Hacker News Reader

Comment by samcheng | Hacker News Reader

If anyone out there is in a similar situation, building a new computer, especially if you have a lot of parts from an old computer to cannibalize, is actually quite easy and much less expensive than buying a new pre-built PC.

Don't be intimidated! If you can turn a screwdriver, you can build a PC.

(For an upgrade, you can often buy just the motherboard with CPU already attached, potentially also upgrading the power supply and RAM. Or upgrade the drive if you're running out of space. Or upgrade the graphics card if you want to play games. Everything else is pretty static and just plugs in.)

View on HN

Easy things include installing M.2 drives, RAM, hard drives. (Just read the motherboard manual to ensure you use the right slots/ports for optimal performance.)

Medium difficulty might be installing the motherboard into the case (getting the rear I/O ports aligned just right) or installing the CPU with thermal paste into that motherboard, along with the heatsink.

Hard difficulty is just getting all the wires run without obstructing airflow (or just looking "ugly"), and the little wires from the case to the motherboard in all the right places. Also if you install AIO (all-in-one cooling), you may have to try a few things to make sure everything lines up and it all fits nicely in your case.

None of the above are difficult if you're experienced, but on your first run it might be tricky. And this doesn't include setting up the OS, tweaking and optimizing things... or knowing what to do if something doesn't work as expected. Sometimes you'll get a bad stick of RAM, but that usually gives off symptoms of half a dozen other issues, though with experience you start to default to that assumption, and find ways to rule it out earlier.

Having done it dozens of times, I find it quite easy, but I also know that when things go wrong, they can be scary, and occasionally expensive. (A friend once dropped a CPU and bent the pins irrecoverably!)

I love building PCs and haven't bought a pre-built system ever in 30+ years. That said, thankfully, for inexperienced folk there are innumerable videos on YouTube explaining each step of the process.

I admit I sometimes watch these videos to see if there are any new tips/tricks/secrets that builders have figured out for e.g. working with a new case and getting all that wiring done correctly.

Disagree. None of it is even moderately "hard".

PC Building is the easiest thing out there. Right along with soldering, which has a similar reputation being "hard". If you can wear pants in the morning, you can build a pc and solder anything, even 0402 components and sot-23 packages with zero experience. You can't fuck it up even if you tried. Millions of people build IKEA furniture. PC Building is much easier than that.

To a certain degree, yes. Insofar as getting a computer assembled and functional.

If you want to get fancy with the cooling, design/aesthetics, etc. that becomes another art form of its own. Diminishing returns obviously apply.

I wouldn't say easiest.

Its definitely no where near as hard as a layman can think, but I remember my pc causing me some stress when building it due to fixing random issues or trying to fit things in properly.

Its not very hard but its not easy either.

> the little wires from the case to the motherboard in all the right places

This is often underrated difficulty, especially for whose hands aren't small. I've never failed, but just physically difficult. I get sweat while plugging connector located to small space, and takes bunch of time, especially with bigger air cooler. ASUS Q-connector is great tool but it's not widely adopted.

Up until you press the power button & get bumpkiss. Then you need a known good copy of half the components in the machine to weed out the bad one.

(In my case, it was the PSU. It was particularly tricky as the PSU wasn't completely dead.)

That's the actually difficult part. Everybody can reasonably follow instructions to put together a PC barring any mental or physical disabilities. But if something doesn't work for whatever reason, layperson don't have the requisite knowledge or experience to properly diagnose and fix the issue.

This is something nobody ever mentions when they say building your own PC is easy.

Also the power connectors for graphics cards.. depending on your PSU and card there's what? at least 4 combinations of plugging in 4 pins, 8 pins (or was it 2+4?), or not plugging them in at all. Why are there extra cables that look just like those? Etc.pp.

But not being able to troubleshoot components because you only have one PC or one compatible PC is the worst.

Just for what it's worth, it's "bupkes":

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bupkes

... although the spelling varies a lot:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bupkis

Not if you have a Corsair One like the article author.

On that particular model, even updating the SSD is a pain in the ass since (IIRC) the 2.5in one is at the bottom of the case and the m.2 is on the back of the motherboard which has been perfectly engineered to fit in that case.

