Build Your Own PC, or Die Trying

[Eel O'Brian]

Dude handed it over with the undamaged side facing away from me, so I didn't even notice it until he'd left.  Looks like it was kicked down a flight of steps.  Processor and Mobo were in the box.  I won't be able to put the PC together until the weekend when my other parts come in to check for any damage.  Awesome.

[Beezy]

 

[Fresh Prince]

After working in logistics; your shit will work

[Eel O'Brian]

also, newegg packing is kinda shitty

it's just wadded up paper loosely arranged around the sides, which is of course the perfect protective layer for expensive and delicate electronics

[Eel O'Brian]

also the packaging for that intel processor was surprisingly flimsy

it's the expensive brain of your pc, it should come wrapped in some sort of shock-absorbent material

[OptimoPeach]

I have stuff due from them tomorrow. Bad timing for this thread

[Eel O'Brian]

I did a live chat with a Newegg service rep and sent her the pics just so they'd be aware. She offered to set up an RMA right there, but I told her I'd wait to see if everything works first.  They seem pretty good about it.

[bork]

Hey Eel, what made you trade up your RoG laptop for a desktop, anyway?

[huckleberry]

Every package I have ever got from Newegg in the last 2 years looked like that...every fucking one. More than a dozen easy.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

oddly enough none of them had to be RMA'd.  I am sure your mobo is fine Eel.

[close]

[Eel O'Brian]

Hey Eel, what made you trade up your RoG laptop for a desktop, anyway?

I started feeling like a dickhead for owning a laptop because I never take it anywhere

Also, even though Metro 2033 puts a beating on any system it was still a great big "Eventually modern games won't run at all on this and you'll never be able to upgrade it" wake-up call.

plus, i kind of missed hunkering over a monitor in my kickass office chair, getting really into a game with no distractions around

Every package I have ever got from Newegg in the last 2 years looked like that...every fucking one. More than a dozen easy.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

oddly enough none of them had to be RMA'd.  I am sure your mobo is fine Eel.

[close]

good to know, thanks

[Rman]

My laptop never leaves the house.  I prefer netbooks or tablets for that.

[Van Cruncheon]

yeah, my giant-ass rog laptop is parked on a rolling desk, it has never left the house

but it is nice to slide it out of sight when folks are over

[MyNameIsMethodis]

can one of u guys help me build a game pc for chep

[Eel O'Brian]

how much do you want to spend

[MyNameIsMethodis]

like $600 i have a 1tb hard drive so i dun rlly need another the main problem is I dun have any windows so i'd have to buy one and that alone is like $100.

i was considering just picking up up from ibuypower.

[Eel O'Brian]

give me a minute

[MyNameIsMethodis]

THANK U <3<3<3<3

[Eel O'Brian]

here you go:



you can either rip a DVD drive out of an old PC or add $20 here for one

$500 with shipping, $460 after rebates, plenty of $ remaining out of your $600 limit to get Win7 and a keyboard/mouse set or something

[Eel O'Brian]

check out this article if you want to go even lower

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-pc-build-a-pc-overclock,2739.html

[MyNameIsMethodis]

you are the best thank you so much
  borecast

[Eel O'Brian]

i have become pretty good at working the newegg combo deals over the past two weeks, i could probably put together some variants if i spent a little more time - but that's a decent rig with room for a little future expansion

that motherboard is an am3, so you could upgrade your processor later on if you wanted, and it also gives you plenty of ports like eSata and an optical audio out if you want to jack it into a home surround system

no SLI support, but an SLI amd board would likely put you out of your budget

you don't really need a 600w PSU for that build, but PSU makers lie about how much their products can handle so i played it safe there

[MyNameIsMethodis]

don't I need some special paste to paste the mobo onto the proccessor? or does it come with it

[Eel O'Brian]

you're talking about using thermal paste when mounting the fan/heatsinks to the cpu, and no you don't, it will come already applied

unless you're going to try and overclock you don't really need it for that build

[Eel O'Brian]

hold on, that Mobo doesn't support DDR3 ram (wtf), get this cpu/mobo combo instead

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.500540

you lose some ports, but that's about it, nothing to sweat unless you were planning on hooking up more than 10 USB devices at the same time

total will now come to $492.74 with shipping

[MyNameIsMethodis]

lol that is weird the original one doesnt support DDR3. oh well, i get paid on friday anyways so hoping all these deals liveo ut till then.

