How to Build a Computer
PC Building
I started my PC building hobby a little over three years ago when I was a sophomore in high school. Around January of freshman year I had a vision while listening to a song, the song in question was Porter Robinson’s Shelter, listening to the song made me envision a room full of monitors surrounding me in an arch and that on each screen I had something displayed that was analytics of Mars. Whether that was the CO2 levels or the gravitational force, I was so enthralled by the idea of being this sort of computer genius that could run a whole operation from my bedroom.
My main motivation behind building it was so that me and my brother couldn’t fight over who’s turn it was on the PS3, with my own PC I could do whatever I wanted to it and not bother anyone. Another huge reason I eventually built my PC is that I wanted freedom for the internet from my parents, of course I later found out that they could turn off my WiFi at any given moment but it was still a whole lot better than having to share the somewhat limited time on the internet with someone else in the house. Now I didn’t get every single piece that I have in my PC right off the bat, I worked over three years to slowly install everything that’s in there today.
Another great reason to learn how to build and fix a computer is so that you end up saving money on things that you would’ve ended up spending money on to get fixed. For example I recently changed out the motherboard and CPU for newer models and when I tried to boot up the computer it wouldn’t allow me past the BIOS screen. I spent a week trying everything to see if I could get it to work, eventually I took it to BestBuy so they could have a look and told me it was because Windows wasn’t installed which I found peculiar since I had Windows installed previously. Either way, from that experience I now know that one of the things that I should check first should be whether or not Windows is installed. If I had known that it would have saved me $70.
If you’ve ever thought about building a PC look no further. In this blog I hope to educate you all about how to build a PC and maybe get the ideas flowing of what might be ideal for you.
Starting off with a mid range build of about $1000 is where I started off with building my computer. I’ve gone ahead and created a parts list that’ll help you understand what you need.
Parts List
- CPU- Ryzen 5 3600 $200
“the brains of the computer”( Parill).
- Motherboard- MSI B450 Tomahawk $114
A huge circuit board that connects everything and allows information to be transferred around.
- RAM- Aegis DDR4–3200 $60
Random access memory which is essential in storing information for the motherboard that can be used anywhere between two months and two minutes from that moment.
- PSU- EVGA 500 W 80+ $50
The power supply for the entirety of the computer.
- GPU- EVGA GTX 1060 $230
The graphics card that allows for visuals to be seen and for gaming keeps FPS(frames per second) high.
- Case- H510 $70
The place where all the components will be stored.
Assembly
Now we’re onto building the entire structure. First we’ll start off with the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. The first thing you’re going to want to do is set the motherboard in front of you. Next you’ll take the CPU out of its box and on the chip that you’re giving look for the arrow on the bottom of it that should match up with the arrow on the little square portion on the motherboard(Emonds). Once that’s in, slowly push down the latch to secure it, absolutely put no real force into it since you might bend the threads on the chip. Once everything is secure go ahead and put the CPU cooler over the top of it and make sure you can screw in the corners. The CPU cooler has thermal paste on the bottom that goes on the top of the CPU which helps keep it cool, make sure to plug in the CPU cooler into the motherboard at the top where it’s labeled “CPU Cooler” After that you’ll want to insert the RAM into the four spots. If you got two pieces of RAM make sure there’s one space between each one or else the motherboard won’t read it as two separate entities.
The next step is to insert the motherboard into the case slowly and gently, the motherboard is a giant circuit so you don’t want to put a lot of force onto it. Next you’ll need to screw in the corners with the screws that came in the motherboard’s box. Once that’s done you can insert the GPU into the motherboard, try and install it as close as you can to the CPU since it’ll allow the most bandwidth. When the GPU is hooked into the motherboard screw one screw into the side of the case, it should be visible if you’re looking at the back of the case.
The last and most important step is to install the power supply. The PSU should go in the bottom of the case with the fan facing downward so that the hot air is expelled out the bottom rather than blowing into the PC and increasing the heat.There are four screws that keep the PSU in place, you’ll need to screw those in. There’s two slots that you can use for internal memory at the bottom, regardless of what you use the hard drives need to each have a connection to the PSU. So in total there’s two connections on each hard drive, the second one is the SATA cable that connects to the right edge of the motherboard. The last piece is to hook the 24 pin cable to the motherboard and the PCI-E cable with 16 pins to the GPU(Intel). Finally finish off with connecting any loose cables to their respective spots on the motherboard and fire it up to make sure it works.
I personally hope that people take up this hobby since I find it really fun and would like to share it with other people. It truly should be something people learn since it saves you a lot of money to fix your own computer than to have some professional take a look at it.