Your "my first build" success stories...

[Moleyman]

Hi everyone,

I am still toying on and off about building my next PC myself (versus speccing one myself and getting it built for me).

The thing that concerns me is the "I've just built my first PC and it doesn't work" type stories I read here and on other forums. I appreciate that people are more likely to post when they have issues instead of when everything goes well.

So, to counter all the bad news threads, perhaps you would like to post your first-time build success stories and experiences to help restore my confidence in building my next PC myself

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend.

All the best,

Moley

 

[Moleyman]

I guess the lack of responses kinda confirms my fears that it may not be as simple as the more experienced builders would have us believe lol

Enjoy the rest of your weekend everybody and thanks for looking.

All the best,

Moley

 

[Andy Pandy]

Last weekend I put together the computer in my signature. It was my first ever build and thankfully everything worked first time as I turned it on! It took me about 5 hours to do it all as I was taking my time making sure I followed the instructions to the letter.

Good luck with your build

 

[Moleyman]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Andy Pandy.

How did you find the experience? Daunting? Sweaty hands lol?

Anything you would do differently if you did the build again?

Thanks again,

Moley

 

[Andy Pandy]

I am proud to have built the system myself and I would encourage you to do the same. I watched a ton of videos of how to build computers and it helped a lot. I found attaching the cpu cooler the most difficult part of the build, having to attach the radiator to the mounting bracket on the case took a while for me. One thing that would have really aided me in the build would be to have a magnetic screwdriver. I was using a rubbish screwdriver I got in a cracker lol. Trying to keep the screws in place was quite a challenge..

My back was killing me after 5 hours of leaning over the case and screwing things in but having it all working in the end was so satisfying. I will upload a picture and show you my pc in a moment

 

[Andy Pandy]

There you go. The inside is a little neater now though. I have tidied up the dangling cables.

 

[Moleyman]

Thanks Andy,

I do like the look of that case; I prefer the minimalist look of cases. Can't believe some of the case that you see with all RGB fans in the front glowing away - to me, that is the equivalent of underbody neons on an old Vauxhall Nova

 

[Andy Pandy]

Yeah I prefer the style of this case to a lot of others too. My previous case was a Coolermaster Haf X which I liked at the time, but now I find it a little cheap looking. I have had an issue with temps though in the Phanteks case, I've now covered the radiator openings to stop the hot air sinking back into the case and I have the top panel resting on top to let more air escape. Apart from that I love my build

 

[ED209]

I haven't built a PC in a long time due to the amount they cost but always sort out my PC\Wifes\Sons etc.

The last thing I did was rebuild my own PC into a new case and before that was a mobo\ram\cpu upgrade which went weill with no issues after and booted first time.

I haven't ever had any issues building PC's for friends and just took my time, I did have a friend once who tried and then it wouldn't boot because he had stuffed on too much thermal paste and it had gone everywhere lol.

 

[StarShock]

My first proper build worked. Though I had already done a few upgrades before and moved a system from one case to another. So didn't go in completely blind it was an amd athlon 64 x2 4600 with a GeForce 7800 gtx in an akasa eclipse 62 case. Easily my most tweaked system. Overclocked added super janky custom water cooling. Managed to kill the ram at some point. Cold cathode lights. 2nd gpu and put aftermarket coolers on them. Was good fun. But I'm probably never gonna spend as much time or money on a system again

 

[MM-Seat]

Really easy and I'm rubbish at everything. Only thing I wasn't sure on was the stock cooler as it was almost bending the board when I was trying to fit it. Quick and expensive trip to Maplin sorted it out!

 

[Rroff]

In my time I've built a LOT of systems - easily over 200+ I've lost count, that I remember only one build failure and that was due to the backplate for the CPU shorting out stuff on the back of the motherboard due to the board not actually designed like all the rest that used that chipset. Sometimes had some fun and games with RAM compatibility and finding drivers, etc.

 

[Biggler]

I screwed the motherboard of my first build straight on to the case, without the riser studs

Thankfully it still worked after I fixed that

 

[Habakkuk]

I screwed the motherboard of my first build straight on to the case, without the riser studs

Thankfully it still worked after I fixed that

Oh blimey, a rookie mistake there!

Speaking of which, I managed to blow up a hard drive by getting the 6-pin modular power cable inserted in a 8-pin socket

 

[Grimley]

Off the top my head, my first PC I built from scratch myself was (in 2003) AMD Athlon XP3200 based, parts bought from a Computer fair. (Dont have any pics of it) the Graphics Card I bought for it was my 1st Nvidia card (5600 ultra) which I thought was quite cool until I bought Doom 3 for me & my Nephews to play, even on the lowest settings it was a slideshow, so I ended up buying a 6600GT, much better card. Case & PSU were generic back then, but that was in my unenlightened days.

 

[Akagi]

I plugged my USB plug for the front panel into the Firewire header and when I pressed the power button the motherboard caught fire.

But then I moved it to the correct header and it booted up first time despite previoisly being on fire and it was fine from then on.

 

[pastymuncher]

I built my first pc when the Athlon 64 on socket 754 was launched so 2003/4. This was after the Athlon 2000 based pc I bought from a local pc shop packed up a year and a few days after purchase. Even though it was less than a week over the year's warranty they weren't interested. I didn't know a lot about pc's at the time so did some research and fixed it myself. When I took it apart I found that they had used the cheapest of everything when building it including some piece of crap psu (mercury I think it was) that weighed nothing at all and turned out to be the problem. From then I decided that I would never be ripped off again and went on a mission to find out what was what with pc components. This resulted in a Athlon 64 3400+ in a MSI K8N Neo Platinum with a ATI 9600 Pro. I took my time when building and made sure everything was correct and it all worked first time. Later the gpu was upgraded to a Nvidia 6800GT a couple of months after launch and later stil the cpu was upgraded to the 3700+ in the awesome Epox EP-8NPA SLI which did the unthinkable and introduced SLI to socket 754. I had a pair of BFG 7800GT OC's in this which I beleive may have been my first purchase at OCUK and was £440 for the pair of cards. I also jumped into the world of watercooling at this time because the heat from this build was just sweltering in my little pc room and I needed a way to remove the heat from the room. Since then I have kept up with learning as much pc knowledge as I can and getting the best performance for my money. I would never buy a pre-built pc again.

 

[Jediben]

My first build was oooh 1996... things were different back then. I had to set jumpers on thr motherboard correctly (being based on a cyrix 686 cpu there were i think 8 different switches on what I think was a Chaintech motherboard) and ram came in 64mb or 128mb sticks... i had received an Orchid Righteous 3Dfx accelerator card tongo alongside my s3 Virge 2d graphics card, and still had room to plug my soundblaster 16 derivative audi card into an isa slot. I also had the internal 56k modem in a pci slot. The ATA hard drive was something like 4gb amd the ide cables meant more jumpers to choose a slave or master arrangement for ny 12x cd-rom drive. All running on a 200w psu.

Kids today don't know they're born!
I still remember the video card 'clicking' as it turned on and rendered Jedi Knight with life like clarity... hey I was 15 and the tech was new, ok?

 

[mistersprinkles]

My first build was in 2005 and it fired up on the first try. It was a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz based machine. I don't really remember all the parts it had. 1GB of RAM, 9600 AIW GPU, I think my old Audigy 2 audio card... All in an Antec Sonata 1.

 

[mistersprinkles]

Stunning case.