12 ms·

> Building a gaming PC in real life is way too hard Huh?

jandrese 9y ago
It can get arcane getting the right socket mobo for your processor, getting the correct timings on the RAM, figuring out how much power supply you need to buy... And then there's those poorly documented nonstandardized fiddly little wire connectors for all of the front panel functions, plus another set for the USB ports and so on. To this day I'm never sure which way to plug in the LEDs, and even when I think I have it down I'll run into a mobo that does it the opposite way. And then your case has a three pin power switch (outer two wired up), but the motherboard only has two pins for it...
- chx 9y ago
  I think your comment is, what, a decade out of date? First of all, pcpartpicker and logicalincrements will help you choosing the right CPU with the right motherboard. Correct timings on RAM hasn't been a thing for many, many years, they work, at worst it won't use the maximum possibility the module offers. The PSU is hardly a problem, unless you are spending an extraordinary amount of money, the smallest PSU you can realistically buy is an overkill (CPU is 65W typically, very few GPUs go above 150W, and you can't even get a below 350W PSU really unless you have some office prebuilt from HP or Dell). The front I/O pretty much has standardized on Intel https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/images/motherboards/desktop/sb/img/fp_header.jpg https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/images/mothe... and most cases have a single block now.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    It's probably fine when you're buying everything new today. Building computers out of salvage parts adds a lot of complication.
davidkuhta 9y ago
Since the great subterranean migration of 2017, catching the elusive GPU outside of a mine and in its native habitat has proved quite difficult.
- slededit 9y ago
  The worst part is basically all the major vendors have drastically reduced their return policies or eliminated them entirely.
  - acmecorps 9y ago
    Really? Do you have a source for this? This would be bad for actual gamers
    - slededit 9y ago
      My source is Frys having giant signs saying final sale on all of their GPUs.
      - nasredin 9y ago
        I've read that GPUs are not designed to be run 24/7 e.g. bitcoin mining.
        shadowfacts 9y ago
        They’re not designed to run 24/7 but they don’t have an issue with it. The GPU and the card itself have no issues running continuously. The biggest problems come from the fans running continuously and getting worn down, and the coolers are by far the easiest part to replace.
- mellinoe 9y ago
  Is it really that hard to find them? I'm not that familiar with the current lineup of cards (still rocking a GTX 770 myself), but Amazon seems to have several 1050-1080 model cards in stock from various vendors. The prices do look a bit inflated, though.
  - shadowfacts 9y ago
    They’re hard to find for a reasonable price. The GTX 1070 had a launch price of $380. The cheapest one currently listed on PCPartPicker is about $550.
urda 9y ago
It will do you well to remember HN isn't the entire world. For many gamers out there building their first PC is a scary and daunting step.
- sp332 9y ago
  I've heard people say that before they actually put a PC together. Afterwards every one of them said "Oh, that wasn't so bad!" At least, in the last 15 years... The days of AGP and PCI-X and sharp-edged rolled-steel cases were a little more fraught.
  - giobox 9y ago
    AGP/PCI-X wasn't really any more difficult to work with than today's PCI Express etc. You really have to rewind to mid 90's pre-Windows 95 in the days before Plug 'n' Play when manually assigning IRQs etc was a thing before the process of building your own PC meaningfully changes in my opinion. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_and_play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_and_play
    - sp332 9y ago
      Right, but you had to match all the parts you were buying. It's easier now that everything is ATX and PCI-e. And before Amazon and Newegg, return policies were patchy.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > And before Amazon and Newegg, return policies were patchy. OTOH, before the main consumer storefronts were the kind of flea markets of no-name sellers that used to roll into county fairgrounds every couple months, you could actually find good retailers with not only strong return policies, but also focussed on quality parts with a high S/N ratio in their catalog, that even offered added value (including, e.g., mounting CPU and memory when bought with a motherboard.) Some of those same places survived, but they don't do consumer retail anymore.
