, do you ? And Quake III looks fine so long as you can get 30fps - a speed the GeForce2 is more than comfortable with.

Sound card - Here the choice is simple. There is no point in getting anything other than a SoundBlaster Live! Value. This is cheap, and effective. Take it from us, you don't want to get into the mind-numbing details of other sound cards. Suffice it to say that in the gaming world the 'blaster is king.

A cd CD-RW drive - Again, there's no need to spend large or think too much about this. Just buy the cheapest one you can get your hands on. $49 should be more than enough to get a decent one. Don't go for a SCSI device, however, as it won't work on your machine without an expensive 'SCSI adaptor' (as the boffins love to call them).

A modem. - Make sure you get a so called 'WinModem'. These modems are enhanced to work better with Windows Millennium, and represent very good value for money.

Keyboard, mouse, monitor - Again, just get the cheapest one you can find in 'Computer Shopper'. In fact let's be honest here, the prices for most of these items don't vary from supplier to supplier. Save yourself loads of valuable time by simply allowing your copy of computer shopper to fall open at a random supplier's advertizement page. Chances are their prices will be as good as the next guy's, and you just saved yourself hours of pointless price comparisons. Better yet, if you live near a Fry's Electronics Store just go there and get your components retail. This has the added advantage of knowledgable and helpful staff on hand to answer any technological queries you may have.

A Genuine Retail copy of Microsoft Windows Millenium. There's no reason to economise here. Your Operating System is the thing that holds your whole PC together. It will be the program you use whatever task you perform with your PC. Millions of people over the world trust Windows. There's simply no point in risking any other OS. Windows ME should come on a watermarked CD. Check that your copy is genuine, and call Microsoft's anti-piracy hotline if you suspect anything untoward.

OK so you have got all your components home, and unwrapped them. The next part should take about twenty minutes max. You are going to build your PC (and guess what ? it is not going to be rocket science). Clear a space on the table. Get all the components out of their protective wrappers and put them on the table in front of you. (Don't worry about all that garbage about wearing an anti-static suit. Almost nobody bothers these days. Modern components are surprisingly resistant to static shock, and the cost of the anti-static gear is not justified by the risks. If you are concerned about static electricity damage, we suggest you simply turn on the air conditioning. This has the effect of reducing the relative humidity, which in turn removes the static electricity from the air.)

So where to start ? It's all pretty obvious and easy. If you think of it like an Erector Set, or Lego you will feel more confident. Make sure your tech-savvy friends are nowhere to be seen, you don't want to listen to their snotty and superior 'advice', and you don't want them laughing if you make a mistake.

So here is a step-by-step guide to assembling your new PC.

open the case, screw the motherboard onto the mounting points and slide it back in.

Remove the top of the case. Plug the DIMMS into the slots which look the right size. You may need to use a bit of force (But please be careful. It's ok to whack the top of the DIMM with the spine of a paperback book, just don't use a hardback. You could damage your components).

Plug the graphics card into the AGP port (it's the only one it will fit into). Next plug the sound card into one of the slots marked PCI. Plug your WinModem into the AMR slot. As with the graphics card, it will not fit in the incorrect slot, so don't worry about getting it wrong.

Mount the hard drive and CDRW drive in the case. Connect the ribbon cables to their matching sockets on your motherboard.

Finally install the processor, making sure you install a cooling fan too. It is impossible to fit the processor incorrectly, due to the pin arrangement.

Close the case, plug in the keyboard, mouse and monitor.

AT LAST! You are done. You should now have a fully functional PC. Its now time to fire it up for the first time and install Windows Millenium.

Insert the Windows Millenium CD into the drive and switch on your computer. Follow all the instructions on the screen. About 10 minutes later you will have a freshly installed machine ready to do productive work. All for about $500 at today's prices, plus the satisfaction of knowing you have beaten those irritating amateur experts at their own game.

Now you can go around telling everyone you know how easy it was. The more people we let in on this PC industry 'secret' the better. Those annoying conversations round the water cooler with people who think they are so clever because they built their own PC will soon be a thing of the past.

Just keep telling everyone how easy it was and point them to this page if they need any more help.

