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Top Tips for Building your First Computer

Computers have now become an every day use, children are using them at primary school, at home and when they grow up. Children now are going to grow up having used a computer since they were little kids. Even if you don’t like computers, if you get annoyed by them you cannot ignore them they are everywhere so you may as well get used to it.

However, there is definitely a stigma throughout the world that computers are complex machines (perhaps due to the amount of uses a computer has) that they are difficult to build and take an experienced and knowledgeable person to create. Well they are wrong. Although you need some basic understanding of what each component does, you can quite easily build a computer in a couple of hours.

These are my top tips for building your first computer.

Top tip number one

If your planning on building your own computer always spend a little time before hand researching where is the best place to purchase your components from. Don’t just go of the retail price but remember to include the VAT and post price.

Two very good online computer shops are www.overclockers.co.uk and www.scan.co.uk

Top tip number two

Check that you have enough cables for all of the components. Usually you are given more than enough, however sometimes they do forget to pack enough. Unless you already have some yourself or you can easily get your hands on some this can be a nuisance.

Top tip number three

Cable management is always a good idea. Remember cable ties are your friends! so get your hands on a couple and take some time after the build to cable tie all your cables together for better air circulation and overall looks and access.

Top tip number four

Make sure you use some sort of earthing cable or touch the piping on your radiators before handling your computer components, especially when placing your motherboard in to your case.

Brief step by step guide to building the computer

Use these steps to building your computer:

  1. PSU goes in first. 
  2. Put your drives in second, either DVD rom drives card readers e.t.c
  3. Your hard drives go in now
  4. Motherboard next  
  5. Place your CPU in to your motherboard.  
  6. Use your thermal paste and place your heat sink on top.  
  7. Put your memory, graphics card, sound card, network card and any other devices in place.  
  8. Wire everything up. 
  9. Check everything is in place and connected.  
  10. Turn on and cross your fingers.
Hope this helps.

By: Willyboy104
Published: 10/01/08


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5 Posted Comments:

@ 9:01 am 10/01/08 by Ette_Rual
reading this article made me remember the first time i build my PC. actually, it is a family computer. so my siblings and i were tweaking the PC with screw drivers. i think this was back in 1995. long story short, we ended up asking help from a professional.

i like how you closed your article. "Turn on and cross your fingers." oh yeah, that will surely help :D
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@ 12:16 pm 10/01/08 by Willow Sidhe
I used to think it was complex and hard until I got a room mate who built computers for people. It's really quite easy once you understand how it works. This is a great article on the subject, as well. Thanks for the info. :)
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My PC

@ 7:23 pm 10/02/08 by agihcam
I thought you will give details here the specifications of the PC and when I read it, it shows the general approach. Well, this is good enough information to take into consideration when building a PC. I would like to build my own new PC since my old one is not functioning as expected, that is why I am very much interested with this topic.
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@ 8:34 am 10/11/08 by Mr. U
It's a good general approach, which might be helpful for first time builders -- but it lacks detail...
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@ 12:40 am 10/22/08 by Lejandro
I've done a bit of PCs and experience tells me that in initail boot, start with most basic set-up; 1. Case+PSU +Motherboard if everything goes well...
2. Case+PSU+Motherboard+Videocard/monitor then...
3. Cas+PSU+Motherboard+VC?monitor+memory then...
4. add the HD and so forth...

If you put everything up at thesame time in initial boot, troubleshooting if things don't act as it suppose to is hard for a first time builder...

Just my 2c...
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