Thread: Building a Desktop

1. Don't do work on a carpet or other static-electricity prone surface; ground yourself.
2. Make sure your components match up (i.e. a Socket AM2 processor won't work with an LGA775 board).
3. Make sure your power supply more than meets your power needs, though you can sort of cut it close if you are careful.
4. Motherboards need standoffs, otherwise parts may be fried, or at least short out.
5. Airflow. You need a decent stream if you want to keep your computer at a proper temp. For example, my case actually heats up if the side window is taken off.
6. Thermal paste. Don't use the standard shit. It works well enough, but Arctic Silver 5 is a key to longevity and stability.
7. Make sure if you have front USB and/or media reader connections to unhook them from the board. not doing so before an installation will give you a C: drive that is not your Windows install.
8. Memory will underclock or not run at all if the board doesn't accept the sticks properly. try to match up the RAM as close to standard as you can.

That's all I can think of right now... Some of it is sorta common sense, but just throwing it out there for some usefulness.

Oh, and ditto to Harner's question.

It looks like I may not be building my desktop after all. My harddrive hadn't crashed after all, and my old PC is up and running.

But just in case...

Originally Posted by Harner

What parts do you have to work with?

DVD-R/CD drive, some DDR DIMM's, a rather new graphics card (whose socket type I don't remember), and apparently a harddrive now. That's probably about it, aside from peripherals of course.

Originally Posted by linkinkampf19

1. Don't do work on a carpet or other static-electricity prone surface; ground yourself.
2. Make sure your components match up (i.e. a Socket AM2 processor won't work with an LGA775 board).
3. Make sure your power supply more than meets your power needs, though you can sort of cut it close if you are careful.
4. Motherboards need standoffs, otherwise parts may be fried, or at least short out.
5. Airflow. You need a decent stream if you want to keep your computer at a proper temp. For example, my case actually heats up if the side window is taken off.
6. Thermal paste. Don't use the standard shit. It works well enough, but Arctic Silver 5 is a key to longevity and stability.
7. Make sure if you have front USB and/or media reader connections to unhook them from the board. not doing so before an installation will give you a C: drive that is not your Windows install.
8. Memory will underclock or not run at all if the board doesn't accept the sticks properly. try to match up the RAM as close to standard as you can.

That's all I can think of right now... Some of it is sorta common sense, but just throwing it out there for some usefulness.

Oh, and ditto to Harner's question.

Thanks. 6 is very useful info, and 7 is something I was totally unaware of.

Originally Posted by SneeBeezums

Syclid, we'll need more info on that graphics card. If you are using DDR, it may be AGP which is rather outdated. PCIe is the new video card standard. If you are going to do a rebuild, what's your budget?

Naw dawg, it's a PCIe card.

As for my budget, I wasn't certain... but let me say that my target would have been a mid-range system equivalent.

Originally Posted by SneeBeezums

I agree with everything you've said except that. I just rebuilt my desktop and have never heard of that. I had front and rear USB headers installed and had no problems installing Windows. Maybe on the media card readers.

Yeah sorry about that. In my typing frenzy I actually meant just media card readers, or quite possibly if you had a USB stick inserted into one of slots. Media card readers themselves will be recognized as drives even if there are no card in them, therefore giving them priority as C:, D:, and E:, etc. Also, this may have been corrected in Vista and Windows 7, but I know for sure it happens in XP.

Originally Posted by Ephekt

I'm sorry, but this is just false.

I just was reinforcing that AS5 is that good. I was just trying to find a few decent words to give headway between regular ceramic compound and AS5. I guess longevity wasn't the best choice. Thanks for giving me insight to CPU architecture. You learn something new everyday.

Plus, I've always just ever used AS5 and kinda look down on plain paste nowadays.

Originally Posted by linkinkampf19

6. Thermal paste. Don't use the standard shit. It works well enough, but Arctic Silver 5 is a key to longevity and stability.

I'm sorry, but this is just false. AS is definitely better and will reduce temps, but the 5-10 degree difference isn't going to make a bit of difference to either longevity or stability as long as you're below the tjunction max. CPUs are engineered to last at least 10 years under this temperature (real world is more like 20+). Most people do not use CPUs long enough to worry about any minute effects on longevity, even if AS made that much difference (it does not unless you're overclocking). The major concern is to prevent going over the tjunction max, as your PC will start shutting down to protect itself. The default thermal paste does this just fine.

7. Make sure if you have front USB and/or media reader connections to unhook them from the board. not doing so before an installation will give you a C: drive that is not your Windows install.

I've never experienced or heard of this.

Originally Posted by ephekt

Most people do not use CPUs long enough to worry about any minute effects on longevity, even if AS made that much difference (it does not unless you're overclocking).

Yeah, I'm probably not going to be overclocking, though I could understand how that assumption might be made if I'm building my own PC...