drak0n1c 9y ago
Motherboard articles proudly promote a dim view of hardware, which is unfortunate for a publication with that name.
sincerely 9y ago
it is definitely harder than most PC building enthusiasts make it sound
- ovao 9y ago
  I haven’t built many machines over the years, but to me it’s less like ‘hard’ and more like ‘scary’. The line about locking down CPUs feeling like breaking hundreds of dollars of hardware 100% of the time is a very real thing. Otherwise it’s the usual dread of whether the damn thing will actually boot. These days, though, they’re much better at booting than they are at not booting, so most of that nail biting is gone.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  Honestly, it's mostly just detail-oriented. Some people might not pick it up easily, while others will. All the hardware-building forums and such make it easier than it used to be.
- penguinUzer 9y ago
  A lot of it is RTFM. If someone won't read the manual for their lawn mower or car they sure aren't going to bother for their computer.
paxys 9y ago
Why is that so surprising? It is hard even for technically-inclined users, let alone regular ones.
- maksimum 9y ago
  Define 'hard'. To me, almost anything that can be completed in a fixed amount of time with high probability isn't hard; it's tedious at most. But if it can be completed within one hour it's not even tedious, it's (IMO) 'easy'. For something to be 'hard', there should be a reasonable chance of failure with associated non-trivial costs.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    > a reasonable chance of failure with associated non-trivial costs. Any single part of a computer is a non-trivial cost if broken, and it's not too difficult to imagine the situations where that might happen: bending a pin on a CPU, giving a static shock to a component, misapplying thermal paste. Even for enthusiasts, this is a task they do perhaps every 3 years, and every time with different components.
    - wtallis 9y ago
      Most CPUs these days don't have pins to be bent. Killing a PC component with static shock is more difficult than you imagine and is pretty hard to do even if you aren't taking serious precautions like using anti-static wrist straps. Misapplying thermal past won't kill anything unless you use so much that it oozes out from the CPU-heatsink joint and short-circuits stuff on the motherboard (and that's assuming that your heatsink doesn't have thermal compound pre-applied, and that the aftermarket thermal compound you're using is actually electrically conductive). It takes willful ignorance and disregard for the simple instructions included with each component to even have a chance at breaking the expensive things.
      - lfowles 9y ago
        > Killing a PC component with static shock is more difficult than you imagine and is pretty hard to do even if you aren't taking serious precautions like using anti-static wrist straps Can confirm, got a little lazy and put spare components together into a working system on the carpet this past weekend. Everything still works well enough. :)
InitialLastName 9y ago
I think folks here are missing something. It isn't assembling a gaming PC that's difficult, it's the process of building the rig; specifying parts and confirming that they're compatible can be a daunting task, much less sourcing them and recognizing the appropriate prices. It's a really big matrix of possibilities that can be pretty opaque to people who don't keep up with it.
- trey-jones 9y ago
  It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the shopping is the fun part.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    Maybe for some people, but for others it can be a big, risky outlay of a significant amount of money.
- wtallis 9y ago
  Using a tool like PCPartPicker takes almost all of the effort and uncertainty out of planning a build.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    I've only built a couple of PCs but my method has been to find a PC for sale that is outside my price range - check for Linux compatibility by searching for problems - and then source the parts that match the spec. I can modify as I go, double up on RAM or whatever.
- onli 9y ago
  There are several sites that help with that. I built one of them: https://www.pc-kombo.com/ https://www.pc-kombo.com/ - it gives you the best cpu + gpu for your budget, based on benchmarks, with fitting parts around that. The most known is https://pcpartpicker.com/ https://pcpartpicker.com/, which gives you a broad selection of parts and checks compatibility as well.
sundvor 9y ago
There will be blood. ;) And you will put too much paste on, or not enough.
- sundvor 9y ago
