The Joy And Hate Rollercoaster of Your First PC Build...

[gvisoc]

... when you're 45, you don't work with your hands, and you've never done it before.

Background: my 2017 desktop PC died in November. This was my very sane line of thinking: "Hey, I am going to build one with fresh-of-the-oven AMD hardware, with very little and very tiny nanometers and all the Zens and the chidens and the numbers and whatnot, to have future-proof compatibility on Linux, because AMD publishes their own perfectly fine Linux opensource driver, because I am a full grown-up, and and and because engineer and and I've been using Linux for twent... yak yak yik yak yak yik yik yik".

What can go wrong.

Well.

• I learned that the socket number is the number of microscopic pins that you can f*%k if you're not careful when mounting the CPU (didn't happen, but I lost a kilo on sweat)
  • The CPU is crazy heavy. If it falls on the pins, there go a healthy number of hundreds of dollars.
  • Not to mention the cracks and the squeaks that the different pressure levers make when you're trying to install it.
  • Not fun.
• I learned that bending a motherboard is very easy and most likely fatal for it (didn't happen, another kilo goes)
  • Not fun, no
• I learned that not all M.2 slots are the same when it comes to plug storage. "Lanes", oh my.
  • Amount of reboots not understanding where are all those gigabytes per second: 3.
• I learned to hate cable management even though I bought a new, fully modular PSU.
  • Cables types and gens. Someone should be held accountable for the MADNESS.
  • More on this below.
• I learned that DDR5 memory does pre-training at first boot and it takes about 30 seconds per 16 GB of RAM. Meanwhile, the ez-led of the SDRAM is blinking the same way than if the mobo couldn't find the memory. I lost half my soul looking at a pile of hardware in a corner to look at it very sad, and I assembled the build about 5 times before discovering it about a week after the first try: I had to wait 2 minutes for some sign of mobo life to show on the display, and that was it.
  • It is not documented in the mobo manual
  • It is sometimes referred to, vaguely, in support forums.
  • Baba Yaga, if you're reading this, you should note down the people that writes mobo manuals.
• I learned that GPU are huge and they weigh so much that you won't be able to see the PCI-e slot where you need to place it. It won't make any click when it sits.
  • If it falls on the wrong place, everything goes to hell.
• I learned that recently, the PSU standard has changed to Type 5 (that's the corsair branded generation) all the power sockets on the devices have changed as well with PCI-e Gen 5, having smaller sockets and plugs.
  • WHY THE VIOLENCE?
  • Somehow I had successfully built the system without having to buy a whole new cable kit.

Somehow I went throught he whole build process unscathed, but I still need to get a 4-set of new fans for the case (quieter set) and install a THIRD POWER PCI-e cable for the GPU to run stabler, instead of having the card running on a 2-cable set, one of them using the daisy-chain extension. That thing is insane what the hell? THREE POWER CABLES? Do I need to invent an ARC generator?

HOWEVER! It's my baby, it works, I love it now, it's my best computer ever, I hate a bunch of people I don't know, I make them responsible for the above and if I knew I were standing in front of them I would not say good morning. And of course I hate the me from November the first one, for deciding that all the problems I had were not enough and I had to play with brittle expensive janky fancy things because I don't know any better and being 45 doesn't make you any smarter.

I don't dare to ask my wife how that all looked like from her perspective.

But my PC is great.

 

[KGIII]

It has been a while since I've built my own PC.

It's going to be a while before I do it again. And, by that, I mean probably forever. I'll pay the costs to have that done for me and it won't even cost me my geek credentials. I don't pay for them to do a 'burn-in', 'cause that's what warranties are for.

 

[gvisoc]

I've learned a lot, that's something no one will take away, for sure.

Did I learn the things I wanted to learn?

Not sure lol

 

[Mike-BTU]

It has been a while since I've built my own PC.

It's going to be a while before I do it again. And, by that, I mean probably forever. ...

Same here.

I built most of my PCs for about 25 years (as well as for the company that I worked for). Loved it!

But our last four were used ones, offered to me for the taking.

I would have never bought a mini PC myself. But this Asus VivoPC VM60 i5 meets all our needs. My wife uses one, but with an i3. And the price was right!

The 2 computers before that were Dell tower units; one for me and one for my wife. But, they contained those electrolytic capacitors that were famous for failing after a few years. Damaged the main hard drives and the external USB drive that I kept Timeshift backups on. Yeah.

I never got around to salvaging any data off of them l. Guess I don't need it.

I'll likely never build another PC, either.

 

[KGIII]

I've learned a lot, that's something no one will take away, for sure.

Did I learn the things I wanted to learn?

Not sure lol

At least you won in the end.

Plus, you now have a new system to play with and enjoy. It's amazing how fast computers have become. I remember when I first used an NVMe M.2 SSD and how much faster it was than an SSD and how much faster that was when compared to an HDD.

 

[KGIII]

I'll likely never build another PC, either.