	AOL (3.75 / 4) (#8)
	by eWulf on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 06:08:52 AM PST

	Will building a computer this way work with AOL?

	Me too (3.00 / 4) (#9)
	by Tycho on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 06:09:53 AM PST

	I need to know this as well

	Of course. (5.00 / 1) (#10)
	by dmg on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 06:22:58 AM PST

	There is no reason at all why a computer built using this guide would not work with AOL. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the above configuration is *optimized* for America Online users. The propeller heads will tell you AOL is not as good as other ISPs, but thats because AOL is easy and nerds like things to be complicated. time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration. -- MC Hawking

	how is aol easy? (1.00 / 1) (#53)
	by alprazolam on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 01:51:45 PM PST

	it's an extra piece of software you have to learn. without aol all you have to do is hit the 'home' button on your internet explorer web browser and let it tell you what to do. aol has all those buttons and menus and buddy lists, who has time to figure it all out?

	What? (1.00 / 1) (#65)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 08:49:02 PM PST

	It really couldn't get any easier if it wanted too.

	it will never work (1.00 / 1) (#118)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 09:45:46 PM PST

	there is every reason why a computer built with this guide will not work with aol it won't work with any dial up or isp the thing just won't boot.

	DMG (1.00 / 1) (#160)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 11:47:53 PM PST

	"The propeller heads will tell you AOL is not as good as other ISPs, but thats because AOL is easy and nerds like things to be complicated." Nope. Propeller heads just want things to work the way they should without bogging down the system with crap!

	IQ(Author)< IQ(Rock) (1.00 / 1) (#240)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Aug 7th, 2001 at 08:07:17 AM PST

	Considering you forgot to mention they would need a hammer and some crazy glue to get the P4 to fit in that Motherboard. I would have to agree that AOL won't work. Of course neither will anything since the computer won't even post. This article is a great example of how a little knowledge can be very dangerous. Please do your readers a great service and never wright a tech-article again.

	This is the problem... (1.00 / 1) (#280)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Aug 7th, 2001 at 02:04:26 PM PST

	See, you can't post a subject in pseudocode here. Won't sit well with your audience. And you said `post'. POST is short for Power On Self Test, it's the first thing your computer does when it starts up, to make sure it has a CPU (processor) and memory (RAM), as well as other little startup tasks. Better to say that the computer won't start, won't turn on, won't go, will do nothing. That sort of thing. --grendel drago

	Wow (none / 0) (#307)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Oct 2nd, 2001 at 08:56:54 PM PST

	In fact, I would go so far as to say that the above configuration is optimized for America Online users. That made my day. Truer words were never spoken.

	Not at all. (4.00 / 2) (#42)
	by dmg on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 12:04:58 PM PST

	Rest assured I am not on AOL's payroll. I am simply attempting to help adequacy avoid falling into the trap that many other websites have fallen into, where people make thoughtless comments, and the whole online dialog degenerates into a mess of noise. Unless you have specific problems with AOL, bashing them can be seen as a knee-jerk reaction somewhat similar to what happens if you mention Microsoft on slashdot. There is no sinister conspiracy. We're just trying to keep adequacy troll free, and full of factual, signal-bearing comments. time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration. -- MC Hawking

	Pet Peeve Time (5.00 / 1) (#54)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 03:14:02 PM PST

	the 500 meg of memory i had freed up was gone. Damn, I wish I had so much RAM laying around that I could install multiple versions of AOL into a huge RAM drive. There are vast amounts of difference between memory (RAM) and hard drive space.

	oh yeah HD space isn't memory, it's, umm... (1.00 / 1) (#164)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 11:51:36 PM PST

	Ever heard the terms "primary memory" and "secondary memory", my critical friend? "diskspace" is known as "secondary" or "non-volatile" memory. It really annoys me when people try to be smart simply for the sake of insulting somebody else.

	"Secondary Memory" (5.00 / 1) (#236)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Aug 7th, 2001 at 07:38:47 AM PST

	umm no, harddrive space is sometimes refered to as "secondary storage". But secondary memory is a term you or one of your moronic friends coined and is trying to pass off as knowledge when in fact you seem to be quite confused.