  Whoever downvoted (and that's fine!) must only have worked on these modern cases with no sharp edges. Back in the days it was almost recommended to increase the iron in your diet prior to commencing a PC build.
dfxm12 9y ago
Meh, "gaming" is the operative word in that sentence. It's not just building a PC, it's knowing what components are required to run today's games, while leaving enough room for future-proofing against next {year|month|week}'s games.
badlucklottery 9y ago
I think it's one of those things that's super easy when everything goes right and requiring some pretty arcane tricks when they go wrong. I just recently put together a new PC and I was getting close to done. I plugged everything in before putting the side panels on, hit the power button and...nothing. No fans, no beeps, nada. Okay, I'll just disconnect the ATX power cable from the motherboard and short PS_ON to ground and see if the PSU fan will spin a bit...nothing again. Hmm. Maybe the modular cable is bad? Google the pinout for Corsair's "Type 4" PSU to make sure it's what I assume it is, drop my bit of wire down the correct pins directly on the PSU, jam my multimeter probes down a 12v + ground and...hell yeah, getting 11.something volts. Okay, bad ATX power cable, call Corsair, wait a week, problem solved. My wife was watching me do all this on the breakfast bar and kept asking "how did you know to try that?" and I really didn't have a good answer other than "been doing this or watching my dad do this since I was 8".
- jerf 9y ago
  I'm not sure I've ever assembled a computer without 1. exhaustively searching the internet about all the components and their interactions, finding no red flags 2. buying and assembling all the components 3. discovering some critical problem that requires some arcane setting to fix that probably downgrades performance 4. searching the internet for this particular problem and getting dozens of hits now that I have a specific symptom to go with my hardware. Clearly step 1 is going wrong somehow, but, I mean, I'm a fairly typical HN poster, you know, I've got at least intermediate-level search skills, you know?
  - ansible 9y ago
    Certainly there are things that can easily trip up an occasional PC builder. One of the things I always do these days is look up the memory compatibility for the motherboard I've selected, and then only buy off of that list. There are so many variations in just DDR4 2400 memory, and matching up all the parameters (timing, latency, etc.) is a hassle.
- actsasbuffoon 9y ago
  Ugh, this brings back bad memories. I had a new PC that wouldn't power up, and I couldn't figure out why for 2 or 3 days. Eventually I took the motherboard out of the case and then put it back in. Suddenly everything worked. The best guess I've got is that somehow the motherboard was touching the case in a way that was causing it to short out.
danShumway 9y ago
It kind of straddles the worst line between easy and hard. It's pretty straightforward and easy to do, so you don't get any bragging rights when you finish, but there also aren't a ton of safety nets in case you do something stupid to keep you from ruining an expensive component. When I put together my computer, I dropped a CPU at an angle and bent one of the pins on the motherboard, then spent 3 hours flicking it with a needle to get it to realign. It's like doing taxes - not really an accomplishment, so big whoop if you do it right, but just dangerous enough to mean you have to pay attention and take it seriously.
- ethbro 9y ago
  When working with electronics, I use the CS vs EE analogy. CS person: grabs part by hand, shuffles across the floor in socks, brushes dust off a pin, presses part into place EE person: stares in horror, a grounding strap dangling from their hand CS: "What?" EE: "You know you're supposed to ground yourself to prevent static discharge from frying parts?" CS: "Bah, it worked fine the last time I did it this way." Point being there's a difference between something that works 99/100 times, and something that works 60/100 times. And when failure means a dead part, probably best to go the extra mile.
  - nasredin 9y ago
    You only ground yourself if you paid for the components. If it's your bud's money... it will probably be fine. Just hold the beer when you are installing the CPU :)
  - Paperweight 9y ago
    ...and then the CS-assembled computer works perfectly while the EE-assembled computer has gremlins. That's how it usually works. :/
  - penguinUzer 9y ago
    Being one of those "EE persons" specialized in semiconductors seeing lack of ESD protection drives me insane. I used to work on an electronics factory production floor where it was required of me to take a certification course of proper handling procedures and in the use of ESD arresting equipment. Your PC build didn't boot? Probably shocked it. It's blue screening or kernel panicking? Probably shocked it.
