[thechat] Building a computer

spinhead evolt at spinhead.com
Fri Sep 7 17:53:13 CDT 2001


Even though I buy mine now (Dells, to be consistent with the office
environment) I used to build my own, and it's a great learning experience.
My first machine, I knew almost nothing when I started. You're already way
past that. (My daughter is still using it; added a second HD and some RAM
but no other changes since the day it was built.)

Agree on the video cards - ATI or Nvidia are both good, 32 meg or more.

And, from a guy nicknamed 'sparky' take Daniel and Garrett's warnings about
grounding/earthing yourself before you touch ANYTHING. Toasted a motherboard
with my very static fingers once. I was sad.

spinhead


----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Stevens" <kjs at ratking.co.uk>
To: <thechat at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 10:00 AM
Subject: [thechat] Building a computer


> Hi people
>              Just wondering if anyone out there has any experience in
> building a computer from scratch. My old machine is getting more erratic,
> and as I'm getting better at programming I'm finding it gets very slow
with
> all the applications I try to run at once. I've had the case off loads of
> times, and have a rough idea of what goes where, so I thought I would
build
> myself a new computer rather than getting an off the shelf model. Here is
> the spec I am looking at and the prices where known...
>
> Intel Pentium 4 1.5ghz CPU (£150)
> Intel Motherboard (£150)
> 20 Gig 7200rpm hard disk (£80)
> Burn-proof CD-RW (£80)
> 256 meg RAM
>
> The rest of the stuff, case, power supply, graphics card, fan etc. will
> probably be based around the spec above. There are some things I would
like
> advice on...
>
> 1. Am I kidding myself that I am competent enough to build a computer,
i.e.
> is it a lot harder than it looks?
> 2. What would be a fairly good graphics card to go with my selections? I'm
> not a huge games fan, but would like something that is half decent but not
> too expensive.
> 3. Have I missed out anything serious?
> 4. Any tips about potential pitfalls would be greatly appreciated.
>
> TIA
>
> Kev
> kjs at ratking.co.uk
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> thechat mailing list
> thechat at lists.evolt.org
> http://lists.evolt.org/mailman/listinfo/thechat
> http://lists.evolt.org/thechatarchive/
> ________________
> "It's Friday.  Yeah! - only two more working days til Monday - Woooo!"
>





More information about the thechat mailing list