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Building Your Own Computer
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Building a computer is easier than most people think.
Building your own computer is much more simple that most people think. It also saves a lot of money and you will be better able to handle your computer troubles yourself instead of paying a large sum of money to have someone do it for you. (Note this is a generic guide, procedures may very depending on your components. Read the manuals that come with your parts)
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Step 1: Select The Parts
Before you can build your computer you must decide what kind of computer you want. Do you want a huge powerful machine with dual processors, 4 gigz of RAM, more hard drive space than you could possibly use, and a top of the line graphics card. Or do you want a cheap low grade word processor. The average computer is going to have about 512 MB of RAM, 40 to 80 gigz of hard drive space, a 2.4-2.6 GHz pentium or an AMD athlon XP, and a graphics card with 128 MB of RAM. You will also need to consider what case you want. If you want to show off your machine you will want a case window and case lights. If you don't really care you should get a cheaper case. There are also other components your computer will need: a modem if you have dial-up, a networking card if you have LAN, cable, or DSL, a floppy drive (many people no longer use floppy drives) and a media card reader. Case fans are also important. If your computer stays on 24/7 you will need something to cool it down, if your computer is on only one or two hours at a time then one case fan and a processor fan should do it. After you have selected all of the parts you want you need to find a compatible mother board, be sure to find one that supports your processor, hard drive type (ATA, SATA, and SCSI), and graphics card type (most motherboards have AGP slots). Also select a power source large enough to support all of your components. |
Choosing your parts is one of the most crucial parts of building your computer. |
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Step 2: Building it!
Before you start building your computer there are a few things you should probably do: 1. Make sure you have a clean workspace building your computer on the grass in your backyard won't do. 2. Ground yourself, static electricity can damage your parts, so dont do this in your socks. 3. make sure you have the proper tools, dont use the wrong size screw driver, also try not to use a magnetic screw driver. After this you should be ready to start. First you need to remove the side panels on your case. Some cases use thumb screws so this part should be easy. After the side panels have been removed you need to mount to motherboard DO NOT OVER TIGHTEN THE SCREWS. After the motherboard is mounted you should install the power source (this should be obvious but make sure that nothing is pluged in at this point). After this is done you should mount all of your drive bay components (hard drive, floppy drive, CD or DVD drives, and media card reader if you have one). Your CD and DVD drives are going to be mounted in your 5.25'' drive bays, your hard drives, floppy drive, and media card reader will be put in your 3.15'' bays (some media card readers go inside your 5.25''). After you have your hard drive, CD drive, etc. mounted you should install your graphics card (usually in a AGP slot but sometimes PCI). To install PCI and AGP devices remove the slot cover on the back of the case and slide the card into the slot (try not to force it). After all of your PCI and AGP devices are installed you need to wire everything. Most of your devices have unique connectors so it should be easy (both ATA hard drives and CD drives use IDE cables). Make sure that everything is plugged in and secure. Now you should plug in your computer. |
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Step 3: Choose and install your operating system
Choosing the right operating system is very important. Most people will choose some version of windows (XP pro or home or 2000 usually). But some people, like me, use Linux (I am running SuSE Linux and Windows XP). There are also several other operating systems such as BSD, BeOS and solaris, but those are less common. Installation for Windows very basic. Depending on your BIOS you may just have to put the Windows CD in your drive and this installation will start automatically. You may have to tell your computer to boot from the CD ususally you press F2 or F8 while your computer is still booting to do this (there will be about 4 lines of text displaying your graphics card specs when you start up with many systems, thats when you should press the key). The manuals that come with your motherboard should explain this better. After you get your computer to boot from the CD the rest is self-explanitory (for windows). Linux can be equally simple to install, but some distros have text installation which is not as easy. Linux is much more customizable than windows so you may have to take a little extra time to pick the settings and software you want to install, but I would rather spend five minutes customizing my system than spend five hours trying to fix Microsoft's default settings. NOTE: This guide lacks a lot of details, read the manuals that come with your components.
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Choose the right operating system for you. |
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