ArlenBales 9y ago
Two of my friends build bicycles from scratch, but they find building a PC difficult. I argue that their hobby is ten times more complex than building a PC nowadays, as everything is mostly plug-in-play and idiot-proof. Installing the CPU in a mobo is a walk-in-the-park compared to truing your wheel or overhaul a hub.
- penguinUzer 9y ago
  I disagree on being 10x harder. Bicycles are the same concept just older. There is a frame (computer case/mobo) and you bolt on compatible parts like brakes, cranks, forks, wheels, etc. (cpu/memory/gpu/psu) I'm sure if you talk to someone working at a bike shop they could take your comment, flip it, and still have it be accurate: Two of my friends build PCs from scratch, but they find building a bicycle difficult. I argue that their hobby is ten times more complex than building a bicycle nowadays, as everything is mostly plug-in-play and idiot-proof. Truing your wheel or overhaul a hub is a walk-in-the-park compared to installing the CPU.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Having done the process a few times over the last, oh, two decades, I can say that some things have gotten easier while others have gotten a bit worse. Assembly a PC is pretty easy these days, most of the parts go together pretty easily, and your chances of everything working on the first try are pretty high. This is way different from ye olden days when it might take hours just to get a PC put together correctly unless you were lucky, hardware is a lot less fiddly these days than it used to be. But buying all the components for a PC is more challenging for novices. This can be hard for techies to understand because we just assume that everyone knows what we know. But your J. Average prospective computer building may not know whether a Core i7 8700 is better than a Core 2 Quad or vice versa. They also may not know what the heck an 8th generation Core i7 is. There are so many generations of components now and so many gradations within each generation that it can become and informational overload. If you try to go at the problem directly by just heading to newegg or amazon and browsing for parts without doing the research you're going to have a bad time. There are a zillion different socket formats, there are a zillion different motherboard form factors, there are a zillion different GPU lines and each one has a zillion different variations. How do you know which are compatible? How do you know which ones are the best? Or just the best for the price? Are higher numbers better? Worse? Not important? Is LGA 2066 better than LGA 1151? Is a GeForce 9800 better than a GTX 1080? There are a zillion of these little questions. Already knowing most of the answers makes navigating the problem vastly easier, having to find an answer for each and every one of them can be exhausting. You absolutely need some sort of guide or hand holding to get started on this problem from scratch but if you don't have any pre-existing knowledge you don't know where to go. (Personally, my favorite is http://www.logicalincrements.com http://www.logicalincrements.com but there are others.) You need someone to help you narrow the scope of the decision problem to a manageable level, otherwise you'll drown in choices and questions until you run out of will power to continue.
- penguinUzer 9y ago
  Excellent comment! Graphics card naming schemes are the worst of the lot. Without being an enthusiast and keeping up with benchmark reporting it's impossible to tell say, if an AMD RX560 is faster than an RX480. I mean 560 is a bigger number which means it's faster, right?
Infernal 9y ago
The last computer I built required soldering and Digi-Key. As I found out after lots of trial and error, I got a bad molex-to-sata power adapter, and it took killing two hard drives before I narrowed it down to that cable. The SATA end was too narrow to get a multimeter in. I suspect the 12v and 5v lines were crossed. Long story short, a couple of resistors and diodes later my WD Blues were spinning up again, but it was a pain in the ass.
penguinUzer 9y ago
I used to think this way until recently. I literally have an engineering degree in electronics and it takes me hours to research a compatible set of components. A lay person stands no chance! A couple of examples off the top of my head: AMD RX480 power draw exceeds the pci-express current limit specification and bricked motherboards, hence I bought/overclocked an RX470 instead. Intel 6700k overclocking. Wow. Reading and understanding the thermal and power envelopes described in the 300 page datasheet difficult for me, it would be impossible for a lay person to comprehend.