	No! (3.00 / 3) (#12)
	by 6e7a on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 07:07:15 AM PST

	AOL doesn't work well with anyPC! ;-) 6e77a 70 6e 6e7a!

	AOL works fine. (2.75 / 4) (#14)
	by dmg on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 07:27:26 AM PST

	Please don't make baseless accusations in this forum, or we will have to delete them. Unless you can produce evidence that AOL does not work, please post a retraction and an apology, or the Editors will be forced to delete your comment. time to give a Newtonian demonstration - of a bullet, its mass and its acceleration. -- MC Hawking

	Did you type this (2.00 / 2) (#39)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 11:56:00 AM PST

	as you were opening the letter containing your check from AOL?

	i do (3.66 / 3) (#51)
	by alprazolam on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 01:45:47 PM PST

	Unless you have specific problems with AOL Four hours of reloading the winmodem and aol drivers, i was able to dial in. the 500 meg of memory i had freed up was gone. i absolutely can't wait to uninstall aol and return to the days when my computer only crashed randomly once a week, as opposed to every other day.

	you moron (1.00 / 1) (#57)
	by alprazolam on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 04:37:15 PM PST

	its still memory. don't think i don't know the difference, dumb fuck

	Re: you moron (5.00 / 1) (#69)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 08:52:18 PM PST

	Hmm... maybe the fact that you used the wrong words made us think you don't know the difference. Memory and diskspace, in case you haven't noticed, are completely different things.

	it wouldn't be so bad (1.00 / 1) (#235)
	by alprazolam on Tue Aug 7th, 2001 at 07:34:30 AM PST

	it's just that when IT types try to act like they fucking know something about anything other than monty python, i feel the need to flame

	very smart. (1.00 / 1) (#86)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 09:13:22 PM PST

	God, thats smart. Talk about the site that your clearly ripping off, cant tell when someone is joking huh?

	Re: AOL works fine (5.00 / 1) (#55)
	by 6e7a on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 03:15:13 PM PST

	Do you know what the following symbol means? ;-) 6e77a 70 6e 6e7a!

	DANGER! DANGER! (5.00 / 1) (#16)
	by CaptainZornchugger on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 07:35:09 AM PST

	The parent poster, 6e7a, is a known propellorhead 'geek'! Such 'geeks' post merely to provoke reaction and feel superiour to 'non-geeks'! Do not respond to, or 'feed' his posts! The only way to deal with 'geeks' is to ignore them! I repeat, do not 'respond' to the 'parent' 'post', or 'horrible' things will happen! Danger!

	A known propellorhead 'geek'? (5.00 / 1) (#56)
	by 6e7a on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 03:20:13 PM PST

	I joined yesterday. How could your statement possibly be true? BTW, who's Captain Zorn, and what of his do you chug anyway? You might want to stop doing that. It seems to be affecting your mind. :-) 6e77a 70 6e 6e7a!

	Jesus fucking christ... (1.00 / 1) (#179)
	by Anonymous Reader on Tue Aug 7th, 2001 at 12:51:08 AM PST

	Enough with the goddamned geek stereotypes ya wankers

	Re: AOL (3.00 / 2) (#49)
	by gleef on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 01:27:26 PM PST

	eWulf asks: Will building a computer this way work with AOL? No, but it's because the described computer will not work at all. You can't use a Pentium 4 Processor with the ABit KT7 Raid motherboard. Replace the Pentium 4 with a AMD Duron 800Mhz (or, if you're speed hungry, an AMD Thunderbird 1.4Ghz), and you'll have a machine that actually works. Most of the time. It probably will crash and die randomly due to being underpowered. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to build a computer from scratch, but you do need to learn more information than the author seems to have bothered to learn. The above comments just point out what's broken about his suggestions, there are far more things that ar just plain bad advice. For example, few people will ever use the high-end features of the motherboard he suggested; you can save $60 just by getting a more reasonable motherboard (eg. the Soyo K7VTA).

