New to PC Building and this Forum

[TiminNY]

Hi All,

I'm really excited about the prospect of building a PC for the first time.
I have a some experience with upgrading(video and sound cards, changing cd-rom's,hard drives, cpu upgrades, etc.), but I know nothing about mother boards, cases and voltage.
I plan on reading through alot of this forum in this next weeks, but was wondering if anyone has any suggestions ....any at all..... on where to best get started.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Sincerely,
Tim Hughes
Long Island, NY
justtim@cybermail.net

 

[Packet]

my general tips for building a comp

First, make sure you get good hardware / compatable hardware. Give a list in this forum before you buy your stuff, people are usually happy to tell you if it all looks ok.

For a case, the larger it is the easier it is going to be to work with. I like full towers, they take up more space but your hands will thank you.

When installing a motherboard, make sure you have the correct hardware aligned corretly. Weither its the plastic studs that hold the motherboard in, or the screw sockets, make sure they are all lined up and use as many as possible. You don't want your motherboard to have alot of flex, and if you are using the metal screw sockets it could cause a short in the board if it is touching the wrong part of the motherboard.

Install your motherboard, hard drive, cpu, one stick of ram, video, and CD/DVD-Rom first. Leave the rest of the cards out until you have installed your OS, safer this way.

Hope those help you get started

 

[deadlock]

Like you I was once experienced in peripheral installation, and I decided I wanted a PC and wanted to build it. Though at the time I didn't know how.

Heck, the best way to learn is to just do it. Dive in, and do it. There are plenty of guides on the net that will teach you the basics, but there are bound to be unique circumstances that you pick up as you go along.

Just start with a regular machine, no fancy frills like RAID or complicated internal stuff like some methods of overclocking require (i.e. soldering iron and wires), and do it.

You'll learn fast. Now I run a little service doing it for people. It's easy.