It can get arcane getting the right socket mobo for your processor, getting the correct timings on the RAM, figuring out how much power supply you need to buy... And then there's those poorly documented nonstandardized fiddly little wire connectors for all of the front panel functions, plus another set for the USB ports and so on. To this day I'm never sure which way to plug in the LEDs, and even when I think I have it down I'll run into a mobo that does it the opposite way. And then your case has a three pin power switch (outer two wired up), but the motherboard only has two pins for it...

chx 9y ago
I think your comment is, what, a decade out of date? First of all, pcpartpicker and logicalincrements will help you choosing the right CPU with the right motherboard. Correct timings on RAM hasn't been a thing for many, many years, they work, at worst it won't use the maximum possibility the module offers. The PSU is hardly a problem, unless you are spending an extraordinary amount of money, the smallest PSU you can realistically buy is an overkill (CPU is 65W typically, very few GPUs go above 150W, and you can't even get a below 350W PSU really unless you have some office prebuilt from HP or Dell). The front I/O pretty much has standardized on Intel https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/images/motherboards/desktop/sb/img/fp_header.jpg https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/images/mothe... and most cases have a single block now.
- jandrese 9y ago
  It's probably fine when you're buying everything new today. Building computers out of salvage parts adds a lot of complication.

davidkuhta 9y ago

Since the great subterranean migration of 2017, catching the elusive GPU outside of a mine and in its native habitat has proved quite difficult.

slededit 9y ago
The worst part is basically all the major vendors have drastically reduced their return policies or eliminated them entirely.
- acmecorps 9y ago
  Really? Do you have a source for this? This would be bad for actual gamers
  - slededit 9y ago
    My source is Frys having giant signs saying final sale on all of their GPUs.
    - nasredin 9y ago
      I've read that GPUs are not designed to be run 24/7 e.g. bitcoin mining.
      - shadowfacts 9y ago
        They’re not designed to run 24/7 but they don’t have an issue with it. The GPU and the card itself have no issues running continuously. The biggest problems come from the fans running continuously and getting worn down, and the coolers are by far the easiest part to replace.
mellinoe 9y ago
Is it really that hard to find them? I'm not that familiar with the current lineup of cards (still rocking a GTX 770 myself), but Amazon seems to have several 1050-1080 model cards in stock from various vendors. The prices do look a bit inflated, though.
- shadowfacts 9y ago
  They’re hard to find for a reasonable price. The GTX 1070 had a launch price of $380. The cheapest one currently listed on PCPartPicker is about $550.

urda 9y ago

It will do you well to remember HN isn't the entire world. For many gamers out there building their first PC is a scary and daunting step.

sp332 9y ago
I've heard people say that before they actually put a PC together. Afterwards every one of them said "Oh, that wasn't so bad!" At least, in the last 15 years... The days of AGP and PCI-X and sharp-edged rolled-steel cases were a little more fraught.
- giobox 9y ago
  AGP/PCI-X wasn't really any more difficult to work with than today's PCI Express etc. You really have to rewind to mid 90's pre-Windows 95 in the days before Plug 'n' Play when manually assigning IRQs etc was a thing before the process of building your own PC meaningfully changes in my opinion. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_and_play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_and_play
  - sp332 9y ago
    Right, but you had to match all the parts you were buying. It's easier now that everything is ATX and PCI-e. And before Amazon and Newegg, return policies were patchy.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > And before Amazon and Newegg, return policies were patchy. OTOH, before the main consumer storefronts were the kind of flea markets of no-name sellers that used to roll into county fairgrounds every couple months, you could actually find good retailers with not only strong return policies, but also focussed on quality parts with a high S/N ratio in their catalog, that even offered added value (including, e.g., mounting CPU and memory when bought with a motherboard.) Some of those same places survived, but they don't do consumer retail anymore.