	Uh, what? (5.00 / 1) (#64)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 08:48:17 PM PST

	No, it be a waste to build you own if you don't choose a high quality motherboard. It's obviously the essential key. Look at Asus, Abit and Iwill for great DDR solutions.

	brand name is not necessary (1.00 / 1) (#114)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 09:42:07 PM PST

	First, we're here talking about budget system. Leave alone those DDR options. Besides,brand name product is not really necessary for a stable system (unless you look for doing some tweaks, then you have find a suitable motherboard with adequate functions). I built many systems since 80286 and often use cheap brands on them. Asus, ABit and etc are well known in Amercia, but there're still American-unknown but good Taiwan motherboard or periperhal manfuactuers. I used to live in Hong Kong and we knew Asus, ABit, Leadtek well before they reached US.

	hehe (1.00 / 1) (#110)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 09:38:31 PM PST

	no one should read this website if the rest is of the same quality as the how to on building a computer. these people are idiots. unless they can provide very good reasons for all there choices in hardware. OMG this how to is retarded. i don't give a fuck if you erase this but man this site blows goats asses.

	Underloaded on the memory, and other things (4.00 / 2) (#11)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 07:01:11 AM PST

	There are a few adjustments I'd make to that recommendation for the general user: Anyway, while it's probably not worth going overboard on cases, consider that the case is the thing you're going to have to stare at even when the computer is turned off - and there are plenty of places that sell some nice looking cases, so it might be worth looking around. Remember that a case is going to be one of the smallest contributors to overall cost. Also, while the author recommends just buying any old motherboard and arbitrary Intel chip, and hoping they go together, I'm a bit more cautious about mixing chips, motherboards and memory. It's better to buy your motherboard and CPU together. When I last built a machine (admittedly, about four years ago now), there were all sorts of jumpers I had to set just right on my motherboard depending on what kind of chip and memory I had, and there was much opportunity to screw up. I find that it's much better (and occasionally even cheaper) to buy motherboard+cpu "combos" from various dealers - let people who do this stuff every day take care of installing the cpu into the motherboard and setting all the jumpers. There's really no reason to buy the motherboard and cpu separately unless you want to be very particular about which cpu and which motherboard you get. If you're in this article's target audience, you don't care. Often with these motherboard combos you can get memory as well, and that brings up another point - memory is right now cheap, so much so that 128M is really selling yourself short. I'd get at least 256M; if you're worried about the cost, cut back on that CPU a bit. When you're looking to make your machine less annoying (in terms of being slow at inconvenient times, etc.), more memory is almost always a better value than a faster CPU. I'd plug the place I most recently ordered components from online - www.compu-terra.com - but I only placed my order Saturday, so I can't say how fast their service is or isn't. They do, however, let you build motherboard+cpu+memory combos from almost any motherboard in stock. Finally - why bother doing any of this yourself? Go to one of those big computer expos that run tv commercials with the loud announcer borrowed from the used car guy, and find a table filled with systems that are already assembled and usually already have windows millenium installed on them. You might have to wander around a bit until you find someone who will give you all the manuals and orginal disks for any software that's pre-installed on the machine, but I've found that most mom-and-pop stores at these expos aren't into massive piracy. You may end up paying slightly more than assembling the parts yourself(but not by much - family employees don't have to be paid minimum wage, and these places get volume discounts that you just building one box don't), and the cover charge at the expo door may annoy you, but it's still a much better deal than you'll get from the big names and you get to just take the box home and plug it in.

	why bother doing any of this yourself? (5.00 / 1) (#21)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 08:19:06 AM PST

	Because it is interesting, fun, easy, cheap, and lets you silence those irritating nerds that are always going on and on about how they 'custom built their system' so they could 'choose the optimum components'

	<chuckle> (3.00 / 2) (#36)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 11:26:09 AM PST

	I thought this article was serious, until I got to this point - "A modem. - Make sure you get a so called 'WinModem'. These modems are enhanced to work better with Windows Millennium, and represent very good value for money." Nice joke!

	Care to elaborate ? (3.66 / 3) (#38)
	by Anonymous Reader on Mon Aug 6th, 2001 at 11:50:50 AM PST

	I've been using my winmodem without problems for over three years. Can you please tell me why I should consider it 'a joke' ?