Ever built a computer ?

As the headimg says, have to ever built or thought about building your own computer? No? nor had I but my youngest son has.

So with his help I decided to build my own to my own specifications. First of all the question I asked myself "What is the computer for."

My aim was to build one mainly for photographic work so certain parts like graphic cards came high on the list.

Getting into buying individual parts was interesting in what to consider. for example the casing. I wanted one with a good air flow as the cooler a computer runs the better. So any case with a side air vent was a no no, and got one with a twin front fan and straight through rear fan back.

The board everything went onto was a tough decision as there is such a choice.

Next was the processor
Looking into them I found out that the intel i7 was better than the intel i5 with video work in mind. No I didn't know either until I researched.

then looked into CD/DVD player and found one that was quiet as were the silent fans. Memory is now on a SSD card with another hard disk as a secondary one.

The power unit another consideration, getting one powerful enough to allow for expansion if needed.

Things like amount of RAM is now 16 Ram , over doing it again but does allow for several programs to run at once

I decided to stick with windows 7 professional as I already had the disk from my previous computer.

Have to admit at this stage it did take 3 months to build, not because it was hard , the time was taken up in deciding one which parts were the best on the budget I set

So why bother? simply because I now have a specialist computer you can't get in a retailers, and able to upgrade
easily component wise.

So have I saved money by building my own ? lets put it this way, even if I could have got the same shop built it would have cost at least several hundreds of pounds more.

Ok now have a computer built to do what I want. next the question of monitors.
We all know the vast choice out there but I decided to go for a Dell ultra sharp purely because of its IPS screen so there is no fading looking end on from one side to the other

Ok that is the computer and monitor ( keyboard and mouse are standard type).


Bought extrnl speakers Creative inspire T10 and for their size they are extremely good

Next the printer

No good doing all of this with a rubbish printer so it was down to a dedicated photo type and a I have had Epson before that is what I stayed with. So that is what I am now using.

Not being that good with editing suites I stuck with Adobe Elements as it is comprehensive and easy to use.

needless to say with all that and camera gear room is getting a bit of a problem

Hope this is interesting and not too boring

Re: Ever built a computer ?

Can't fault the build. Should do the job admirably .

Re: Ever built a computer ?

It does now as the first power unit was a little underpowered, or at least it packed up after about 18 months which is why i went for a 750watt one instead if my memory hasn't failed.
I did also upgrade the cooling fans to be quieter and doubled the Ram capacity.
Before all this I admit how a computer was put together was a complete mystery.
Also i have a couple of extrnl hard drives as additional backup

bios Picture needs closer look

As you can see the temperature is about 30c, so not running to hot

Re: Ever built a computer ?

hat off to you rs.

I was going to build one last year...with a little help from a friend.

I bought a Corsair Osbidian tower or something like that..saw it had 3 fans and gave up, that was enough to scare me...gave it to my friend, with a budget and let him loose.

Got it back, all done and had my office broken into a month later...gone.

Re: Ever built a computer ?

That is a shame . You should get him to show you how to build your own. most of my stuff I got from Scan Computers who were very helpful

Re: Ever built a computer ?

Nice one RS - you certainly get a much better computer if you build your own PC

I no longer use PCs (used to build my own) and it's not quite as easy building your own Mac - because Apple don't want you running their OS on computers not built by them so they can be problematic. Still, wouldn't mind building a Hacintosh one day just to see what its like

Re: Ever built a computer ?

Sounds good I have built my own computers but very long ago. My last couple have been ordered from the manufacturers to my specs and there is not much saving in building your own here.

My only comment is that I hope it is running WIN 7 as a 64 bit computer otherwise all that RAM is wasted (From memory I think a 32bit computer in practice can only handle something like 3.7Gb of RAM). Even with a 64bit computer more than 8Gb of RAM is subject to the law of diminishing returns as more processing time can be spent managing the memory than using it.

Having said that looks like it was worth the effort.

Re: Ever built a computer ?

I went on a day course course once, quite some years ago, on building computers, and much of it was spent listening to the very cocky tutor, who bragged about the money he was earning! When we got back from lunch he made up a cock and bull story about how the room (in a small hotel) was broken into during our absence and stuff was stolen (can't remember what), so he 'gave' us a 'free' video.

We did get some hands on practical assembley, being paired up with someone, but of course we didn't do all the work involved, like attaching cooling fans to the power supply, and all that lark. But I can remember enjoying the practical side of the day. Just a shame about him!!!

Gave me the confidence to open up tower cases and peer inside!

Re: Ever built a computer ?

It is possible to run both operating systems on either a Mac or PC by dual booting. On a Mac it is possible to run both operating systems at the same time and it works surprisingly well. There are limitations with Macs though as I found to my cost with my Mac Pro setup in that certain versions cannot run the Mac operating system beyond OS 10.7.5, so anyone thinking of building a cheap Mac should consider this as it is a right pain to have to deal with older versions of software. I will be installing Windows on both the desktop and on a partition to help with this so that I can run such programs as Teamviewer (remote control software), which throws an error on my current setup.

The computer I'm using now has dual boot with a choice between Windows 7 and Ubuntu. You can, of course, triple boot should you wish.

Re: Ever built a computer ?

Yep, been there, done it, and got a T shirt.
But that was a long time ago in the days of DOS and DX4.
I did build gaming machines, that were also capable of running 'Coral draw 9' that I used. Also before I got into 'Word' I used 'Word perfect'. Such a long time ago.
I don't bother with desktops anymore. It's now a laptop and iPad. Plus kindles for my reading.
With these I can do everything I need to do now days.
I will say it was fun and educational building PCs.