drak0n1c 9y ago

Motherboard articles proudly promote a dim view of hardware, which is unfortunate for a publication with that name.

sincerely 9y ago

it is definitely harder than most PC building enthusiasts make it sound

ovao 9y ago
I haven’t built many machines over the years, but to me it’s less like ‘hard’ and more like ‘scary’. The line about locking down CPUs feeling like breaking hundreds of dollars of hardware 100% of the time is a very real thing. Otherwise it’s the usual dread of whether the damn thing will actually boot. These days, though, they’re much better at booting than they are at not booting, so most of that nail biting is gone.
khedoros1 9y ago
Honestly, it's mostly just detail-oriented. Some people might not pick it up easily, while others will. All the hardware-building forums and such make it easier than it used to be.
penguinUzer 9y ago
A lot of it is RTFM. If someone won't read the manual for their lawn mower or car they sure aren't going to bother for their computer.

paxys 9y ago

Why is that so surprising? It is hard even for technically-inclined users, let alone regular ones.

maksimum 9y ago
Define 'hard'. To me, almost anything that can be completed in a fixed amount of time with high probability isn't hard; it's tedious at most. But if it can be completed within one hour it's not even tedious, it's (IMO) 'easy'. For something to be 'hard', there should be a reasonable chance of failure with associated non-trivial costs.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  > a reasonable chance of failure with associated non-trivial costs. Any single part of a computer is a non-trivial cost if broken, and it's not too difficult to imagine the situations where that might happen: bending a pin on a CPU, giving a static shock to a component, misapplying thermal paste. Even for enthusiasts, this is a task they do perhaps every 3 years, and every time with different components.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    Most CPUs these days don't have pins to be bent. Killing a PC component with static shock is more difficult than you imagine and is pretty hard to do even if you aren't taking serious precautions like using anti-static wrist straps. Misapplying thermal past won't kill anything unless you use so much that it oozes out from the CPU-heatsink joint and short-circuits stuff on the motherboard (and that's assuming that your heatsink doesn't have thermal compound pre-applied, and that the aftermarket thermal compound you're using is actually electrically conductive). It takes willful ignorance and disregard for the simple instructions included with each component to even have a chance at breaking the expensive things.
    - lfowles 9y ago
      > Killing a PC component with static shock is more difficult than you imagine and is pretty hard to do even if you aren't taking serious precautions like using anti-static wrist straps Can confirm, got a little lazy and put spare components together into a working system on the carpet this past weekend. Everything still works well enough. :)

InitialLastName 9y ago

I think folks here are missing something. It isn't assembling a gaming PC that's difficult, it's the process of building the rig; specifying parts and confirming that they're compatible can be a daunting task, much less sourcing them and recognizing the appropriate prices. It's a really big matrix of possibilities that can be pretty opaque to people who don't keep up with it.

trey-jones 9y ago
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the shopping is the fun part.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  Maybe for some people, but for others it can be a big, risky outlay of a significant amount of money.
wtallis 9y ago
Using a tool like PCPartPicker takes almost all of the effort and uncertainty out of planning a build.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I've only built a couple of PCs but my method has been to find a PC for sale that is outside my price range - check for Linux compatibility by searching for problems - and then source the parts that match the spec. I can modify as I go, double up on RAM or whatever.
onli 9y ago
There are several sites that help with that. I built one of them: https://www.pc-kombo.com/ https://www.pc-kombo.com/ - it gives you the best cpu + gpu for your budget, based on benchmarks, with fitting parts around that. The most known is https://pcpartpicker.com/ https://pcpartpicker.com/, which gives you a broad selection of parts and checks compatibility as well.

sundvor 9y ago

There will be blood. ;) And you will put too much paste on, or not enough.

sundvor 9y ago
Whoever downvoted (and that's fine!) must only have worked on these modern cases with no sharp edges. Back in the days it was almost recommended to increase the iron in your diet prior to commencing a PC build.

