Jeff, those are some excellent photographs!
May I ask what kind of camera you have?
I’ve tried to take photos of electronics in the past but they always came out blurry on my ancient Canon PowerShot S45 camera.
Thanks.
Ignore “PCman”:
Once you mentioned that you don’t properly protect against static
you immediately lost a great deal of authority as far as I am
concerned.
My experience is the same as yours - I’ve worked on/inside/building PCs since 1985 and I have NEVER killed any component with static.
As you say, touch an earthed metal surface and you are pretty much safe. And don’t wear anything that generates lots of static (nylon, fleeces etc.)
I don’t see why some of you are still complaining about building a computer. So what if you have to research to see if a component supports the motherboard - thats the point. I work at a computer company called CompUsa and we always have customers complain about a faulty motherboard a company installed for them and they have no one else to turn to but us. Most of the time its pre-built pcs, and the manufacturers give them a big run around about fixing them. You want to build a computer to last, and that is why I stress take your time, you don’t need to rush. If you do this you will learn that they will last as long as you build them. Research on the website to see what motherboard is rated the best. Don’t get a motherboard that has hundreds of complaints on it saying it was a bad bored. People get those bad motherboards because they think they look cool, but trust me if the board dies, it really isn’t cool now is it. Trust me I spent $6400 dollars on Alienwares Area-51m desktop and regret it to this day. The motherboard completly burnt out, and since it was 2 months after 30 day warrenty to send the pc back for a new one, I was stuck. I couldn’t do anything, I contacted those newbies on the phone who knew 10 times less than me about computers and gave me nothing but a run around. Finally they told me to take it back but I didn’t waste my time because I knew it would be sitting at their warehouse months on end before it would be fixed, but luckly I went back to my old pc I built which was an AMD 3200+ 939 pc, its been working for about two - half years and still going strong. As for this Alienware pc I saved up and bought, I took some of them parts out inside the motherboard and threw the case and the damn problematic liquid coolant they installed in the trash. It was no use to me anyway.
Oh my god, you spent 6,000 DOLLARS on a comp and got a 30 day warranty?
That is crap, shoulda been like 3 years.
wow, big heatsink! looks like a highrise
wow that makes a ton more sence now i nstead of peeple saying that you want dual intel1243 or somtethin u actually explained it
Hello, by any chance, would you have any step-by-step guide for super amateur and intensely klutzy PC builders?
I was looking at these photographs and instructions, and I’m like… whoa. I don’t think I can do this yet.
Jeff,
I enjoyed the article series when it came out.
But I thought I would let you know that I was able to use the article as a ‘recipe’ to build a PC with a 16 year old friend of the family.
He was able to do most of the build himself after reading the article and having some guidance from me.
Thanks.
Joel, stopped by to re-read this post before starting my shopping list and saw your comments about the risks of static discharge being greatly overblown.
We just watched a great training vid at work this week about ESD. The folks that put together the vid rigged up a device to measure the voltage being transferred during typical tasks.
I was surprised to learn that every single thing that I thought was good enough to discharge before touching electronic components, was actually/virtually worthless.
they concluded that wrist straps and a grounded work area (uncluttered by plastic, paper or anything) was the only safe way to work.
Great article. Two years on it has helped me immensely in building my developer rig for the first time. I’ve just finished part one and did a little celebratory gig! On to part 2. Thanks very much!
Nice cooling setup.
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Most of the time, your motherboard will come with the necessary cables. Do make sure that whatever you buy is actually supported by the motherboard (e.g. if you’re buying SATA-II hard drives, or a PCI-E video card). If it’s your first build, I’d suggest double checking either with someone at the store where you’re getting the parts, or with a knowledgeable friend.
YOU ARE AWESOME!!!i was kind of hesitant about…goig about building my pc myself, but this really helps!and i think ill have all my parts in about a month and will get right to it! one question though,do all the parts come with the right cables/ide connectors?or do i buy thses myself?
It’s certainly true that to get started, it’s hard to go wrong with a prebuilt system from Dell or the like. The real benefits from a DIY job come at upgrade time.
For example, I have my own DIY job that suddenly wouldn’t even get to POST. It took me about an hour to figure out that the problem was the power supply. I replaced it, problem solved.
Contrast with the typical Dell customer, who will typically spend about $500 for a new setup. Note that at this point the user has already spend more money but less time, not a bad tradeoff necessarily. But that’s just the beginning, now the user gets to worry about how to migrate all his data to the new drive and OS. The time savings are now gone.
Caption for your “Cat helper” pic:
“I am geeksquad cat. I am defraggin ur hard drive for 99 bux.”
I’m intrigued by the idea that someone who is “not a hardcore gamer” gets the “midrange” option of a pair of SLI-configured 8600GTS cards. You consider that ‘mid range’?
Correct me if I’m wrong: is Scott Hanselman asking for a 3 to 4 monitor setup? That’s the only way you’d definitely need 2 of those cards. Quite possible for hardcore devs, especially those with VPCs running at the background all the time. Or probably he just wants to have an ultra-realistic flight simulator experience 
One of the best reasons I’ve found for building your own machine is that you don’t get saddled with all the bloatware and “trial versions” that the vendors pre-install on the hard drive “for your convenience.”
Great article! Looking forward to part two
Built this Lego kit in about 10 to 12 hours a few weeks back:
http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=B8421cn=57d=70
Eyeing off the 5000 piece Millenium Falcon kit now.
I wouldn’t be so sure if PC assembly can really a easy task. Sure, I have been doing it since i was a teenager anal about the exact specs to power my games, so it appears to be easy. But for anybody who has never assembled one before, I’d caution get a live person with experience for some coaching. There are quite a number of items like the sitting of RAM modules and HSF placement that have high potential for mistakes.
It is not something I’d advise a person to just read a web site guide and attempt it alone.