I don't really work on my house, my cars, etc... I only do those things when I feel like it. It's just that I've decided to spend my time in different ways. As I have less and less time, those ways have changed.

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

• It is not documented in the mobo manual
• It is sometimes referred to, vaguely, in support forums.
• Baba Yaga, if you're reading this, you should note down the people that writes mobo manuals.

It took me a few days of hunting to finally figure out how to get into Legacy BIOS. Not a single forum out there could help me one bit. I just kept looking.

I would venture to say that most people just buy a new PC all put together with software installed. Given that most of those computers have a generic MOBO, it's really no surprise that there is so little information out there.

• I learned that GPU are huge and they weigh so much that you won't be able to see the PCI-e slot where you need to place it. It won't make any click when it sits.

I broke a capacitor once.


Turn the case on it's side.

Install the GPU before everything around it. In mine, the heat sink fan and RAM hover just above and a lot of things are plugged into MOBO impossibly close to the GPU!

HOWEVER! It's my baby, it works, I love it now,

Awesome! Isn't it a great feeling?

 

[MikeRocor]

I don't know any better and being 45 doesn't make you any smarter.

Wait until you hit 60... it gets worse, not better... and all the shtuff will have changed again.

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

r... and all the shtuff will have changed again.

How many times?

The rate of change increasingly increases. <---Think about that!

 

[theLegionWithin]

lol @gvisoc, well written.

every 4 or 5 years I have been doing a complete system rebuild but I think this next time around I'll just get a high-end mini instead (the tech is getting good enough where I dont really need a giant gpu anymore). I've been doing diy builds since the late 90s and let me tell you, the form factor on some parts change but you basically nailed it - it's totally nerve wracking during the build but once it's done (and you dont have to redo a step) it's totally worth it.

welcome to the club

 

[MikeRocor]

The rate of change increasingly increases.

It's an exponential acceleration sort of thing, I guess.

But it doesn't much matter how many times it changed between one time you se it and the next - just that it is different the second time around. It's probably better if it changes -drastically- ... at least that way you're not left -thinking- you know what you're doing when you really don't'. Not that I know this from first hand experience or anything like that...

 

[Condobloke]

@gvisoc .... I haven't laughed that hard in ages .....Thank you !!

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I wish to learn computer assembly, when I open my case all I know is how to clean dust, reset CMOS and take out RAM and put it back, nothing else.
Oh, and I know what different parts are lol

 

[Sherri is a Cat]

My first PC had a 4 GB HDD. I upgraded to 8.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Glad to see you got your first pc build that's working! I've always hated building pc's in the past I've always had fights with cpu coolers and broken several before I could get it on right. One reason why I stopped building my on pc's for a while, in the past couple of years I started building my own pc's again, the cpu coolers have gotten easier to place depending on what you use and I don't hate it as much anymore. I still hate it but know that I can do it well enough where I know I won't have to fight with my build anymore and that I will have a working pc in the end.

 

[Brickwizard]

I built the last one for myself around 2007 It was still a lot cheaper to build than buy pre-built then, now I cany be bothered and i don't suffer the aggravation from Er' indoors, for bits being everywhere, I am not averse to upgrading 4/5 year old kit to the max if needed.

 

[MikeWalsh]

PC-building is one thing I haven't tackled. I'm with @Brickwizard on this one; I know where all the bits go, what they look like, how they work and interact together, etc, but I honestly couldn't be arsed with all that messing about now.

Slowly developing cataracts doesn't help matters, either....

There's so much decent refurbished gear out there these days, that I, too, am quite content to buy somebody else's 'cast-off' for a reasonable wedge, tidy it up and then upgrade it as far as I want to. On top of which I'm something of a tech dinosaur; I love taking older gear & seeing just how far it CAN be 'pushed'.....and what it's still capable of.

Having the 'latest & greatest' all the time just isn't very high on my list of priorities. Never has been. So long as summat is functional, and does what I want it to do, I'm happy.


Mike.

 

[MikeRocor]

My first PC had a 4 GB HDD. I upgraded to 8.

Mine had a 40 MB HDD - it was one of the last drives I ever had that had an actual stepper motor instead of "voice coil" technology to move the heads.

And I'm -still- not the "old guy" around here.

 

[gvisoc]

I begun with a 2GB drive in 1997, but as all PC were family PCs, we kept taking them to the shop for service and upgrades.

When I moved out I used assembly services and I only swapped very simple parts like RAM, disks and much smaller GPUs.

I was tinkering more and more lately but never put one together from scratch, so it was about time I guess.

 

[MikeRocor]

I was tinkering more and more lately but never put one together from scratch,

My eldest son's first (and second) computer was a laptop - so not too much opportunity for tinkering - but when he was ready for a desktop/tower, he went full-on geek and built one from the ground up. He had help and advice from some of his gaming friends but never had to come to me for help - honestly, I felt kind of left out. I did twist his arm a little and get him to send me the "shopping cart" with all of the components - but he'd already pulled the trigger on it.

I didn't see it in the list, but I guess he actually -paid- for Windows. That's a sad thought.