Build Advice The Newbie's Guide to Computer Building - Version 1.1 - Updated 30 Mar 2010 - Pics!

Glad the guide is still helping people! Anyone has any suggestion for something else to add, let me know.

 

From personal exp of building a few PC's since the early 90's (Intel 486 DX2 66Mhz of powerA) I would add a bit on how most of the connectors are keyed to only fit one way (power). USB headers can be matched easily by taking note of the missing pin as a guide. Tell people what the triangle on the front panel connector is for and such things as HDD activity light in constantly on because its on the the wrong way round.

My 2 cents

 

On some of the older cases they use to give you red fibre washers to put between the screw and the motherboard when you would screw the motherboard to the stand off, AFAIK this isn't necessary any more.

Sorry couldn't find a smaller picture (I mean bigger one )

 

I go under the assumption that most people who are going to attempt to do a custom build will be intelligent enough to figure out that everything plugs in only one way.

Yeah, never once came across any of those. :shrug:

 

wow! thanks a lot dude! just what i need! i'm a newbie,and actually, just got my chassis for my planned gaming rig. do i have to include here my supposed specs? maybe you could give a guide for a newbie liquid-cooling system.

 

my advice afterburner is to make a new thread under the subtitle build advice. use the template on this link: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=182284

i havent done any watercooling before because of obvious reasons (see my age) but im very sure that you need:

Distilled Water
A Reservoir
A Radiator
A Pump
Waterblocks for whatever you need to watercool (CPU, GPU, RAM, Chipset e.t.c)
You could add dyes to colour youre distilled water.
Tubing

I think after removing the fans and attaching the waterblocks and tubing, you top up the water into the Reservoir and do a 'leak test' to make sure it doesnt go wrong.

I would personally (when i will watercool) attach it like this:

Reservoir (holds the water) -> Pump (pumps (narrr) the water around the setup) -> GPU Waterblock -> CPU Waterblock -> Radiator (to cool the water down) -> Back to the Reservoir.

Of course this depends where you put everything, im basing my setup on a Silverstone TJ07. A extremely good example is this: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=172583. The radiator and pump is under the midplate.

Finally, remember to make sure youre DISTILLED water does not contain Algae and Bacteria using biocide, you wont need it on the first top up but from time to time, add some of the stuff into youre set up.

Of course, i could have got it completely wrong. Its best to make sure a experienced member of this forum tells you.

 

thanks again!

 

You're so right man. I bought laptop SONY VAIO. Always bought Sony for as long as I can remember, thought top notch pc's most expensive got to be good right?.. I been Sony buyer for years. Well it was right before windows7 came out and I really needed to get myself a laptop. I bought this white sony notebook from best buy - it had vista pre installed on it, but windows7 capable. I thought cool, if windows7 come out I just install on system np. Well anyway I bought windows7 professional spend $299.99 at that time, installed on Sony laptop and it works, but wait what's this?.. All kinds of problems drives, buttons, sounds... I updated all the drives from sony website, but the fn buttons aren't working at all even up to today. When I contacted Sony they told me sir your 1 year warranty now expired, but if pay us $200( I don't remember the exact amount )we will add a plan for you and fix the problems. That set me off when I heard that. I got mad. It's not about the money, but I felt scammed, scammed by Sony. You end up paying crazy $$ and only for a stupid year. All I told them than that I am disappointed that they can NOT stand behind their products, and technical customer service was not appreciated. And now I got my first build, it was tough getting things together, but in the end I got in it and I am glad. I could not done it without help, but man it's so worth it.

 

Nice! But I see the VGA card is little chokes, Hahaaa...

 

I got 2 x ATi 5770 1GB with a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard but didnt have Physx option
is it worth getting a Nvidia Physx card and can this motherboard fit it?

 

That's because nVidia owns the rights to PhysX, and AMD (ATI) doesn't support it.

Even if you get a dedicated PhysX card (though you'd be better off with something like an nVidia 9800 GT), the nVidia software would prevent you from using it after it detected an AMD GPU. There are work-arounds, but honestly it's not really worth it in most cases unless you absolutely require PhysX.

 

Great guide man, one thing, why is your PSU upside down?

 

In the P180 you can mount the PSU either direction. I mounted it with the fan pulling air from inside the lower chamber since there weren't any other fans on the bottom to cool the HDDs.

 

Nice tutorial, especially good pics for cable management as thats one of the easiest places to come unstuck as a new builder

 

Useful indeed, but how about adding the first BIOS setup?

 

Thanks for the guide man ill use this in helping me build my pc when i build this weekend.

 

BIOS depends on the motherboard brand, so it's not easy to post something that's useful for everyone.

Let us know how it goes!

 

How about some more specific things, e.g. different form factors, pci types etc?

 

Definitely worth noting... Might just have to revise the guide.

 

Might be worth adding in something about the Stand-offs.