[billyofcourse]

that is the reason I never ship via ups.  USPS priotity mail is where it's at.

[OptimoPeach]

Well everything I got yesterday looked fine, but the box my hard drive came in today had a nice looks-like-a-big-fat-guy-sat-on-this dent on one side.

I actually think I just got the hard drive somehow stuck in the case's chassis thanks to this stupid tool-less design crap. FUCK

[OptimoPeach]

k it slides out with like a half ounce of pressure on these lever rail things. I'm just distinguished mentally-challenged is all.

Eel, did you get a Rosewill case or was it a Cooler Master or something? I can't remember. If it was a Rosewill, could you please explain to me how you got your HDD in once you have everything set up? I can't secure the fucker in there without sliding it in too far and having it stick out of the right side of the tower by about an inch.

First time building a PC piece by piece, and it's this of all things that I'm stuck on

[Eel O'Brian]

yeah, i got a rosewill challenger, just came in today with my RAM and DVD drive (everything besides the box the proc and mobo came in was fine). I won't be able to put it all together until saturday, my PSU won't get here until tomorrow evening. I took the case out of the box to look at it and see if there was any damage, and noticed the HDDs slide in from the bay door side instead of the front plate - kinda weird. Whenever i've had an hdd problem in the past it was because i didn't line the rails up correctly when screwing them in.  I've never used a tool-less design before.

I got:

Intel i5-760 processor
EVGA SLI P55 motherboard
MSI Cyclone GTX 460 1GB OC
Rosewill Challenger & 750w PSU (I'm gonna SLI in the future)
LITE-ON DVD-RW
4GB Wintec AmpX DDR3 RAM (I did some research, Wintec does a lot of stuff for pre-built systems and releases some of it for sale a couple times a year, got checks for reliability on the reviews I read)
1.5TB HDD ( van cruncheon)

$680 after rebates

I'll be here to commiserate with you on Saturday.  I'm almost 100% certain something is going to go wrong.

[OptimoPeach]

Man you really do know how to play those combo deals. I ended up with a similar build for roughly $100 more I think lmao. Nevermind, I forgot I bought Windows 7

Well I don't know what I'm going to do now. I've realized that with the way the pins on the rails line up with the holes on my hard drive and the way the rails slide in, I can't get it in there without having it either A. stick out on one side or B. fit snugly but with all the ports facing the wrong direction. I'd be okay if I could slide it in from the opposite side, but I can't. I really hope there's something I'm missing

edit: Now I check Newegg and see this:

[Joe Molotov]

You boys should have gotten a real man's case.



Mmmmm....the Cooler Master Haf X. nomnomnom

[Dickie Dee]

can't see the energy drink holders from that angle

[Eel O'Brian]

Man you really do know how to play those combo deals. I ended up with a similar build for roughly $100 more I think lmao. Nevermind, I forgot I bought Windows 7

Well I don't know what I'm going to do now. I've realized that with the way the pins on the rails line up with the holes on my hard drive and the way the rails slide in, I can't get it in there without having it either A. stick out on one side or B. fit snugly but with all the ports facing the wrong direction. I'd be okay if I could slide it in from the opposite side, but I can't. I really hope there's something I'm missing

edit: Now I check Newegg and see this:

(Image removed from quote.)

oh no

well, i guess you could break the pegs off the included 2.5" HDD cage and lay it in there

[Eel O'Brian]

or buy one of these:

http://www.crazypc.com/products/drive-tray-52230.html

[chronovore]

I was impressed with this thread until I realized I paid more than that for a machine with maybe 1/4 the spec. Dell is poop. Japan prices are poop. Now I am sad.  :'(

[Brehvolution]

Yo Eel, if you have any issues getting your computer together, get a hold of me. I've built dozens of machines.

[cool breeze]

you're talking about using thermal paste when mounting the fan/heatsinks to the cpu, and no you don't, it will come already applied

unless you're going to try and overclock you don't really need it for that build

If you're going to overclock your cpu, it would be best to get a better headsink+fans for it anyway.  That's what I ended up doing and it worked out for the best.

