Final assembly is usually the quickest part of a build. Component selection may require days of consideration, and finding the best source for your gear can take up the better part of a day. But plugging connectors and inserting screws shouldn't take more than a few hours, even for the most inexperienced builder.

If you're familiar with a few simple hand tools, you could assemble a complete PC in less time than it takes to read this guide. But troubleshooting (that is, going back to figure out what went wrong if things don't work the way they're supposed to) could slow things down significantly. Phobias aside, you're unlikely to damage your hardware or yourself if you follow a few very easy precautions, and we hope this final segment will eliminate hours of post-build trial and error.
First Precautions
Nothing creates a sinking feeling faster than damaging a critical component before you're even finished putting everything together. Major concerns include electrostatic discharge, dropped parts, and breakage caused by force fitment or scratched circuits.
Accidental electrostatic discharge (ESD) can destroy PC hardware, a fact that causes many building guides to exaggerate this danger. In truth, few experienced custom PC builders take more than the most basic precautions against ESD; even when it does occur, it's likely to follow the component's ground plane rather than zap its most sensitive parts.
The most basic precaution is to occasionally touch a ground, such as a large metal office desk or the metal case of a plugged-in system, to discharge your body. Additional ESD risks come from the use of carpeted workspaces and extremely dry environments, so another level of protection may come from the use of an antistatic mat under the chair and a humidifier for extremely dry rooms. Grounded wrist straps are an over-the-top method of protection rarely used outside of production environments, yet the extra-cautious will attain peace of mind when wearing one.
Fallen components seem easy to prevent in theory, but damage from droppage is a far more likely cause of broken components than ESD. Hard disk drives are often mishandled during installation and other parts can be easily knocked from a desk. Reducing fall distance is as easy as moving work away from the edge of a desk, and reducing damage from parts getting knocked to the floor is as simple as leaving them in the box until they're ready to be installed.
But one physical issue that even the most cautious of us can't prevent 100% of the time comes from dropping processors into their interfaces at a slight angle. This problem is specific to Intel’s latest LGA interfaces, because the contact pins have gotten thinner as the company has added more of them. Intel’s pins act like springs, so that even the slightest damage can cause insufficient contact pressure. There’s no hard-and-fast rule to prevent you from damaging the motherboard as you guide your processor into place. Just be extra careful during those critical few moments.
Beyond having a CPU slip out of your fingers, assembly damage can include situations where parts are misaligned and forced into place. Most components require only a small amount of pressure to seat the connector, but a few do need more aggressive tactics. We’ll cover those specifics as we install each part.
- Step One: Size Up A Case
- Step 2: Select Your CPU
- Step 3: Select Your Graphics
- Step 4: Select A Motherboard
- Step 5: Select Memory
- Step 6: Select Storage
- Step 7: Select A Power Supply
- Other Components
- Step 8: Choose Your Vendor
- Step 9: Preparing For Assembly
- Step 10: Build The Platform (CPU, Cooler, And DRAM)
- Step 11: Install Motherboard And Power Supply
- Step 12: Install Cables, Cards, And Drives
Cheers!
Cheers!
Wonderful as usual toms.. Appreciate it..
Great article! No doubt this is going to help a lot of folks.
Thanks, guys!
I think you missed a section for "SLI - XFire", but it's great overall. Since its a guide for folks with little to no knowledge, I think it would help them to dispel myths and get some facts over XFire and SLI.
Cheers!
First I put the motherboard into the PC (not fastened) to see where the standoffs are going to be placed onto the case. Also I note what routes I'm going use for my cabling. Then I take the motherboard out and insert the standoffs and port plate into the case. Also I take my case cables (power sw, reset sw, USB, front audio and mic cables and put a twist tie around them all and place them near where they are to be plugged into the motherboard. These cables are easy to lose track of.
Next I place the power supply, and "bay devices" (optical drives, non-removable storage, etc) into the case and have those cables attached and either hanging over the outside of the case or routed behind the motherboard tray. This obviously depends on how you determined the cables will be routed earlier.
Then I take my motherboard, put the CPU, RAM, and cooling system on as much as I can. Then I place the whole thing into the case - usually at an angle at first, leading with the side with the RAM (which is normally going behind the case bays in smaller cases) in first.
At this point it's just a matter of aligning the motherboard with the standoffs and port plate. Plug it all in (including the case plugs which are conveniently out of the way and together).
Power it all on and volia!
Otherwise, it was a good article. People who are uncertain of building their own PCs can learn a lot from it.
The 647W is measured at the wall socket, as the article mentions input power. After taking into account the 85% efficiency of their power supply in this example, the PSU is only outputting 549.95W to the PC components at max load. Adding some headroom they come to the 600W PSU recommendation.
Personally I'd like a little more headroom, but the calculations in the article are correct.
Building your own is great fun, and most serious users should probably give it a try at least once in their lives. Given that, I'd recommend an annual "refresh" of this article, with updated info and re-validated links to corresponding reference articles and resource forums.
A great service to your readers!
I wanted to comment on the power supply part of the article. One is the efficiency and the total cost to use versus the front end purchase cost. A less efficient system will obviously create more total heat as wasted energy. But aside from possibly making someones room rather uncomfortable, it also increases your airconditioning energy use. A good rule of thumb is that an AC system will use 50% of the heat energy. To add the total annual cost, multiply that times the percentage of the year that the AC is on. So your example of a 647W system with 85% PSU would give (550W used):
647W - 550W = 93W at plug
93W * 50% = 47W AC energy
Total Energy (summertime) = 93W + 47W = 140W
If the AC were on the while year and the PC were on continuously, this is about $140 annually, or almost $12 per month added electricity in the summer. If you did the same thing with a cheap 70% efficient system, you get $248 annual cost which is $20.63 per month summertime cost. At a difference of $8, it does not take many months (of continuous on!) to make the more efficient PSU make much more sense.
The other topic I wanted to comment on is ESD. I am an engineer and work with ESD issues everyday. It is a very real an poorly understood issue by many because of the often hidden or delayed failures that it causes. ESD many time causes walking wounded damage without an immediate failure, which finally fails several months later. And if you look at websites sell PC parts, many people complain of DOAs. Many, many DOAs are caused by ESD. Memory, CPUs, motherboards, HDDs, and other sensitive systems are often returned as DOA, driving up the cost of the PC enthusiast market and adding frustration. In research texts, they estimate the global electronic failures due to ESD to be 40-60% of the total failures over product life.
So that little $5 ESD wrist strap is money well spent. Buy one and reduce your heartburn.
Charles
So that little $5 ESD wrist strap is money well spent. Buy one and reduce your heartburn.
Charles
The only problem with wrist straps is that most people don't want to be "tied" to anything. They're a great idea that's really rarely needed. Feel free to say otherwise if you live in the desert.