dfxm12 9y ago

Meh, "gaming" is the operative word in that sentence. It's not just building a PC, it's knowing what components are required to run today's games, while leaving enough room for future-proofing against next {year|month|week}'s games.

badlucklottery 9y ago

I think it's one of those things that's super easy when everything goes right and requiring some pretty arcane tricks when they go wrong. I just recently put together a new PC and I was getting close to done. I plugged everything in before putting the side panels on, hit the power button and...nothing. No fans, no beeps, nada. Okay, I'll just disconnect the ATX power cable from the motherboard and short PS_ON to ground and see if the PSU fan will spin a bit...nothing again. Hmm. Maybe the modular cable is bad? Google the pinout for Corsair's "Type 4" PSU to make sure it's what I assume it is, drop my bit of wire down the correct pins directly on the PSU, jam my multimeter probes down a 12v + ground and...hell yeah, getting 11.something volts. Okay, bad ATX power cable, call Corsair, wait a week, problem solved. My wife was watching me do all this on the breakfast bar and kept asking "how did you know to try that?" and I really didn't have a good answer other than "been doing this or watching my dad do this since I was 8".

jerf 9y ago
I'm not sure I've ever assembled a computer without 1. exhaustively searching the internet about all the components and their interactions, finding no red flags 2. buying and assembling all the components 3. discovering some critical problem that requires some arcane setting to fix that probably downgrades performance 4. searching the internet for this particular problem and getting dozens of hits now that I have a specific symptom to go with my hardware. Clearly step 1 is going wrong somehow, but, I mean, I'm a fairly typical HN poster, you know, I've got at least intermediate-level search skills, you know?
- ansible 9y ago
  Certainly there are things that can easily trip up an occasional PC builder. One of the things I always do these days is look up the memory compatibility for the motherboard I've selected, and then only buy off of that list. There are so many variations in just DDR4 2400 memory, and matching up all the parameters (timing, latency, etc.) is a hassle.
actsasbuffoon 9y ago
Ugh, this brings back bad memories. I had a new PC that wouldn't power up, and I couldn't figure out why for 2 or 3 days. Eventually I took the motherboard out of the case and then put it back in. Suddenly everything worked. The best guess I've got is that somehow the motherboard was touching the case in a way that was causing it to short out.

danShumway 9y ago

It kind of straddles the worst line between easy and hard. It's pretty straightforward and easy to do, so you don't get any bragging rights when you finish, but there also aren't a ton of safety nets in case you do something stupid to keep you from ruining an expensive component. When I put together my computer, I dropped a CPU at an angle and bent one of the pins on the motherboard, then spent 3 hours flicking it with a needle to get it to realign. It's like doing taxes - not really an accomplishment, so big whoop if you do it right, but just dangerous enough to mean you have to pay attention and take it seriously.

ethbro 9y ago
When working with electronics, I use the CS vs EE analogy. CS person: grabs part by hand, shuffles across the floor in socks, brushes dust off a pin, presses part into place EE person: stares in horror, a grounding strap dangling from their hand CS: "What?" EE: "You know you're supposed to ground yourself to prevent static discharge from frying parts?" CS: "Bah, it worked fine the last time I did it this way." Point being there's a difference between something that works 99/100 times, and something that works 60/100 times. And when failure means a dead part, probably best to go the extra mile.
- nasredin 9y ago
  You only ground yourself if you paid for the components. If it's your bud's money... it will probably be fine. Just hold the beer when you are installing the CPU :)
- Paperweight 9y ago
  ...and then the CS-assembled computer works perfectly while the EE-assembled computer has gremlins. That's how it usually works. :/
- penguinUzer 9y ago
  Being one of those "EE persons" specialized in semiconductors seeing lack of ESD protection drives me insane. I used to work on an electronics factory production floor where it was required of me to take a certification course of proper handling procedures and in the use of ESD arresting equipment. Your PC build didn't boot? Probably shocked it. It's blue screening or kernel panicking? Probably shocked it.

