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Hello, I'm thinking of saving up a bit of money to build my own PC this Christmas. First off, is it paticulary difficult? My friend says it's simply a case of slotting things in places, and screwing them in, then connecting cables. Is this true?
Here is some specific questions about a certain motherboard. Does it have onboard sound, and what type of hard drive does it support? (IDE or SATA?)
Here's the link to the motherboard:
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/97310
And finally, do I need to buy any cables? Or are the cables I need supplied with the hardware? (i.e ribbon cables)
Thank you very much :)
Yes, it's a matter of screwing the motherboard, power supply, drives, etc. into a computer case and then attaching the cables. But (there's always a but), even the best of us occasionally run into a gremlin. I would only suggest building your own PC is you have access to someone with computer knowledge in case you hit a glitch.
The motherboard you referenced does in fact have onboard sound, and it supports both Parallel IDE and Serial IDE drives. In most cases, motherboards come with cables. If not, they are relatively inexpensive, and if you do have a computer savvy friend, chances are he/she has extra cables -- Lord knows I have dozens of them.
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If you haven't already purchased the board, choose a different one. DFI makes an excellent board, but you should get one based on the nForce4 Ultra chipset, not the plain vanilla nForce4.
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Well HFD, if you cannot read and understand the specification listed on the web site you quoted, I should think again about building you own computer. The information is all there. It does require some thought on the part of the person doing the building.
It does have on-board sound.
It does support SATA and IDE.Generally speaking all cables are supplied with the motherboard. Putting it together is easy. Working out why it wont work when you switch it on is the hard part.
Stuart
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Ah ok, thank you very much :) My friend is knows a lot about this sort of stuff so if I run into a glitch I'll just ask him.
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I suggest you first attach the motherboard, keyboard, monitor and memory only and see if you can get it to boot to into bios. Then once that works put it in the case and add drives.
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StuartS:
What confused me is that it mentioned both IDE and SATA, I thought motherboards had to only use one standard, and not both. But thanks for the reply, I'm going to think hard about it as if I buy the wrong parts I could obviously lose loads of money.
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>> What confused me is that it mentioned both IDE and SATA, I thought motherboards had to only use one standard, and not both. <<
Most motherboards with SATA support both. Pre-SATA motherboards supported four IDE devices. Motherboards with SATA usually only support two IDE devices.
At the moment there is little to chose between IDE and SATA as regards performance but SATA has the potential to be faster. IDE has just about reached the maximum speed possible. As SATA improves, IDE will be phased out.
Stuart
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DONT forget the standoff screws for the motherboard to the case. My first build I just kind of looked at my old computer, took it apart and built my new one like the way it looked before but I did not notice there were standoffs underneath the motherboard. Luckily before I powered it on I took it to a friend who told me of this so I did save that m/b. I would get someone to watch you as you do it just to be safe. Or get a book on it. And don't get the DFI m/b unless you like spend time configuring everything in the bios manually to get it to run well.
x2 3800+ @2.5ghz
2x512mb cosair xms ddr400
160GB wd
Radeon x1800xt @ 700/1700
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Builting a computer is fairly easy. Most things only fit one way now, (except the IDE cables on the older machines), so it is hard to mess things up.
The complex part comes when you are putting the cpu heatsink on, since I broke a motherboard putting one on before, (slipped with the screwdriver...), (at least it was a cheap throw away) and plugging all the connections for the power switch, reset switch, speaker, leds, and other annoying headers.
The motherboard supports up to 2 IDE and up to 4 SATA connections.
Be adviced that you will need to purchase a video card, one for either PCI or PCIe x16. I suggest a PCIe x16 video adapter.When I built my first computer, I didn't know about all the terms either. Asking questions doesn't hurt any and its always better to ask lots and lots of questions before spending money.
Do be adviced that you will need to make sure the cpu and motherboard and ram will work together, as well as the power supply.
This means that you will need a 24-pin power supply, 184-pin DDR400 (PC3200) memory, with each memory modual being no more then 1 GB in size, and a socket 939 (AMD) CPU. (these are from the mb that you linked to.)
I guess I should revise what I first said. Things are easy to plug together and normally only have one way to fit in, if you made sure that all the parts are compatable with each other first. Its soo much fun trying to jam a ddr memory modual into a ddr2 memory slot.
And for Tigerf117, you say that the DFI mbs are not good for beginners, but then don't mention one that is. whats up with that?
I have not worked with that motherboard before so I can not comment on it.
My first system was a Soyo Dragon socket A motherboard, it was great because i didn't need to configure the bios, except for the time/date to have the machine up and running... although to optimize performance I did.
Currently I run a Biostar motherboard, However, I do not know much about motherboards and don't feel qualified enough to suggest one or comment on the one you have.
Hope that helps!
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