whats the hardest part in building your own computer??

[love2skate824]

yeah, heatsinks are a pain in the butt.

but truely, all the glory is in the single moment of pushing that big button the first time and watching what happens, as guitardaddy said.

also random crashes piss me off. pardon my french.

cable management is a biggie. use those zip ties and get rounded cables!

the part that took me the longest was probobly getting everything out of the friggin retail boxes and getting things organised and prepared.

case audio headers are usually confusing.

But really, dont be scared. Remember, AT is here for you in times of need.

 

[Newfie]

Originally posted by: love2skate824
But really, dont be scared. Remember, AT is here for you in times of need.

Yes!!! So frigging true, here's a cookie for you

To the new guys out there. This is a huge realization i had a while ago. Whenever I had a problem, the AT forums always helped me. And hopefully it always shall

 

[Rubycon]

Buying the parts.

The FedEx man being a flirt doesn't help either.

I'm sure that's not the response you were expecting.

 

[Greenman]

To the OP. Don't listen to any of these people, none of them know what there talking about. The single hardest part of building a computer is explaning to your wife that buying $2000 worth of high end parts really is cheaper than getting a Dell.

 

[michal1980]

i say transfering my outlook file, because my rules never want to transfer, so then i have to setthem all up again.

also overclocking can at times be the hardest. finding that balance of speed/stablity can be never wrecking sometimes, espically when 1 app works and one crashes everything

 

[fibes]

Getting your computer to "work" can be pretty painless, if you do the proper research of what parts to buy. My general rule of thumb is to research the parts that are most popular with other users. Check the reliabilty and "ease to put together" with other forums. Then check to see how the part(s)operate with the other parts of the system(for example, what memory will be a good match for my motherboard? What heatsink will be the best choice for overclocking and has a successful oc with a particular motherboard manufacturer?)

 

[mect]

Personally, I think its hooking up all the little jumpers into the right spots on the mother board. The directions take you through it, but its tiny little finger work trying to get em all in.

 

[wchou]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew

Originally posted by: wchou
the software part is the most painful process because windows is such POS or PITA.

How is it painfull to install the OS, install drivers and then install and configure the programs you need? I can see it being time consuming, but not hard.

because it's so crappy that you need 2-3 hours to get it to work right and a friend i swear keeps formatting his hd at least once a month.

 

[bREwIn dOdgEr dUDe]

the research is time consuming for the first time (special thanks to AT)... but the hardest was the OS especially when SATA drivers need to be loaded by floppy... and going nuts trying to figure out why a CD couldn't/wouldn't suffice, luckily the MoBo Mfr included the floppy... oh and formatting the HD for first time (talk to my "F"-hard drive)... love the feeling tho' once its speeding along & no BSD's... Woo Hoo...

 

[tooltime]

the hardest part??? trying to decide on the components to buy, researching them all.

 

[lxskllr]

Routing wires. I can get a computer up and running in about 1/2 hour. Finding a place to put all of the wires takes me at least 2 hours, maybe more if I'm being really particular.

 

[lpphreakx06]

im thinking the hardest part was the wiring, software was smooth sailing for me

 

[niggles]

Originally posted by: mect
Personally, I think its hooking up all the little jumpers into the right spots on the mother board. The directions take you through it, but its tiny little finger work trying to get em all in.

Seriously? I thought jumper use was at an absolute minimum now. I might get 2 or 3 jumpers on a board at most now.

 

[hemiram]

The hardest part of building the last couple has been figuring out how to connect the front USB ports to the motherboard.

For some reason, none of the cables were labeled at all. nothing, just separate wires coming from the USB plugs. The other ones, that went to a slot filler on the back were completely labeled. The worst part was that the cables had different color coding than the other side, so it was a guess as to what went where. The USB plugs themselves are entombed with hot glue, so you can't even trace them that way.

I ended up just leaving them disconnected. I don't need all the USB ports in back, let alone the two front ones.