ArlenBales 9y ago

Two of my friends build bicycles from scratch, but they find building a PC difficult. I argue that their hobby is ten times more complex than building a PC nowadays, as everything is mostly plug-in-play and idiot-proof. Installing the CPU in a mobo is a walk-in-the-park compared to truing your wheel or overhaul a hub.

penguinUzer 9y ago
I disagree on being 10x harder. Bicycles are the same concept just older. There is a frame (computer case/mobo) and you bolt on compatible parts like brakes, cranks, forks, wheels, etc. (cpu/memory/gpu/psu) I'm sure if you talk to someone working at a bike shop they could take your comment, flip it, and still have it be accurate: Two of my friends build PCs from scratch, but they find building a bicycle difficult. I argue that their hobby is ten times more complex than building a bicycle nowadays, as everything is mostly plug-in-play and idiot-proof. Truing your wheel or overhaul a hub is a walk-in-the-park compared to installing the CPU.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Having done the process a few times over the last, oh, two decades, I can say that some things have gotten easier while others have gotten a bit worse. Assembly a PC is pretty easy these days, most of the parts go together pretty easily, and your chances of everything working on the first try are pretty high. This is way different from ye olden days when it might take hours just to get a PC put together correctly unless you were lucky, hardware is a lot less fiddly these days than it used to be. But buying all the components for a PC is more challenging for novices. This can be hard for techies to understand because we just assume that everyone knows what we know. But your J. Average prospective computer building may not know whether a Core i7 8700 is better than a Core 2 Quad or vice versa. They also may not know what the heck an 8th generation Core i7 is. There are so many generations of components now and so many gradations within each generation that it can become and informational overload. If you try to go at the problem directly by just heading to newegg or amazon and browsing for parts without doing the research you're going to have a bad time. There are a zillion different socket formats, there are a zillion different motherboard form factors, there are a zillion different GPU lines and each one has a zillion different variations. How do you know which are compatible? How do you know which ones are the best? Or just the best for the price? Are higher numbers better? Worse? Not important? Is LGA 2066 better than LGA 1151? Is a GeForce 9800 better than a GTX 1080? There are a zillion of these little questions. Already knowing most of the answers makes navigating the problem vastly easier, having to find an answer for each and every one of them can be exhausting. You absolutely need some sort of guide or hand holding to get started on this problem from scratch but if you don't have any pre-existing knowledge you don't know where to go. (Personally, my favorite is http://www.logicalincrements.com http://www.logicalincrements.com but there are others.) You need someone to help you narrow the scope of the decision problem to a manageable level, otherwise you'll drown in choices and questions until you run out of will power to continue.

penguinUzer 9y ago
Excellent comment! Graphics card naming schemes are the worst of the lot. Without being an enthusiast and keeping up with benchmark reporting it's impossible to tell say, if an AMD RX560 is faster than an RX480. I mean 560 is a bigger number which means it's faster, right?

Infernal 9y ago

The last computer I built required soldering and Digi-Key. As I found out after lots of trial and error, I got a bad molex-to-sata power adapter, and it took killing two hard drives before I narrowed it down to that cable. The SATA end was too narrow to get a multimeter in. I suspect the 12v and 5v lines were crossed. Long story short, a couple of resistors and diodes later my WD Blues were spinning up again, but it was a pain in the ass.

penguinUzer 9y ago

I used to think this way until recently. I literally have an engineering degree in electronics and it takes me hours to research a compatible set of components. A lay person stands no chance! A couple of examples off the top of my head: AMD RX480 power draw exceeds the pci-express current limit specification and bricked motherboards, hence I bought/overclocked an RX470 instead. Intel 6700k overclocking. Wow. Reading and understanding the thermal and power envelopes described in the 300 page datasheet difficult for me, it would be impossible for a lay person to comprehend.