[Eel O'Brian]

yeah, i don't ever intend to overclock so i think i'll be fine with stock

with newegg, you have to know when to jump - their prices fluctuate constantly (the case/psu combo i bought has already gone up by $10)

i bought the gtx 460, motherboard, and processor all on the same day when they were running one of those "extra 10% off with XXXXX code" daily deals

zero hero, i'm sure i'll hit you up on that offer sometime tomorrow

i've done just about everything there is to do on a pc (replaced dvd/psu/vidcard/ram) except install a motherboard and processor and do a post test, so those are likely the parts i will fuck up

[Eel O'Brian]

ups is probably the worst method of shipment since the days of tying things to a rock and throwing it as far as you could and just pretending it got there

or something like that

[Eel O'Brian]

they put packing peanuts in the box with the power supply

[Eel O'Brian]

this thread is now about building your own pc

[cool breeze]

building a pc is surprisingly easy.

I built my current one recently and before that it had been a few years since I built one with the help of a friend.  Things are a billion times easier these days.

[MyNameIsMethodis]

ya im kinda intimidated with putting toether a pc, I have toruble enough installing RAM (blew out 2 ram sockets) and a sound card.

[Eel O'Brian]

if i can seat that motherboard and processor properly, the rest will be gravy

well, except for cable management - going to buy some zip ties tonight

i'll bet anything i am missing a required cable in one of these boxes

[archie4208]

It took me about 6 hours to build my PC and that time was filled with disappointment, swearing and near violent outbursts.  In that time frame all of the following mishaps happened:

*I could not figure out how to screw the hard drives into their bay.
*The RAM was in the wrong slots and caused the mobo to beep like crazy.
*The graphics card barely fit (I had to make special accommodations in the case)
*Plugging in all of the colored connectors into the mobo was a colossal flop since they weren't properly color aligned (this was the most frustrating part)

I was also constantly paranoid I would fuck up with the processor and mobo installation, but honestly those parts were fairly easy.  It was still a worthwhile experience and I learned enough that I probably wouldn't have as much of a problem if I were to build another PC.

[Eel O'Brian]

i think the worst part is gonna be after i have it all hooked up, then having to download like a kajillion win7 updates, then waiting on games to download from steam

it's like, "Congrats on the new PC! PLEASE HOLD FOR 4 to 6 HOURS"

can i go to the MS website and just download everything at once?

[MyNameIsMethodis]

I think if you have a internet connection it updates it as part of the initial setup?

[demi]

Wait for SP1 then slipstream for future installations

[Eel O'Brian]

i also have to buy a keyboard, forgot about that

[Howard Alan Treesong]

If you still Have your old machine back up steam games locally first!!!!!

[Great Rumbler]

It took me about 6 hours to build my PC and that time was filled with disappointment, swearing and near violent outbursts.

Sounds about right! 

The only real mishap when I built my PC a couple years back was that my brother accidentally wiped the conductive paste off the bottom of the processor. But it was easily fixed by getting more from Best Buy.

[Brehvolution]

i think the worst part is gonna be after i have it all hooked up, then having to download like a kajillion win7 updates, then waiting on games to download from steam

it's like, "Congrats on the new PC! PLEASE HOLD FOR 4 to 6 HOURS"

can i go to the MS website and just download everything at once?

If you didn't save your steam directory from your old machine, I'd just let that roll all night while in bed. I've heard that it's good to leave your newly built PC on for 24 hours straight to "burn in". It's probably bullshit though.

[Phoenix Dark]

Building a computer is definitely one of the coolest things I've ever done. Really puts you through a rainbow of emotions if you're a noob like me. I remember turning it on, seeing the light come on and being like FUCK YES then noticing the cpu fan wasn't spinning lol.

hardest part was correctly connecting all those little wires that go into the mobo, like LED lights and stuff.

[Great Rumbler]

hardest part was correctly connecting all those little wires that go into the mobo, like LED lights and stuff.

Yeah, it's definitely a pain.

[Eel O'Brian]

explain saving the steam directory, please ( i did a steam backup once but i've forgotten how)

most of my games were on the RoG laptop, and that's long gone

i still have my old desktop in the living room (just gonna use that to watch movies and dick around on the internet) but i have a few steam games on it i could transfer