Some cases have odd things like this, and it always cracks me up, along with the "English" on the instruction sheets.

And why dont they have a standard power/HD/etc plug by now?? At my advanced age, reading the pinouts is a little hard to do sometimes when the silk screen is an odd color or is blurry.

 

[Jeff7181]

Coming up with the money to buy the parts.

 

[phatrabt]

Originally posted by: mect
Personally, I think its hooking up all the little jumpers into the right spots on the mother board. The directions take you through it, but its tiny little finger work trying to get em all in.

Too true! Why can't we have one standard with a header for it? Couldn't be that hard...

As for me it's setting up everything the way that I had it. I agree with the poster above that it's more time consuming than difficult, but it's still a royal PITA.

Oh, and I still get a little nervous when I put the HSF back on the CPU. Always hope I didn't mess something up and have to get a new CPU.

 

[lexmark]

Originally posted by: Greenman
To the OP. Don't listen to any of these people, none of them know what there talking about. The single hardest part of building a computer is explaning to your wife that buying $2000 worth of high end parts really is cheaper than getting a Dell.

Amen brother.

 

[0roo0roo]

its the which component is doa if ur unlucky. then the pain of returning/shipping if its online etc.

 

[Mickey Eye]

Connecting the firewire port, thankyou Thermal Take for marking the plugs completely differently from MSI. Actually I haven't even done it. Also realising that the first thing your going to have to do to your new case is put a drill through it because the thread on the screw holding the generic backplate in place is busted. After that everything was plain sailing.

I actually enjoyed doing the whole research thing.

 

[nfamous]

Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
I've always found updating the bios to be a real nail-bitter. If you screw-up, you've really screwed things up.

That and the 3 weeks waiting for your board to be returned from RMA.... :| Because then instead of being a 5 hr project, it is now a month long computer build...grr...i'm still bitter over that...

 

[pontifex]

i find that if everything works and you connected everything properly the 1st time, the whole thing should go smoothly.

 

[wchou]

whether to buy cheap component or refurbish products. both maybe dead on arrival

 

[forumposter32]

It's not "hard" although reading about the BIOS can take a while.

I actually found something found only on Asus boards called PEG Link Mode and I disabled it because it overclocks your video card. Strange, since even disabled, my GPU temperature can go up to 84'C.

 

[thescreensavers]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
Pushing the power button the first time

Thats the Hardest part everything is esey compared to this.

 

[Slugbait]

I always get mid to high-end parts, and never had a problem booting and getting up and running. Get one weak link, like a cheap PSU or mobo or RAM, and you spend hours or days trying to track down initial problems. That's something I love to avoid.

That said, the hardest part is the preparation and assembly. Damn, the videocard is a little long, and edges up too close to the hard drive cage so I can't plug in the molex for both the card and drive, now I have to relocate the drive to the next bay, but now the drive cable is too short to also reach the optical drive. OK, I have a side window and internal lighting, now how do I hide or reposition the PSU cables that aren't even connected to anything, and there's all those other cables to route around the back as well for my Platinum and my second optical drive...I don't want the lighting to show a huge cable mess. Crap, I should have gone with the deeper case that only would have cost me $10 more. Jeez, I can't install my Enermax PSU in this crappy Aspire case unless I completely unscrew the top exhaust fan, and then re-install it after bolting in the PSU...who designed this damn thing? Wait, now I have to pull out my NIC cuz it's directly over the jumpers I have to change in order to boot the system with the keyboard spacebar...I should have seen that feature in the mobo manual sooner, but I was too anxious to get this thing up and running fast. Wait, what the hell can I do with this damn cable for the side-panel fan? I can't even set it down without pulling the cables away along with other cables...crap! Oh for pete's sake, the cold cathode tube isn't gonna work there, now I have to reposition it so it doesn't block that...crap, does this double-sided sticky crap work for anybody??? The tube keeps falling off!

Once the OS cd goes in, I'm at my wit's end. But I've also had several beers by that time, so the rest is cake.