By Eric
Published: June 29, 2007
Print    Email

PART ONE (soon to finish as soon as i get some time, but if you're following the guide, buy your parts now) 

 

There are plenty of other write ups out there that show how to build a computer, some in much more detail than what im about to show. But I still want to do it because you never know who might stumble onto this site and need to build one.

This computer's total cost was 556.84 cents. There were a few assumptions taken prior to ordering the parts.

1) we already had a keyboard and mouse we were using so we didnt need to buy them

2) we already had a floppy drive and/or we werent going to be using one.

3) we already have speakers

Below is a list of the parts, the part numbers and links to where you can actually get these parts. I personaly only shop at newegg.com, I've done the whole pricewatch.com thing and priced out the cheapest for each part that I needed. But i found that by doing this i was splitting my main order between 5-10 different vendors and it took longer to actually get everything, or the cost of shipping almost made it not worth it. So, i buy from newegg and i get all my stuff fast (usually in less than 2 days), and if anything (and i mean anything) goes wrong, they are ALWAYS willing to hear you out. I've had two problems with parts i've order from newegg, and each time they resent the part out along with materials to ship the old part back. I didnt have to pay shipping or take time out of my day to go to the post office. Not a pitch, but seriously i've done both and i wont go back.

Step 1) Order all the parts you need. Litterally the hardest part of putting together you're own PC is getting the correct parts. We went with a intel based chipset and motherboard but you can go AMD or whatever you want. The most important things you need to think about when ordering your parts are the following.

1) make sure the CPU chip number convention matches the numbers your board will take. For example, we bought a Intel LGA 775. We had to buy a motherboard that would allow cpu to be used on the board. In laymans terms this breaks down to how many pins and the order of pins that are on the cpu (or motherboard in our case).

2) The speed of your cpu. Measured in Ghz (giga-hertz) the speed of your processor will basically go up at the same rate as the cost. In our case we got a 3.0 ghz processor

3) Type or ram your computer takes. There a few different types DDR/DDR2/DDR3 as of RIGHT NOW ddr2 is the most used however ddr3 is coming up quick so think about that when buying in order to not upgrade for a while. There are a few factors to think about when buying ram.

a) Speed

b) capacity (of many gigs)

c) type (we've talked about.. DDRx)

d) and dual channel (dual chanel ram needs to have a dual channel ram accessable mother board. Basically in non DC ram, one chip is filled up with processes and when thats filled, the next chip gets filled so they are basically in serial order one after another. In DC ram the mother board switches every other process between each ram chip allowing for faster processing of data. The kicker to this is that you have to buy at least two chips and always be running at least two chips for this to work correctly. So if you only need a gig or ram, you have to buy two 512 meg chips. This can add to inital cost up front but better computing in return)

4) Front side bus and hyper threading. Front side bus, i'll spare you the boring details, basically the higher the better. Hyper threading is pretty cool though. Hyper threading works kind of the same way as dual channel ram does, but it only uses one cpu. So you can enable hyper threading on your mother board and if you have a hyper threading capable processor your pc will see it as having two processors. Obviously this is virtual and it's still not as good as having two physical processors but now that there alot of boards out there that have dual processor cabability, and dual core processors, having a hyper threaded setup is really nice.

5) Roms. What do you want to do? Watch DVD's, burn dvd's, burn/play CD's, Burn/Play HD-DVD's/BluRay disks etc. Based on this you need to buy the correct Rom drive(s).

6) Hard drive space and redundency. Being as we're putting together a basic computer here I'll assume that most reading this wont be concerned with redundency. So we'll only talk about one hard drive. There are two major standards of Hard drives, Sata and IDE drives. Sata drives work off of a small cable and achieves much faster speeds over the traditional IDE wide cable. If you go with a SATA drive, make sure your mother board supports SATA drives.

7) Build what you need then add what you think you'll need in 2 years. If well maintained a computer can last a few years before technology just over runs it. I myself haf a 2.8 ghz processor overclocked to 3.4 with liquid cooling. It has been the first time in 10 years that i havent upgraded my PC after two years. Im on my third year now and i think i'll strectch this one out another year before i decomission it, turn it into a server or something and upgrade. So think ahead. If you are going to college for video editing or database administration build a computer that will support that. If you main goal is to surf the web, burn a few cd's/dvd's do general computing and gaming, then buying a 20.1 inch lcd monitor (like we did here) is great. Otherwise you might want to scale down to a 17" and dump more ram in.

Products

	Qty.	Product Description	Total Price
Item(s) shipped from NJ
	1	POWMAX CP0327PL-4 Window Black/Silver SGCC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 400W Power Supply - Retail Item #: N82E16811145047 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy	$29.99
	1	SCEPTRE X20WG-1080P Black 20.1" 5ms(GTG) supported Windows Vista Certified DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail Item #: N82E16824112007 Return Policy: [LCD] Limited Non-Refundable 30-Day Return Policy	$179.99
Click here to obtain a detailed listing of your packages and their contents.
Item(s) shipped from TN
	1	Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM Item #: N82E16822148140 Return Policy: Limited 30-Day Return Policy	$79.99
	1	ASUS P5GC-MX LGA 775 Intel 945GC uATX Intel Motherboard - Retail Item #: N82E16813131176 Return Policy: Limited 30-Day Return Policy	$69.99
	1	Intel Pentium 4 631 Cedar Mill 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80552631 - Retail Item #: N82E16819116004 Return Policy: Processors (CPUs) Return Policy	$68.00
	1	WINTEC AMPO 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 3AMD2533-2G1K-R - Retail Item #: N82E16820161670 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy	$61.99
	1	Sony NEC Optiarc 18X DVD±R DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write Black E-IDE / ATAPI Model 7170A-0B - OEM Item #: N82E16827152076 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy	$29.99
Please be aware that Newegg does not deliver packages on Saturdays or Sundays. Delivery attempts will be made on weekdays only.

Subtotal:		$533.93
Tax:		$0.00
Shipping:		$36.90
Total:		$570.83

Submit Article

5714 Views - View Comments (0)