It also uses water-cooling on the CPU and for the upper models the GPU, using a custom loop that was created specifically to fit in the tight dimensions of the case. So good luck upgrading either the CPU or GPU easily.

sounds like every mITX. My m.2 slot is on the back of my motherboard. That drive has been full for more than a year and I don't care enough to take apart my entire PC just to replace the damn thing. Going mITX was a mistake for me. I wanted to build a NAS and reuse parts from my mITX last year. Only thing I could salvage was the CPU and RAM. Now I have an old CPU on a new MB for my NAS and a newer CPU on my old mITX board for my main PC. SFF really limits your upgrade and reuse paths going forward. Limited PCI slots, limited SATA ports usually, limited RAM slots, the case is just too small and horrible to work with. Looks pretty sitting on a desk though.

Another problem with SFF: proprietary case and/or power supply designs. I got bitten by that one with an old Shuttle cube. Great-looking design, but it was not mITX, it was its own thing. When it became too obsolete, there was no upgrade path.

Most mITX cases don't open up like this, though: https://hardwarecanucks.com/wp-content/uploads/Corsair-ONE-1...

In order to support that, they had to make a lot of custom components. This means that you wouldn't even be able to use the water coolers, for instance, since the loops are tiny. To get to the m.2 slot you'd have to basically disassemble the whole thing, and you weren't the one that put it together in the first place so good luck!

They're absolute beasts in a tiny form factor, which is the only real thing going for them. They cost far more than any mITX build.

I like my mITX case, but I'm only going to open up again if something breaks. I accidentally put my m2 SSD in a PCIe 3.0 slot instead of 4.0, so I'm not getting the full bandwidth. That's just how's gonna be for a while.

Yeah, mITX especially is super limiting.

But ATX cases are pretty obnoxiously large, especially for anybody who has been buying HP or dell or the like desktops, where the Full ITX cases look mosterous in comparison.

microATX size is probably more of a sweet spot. Smaller, but at least you are not completely .

I would have done microATX on my last system update, but I was going with Ryzen, and the only microATX boards available at the time with the better chipsets just had poor overall quality, failed to pack in a lot of rear IO to compensate, etc. I think the intel side microATX offering may have been better.

The sheer amount of Youtube videos showing someone building a PC makes it much easier than it was in the pre- youtube days- you can follow along with the people in the video as they are building their PC. If you buy a popular case you can probably find a video of someone working with that exact case.

If you've got an old computer that's "getting slow" you can go a long way by just maxing out the RAM and putting an SSD in it.

You can also look up the fastest CPU that your motherboard supports and buy a used one on eBay. A top-of-the-line CPU that cost $1000 years ago will be trading for far less today. This is particularly true of Xeon CPUs pulled from retired servers.

>This is particularly true of Xeon CPUs pulled from retired servers.

Too bad xeon CPUs have different sockets/chipset requirements compared to desktop CPUs, so chances are the best you can do is upgrade from a 2/4 core to a slightly faster 4 core.

I'm guessing that's just typical Intel behavior requiring constant motherboard updates with almost every tik/tok CPU release?

And... when was the last time Xeon had a 2/4 core?

> I'm guessing that's just typical Intel behavior requiring constant motherboard updates with almost every tik/tok CPU release?

Yep, but even within the same tik/tok cycle there are different sockets/chipset combinations.

>And... when was the last time Xeon had a 2/4 core?

My point is that most people probably have a desktop motherboard, presumably with a 2/4 core CPU. Upgrading to a used 8 core xeon on ebay is not an option because xeon chips use a different chipset/socket. Therefore the highest available option for most people are 4 core desktop CPUs.

If that's the direction you want to go, retired Xeon-based workstations (HP Z, Dell Precision, etc.) also sell for less than new high-end desktop CPUs, have well-engineered, if proprietary, case designs, and still allow you to bring your own storage and PCIe cards. Power consumption may or may not tip the scales against their favor, though, depending on your location and applications.

The Intel Xeon comes in desktop compatible versions. Up to Coffee Lake(8000 in desktop numbers) they were sold under the Xeon E3 brand, E5 is the aforementioned the incompatible server chip. Comet Lake had them rebranded to the Xeon W and it does become slightly more confusing, but you can definitely still buy Xeon chips that run on the last desktop socket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lake#Workstation_proces...

Check your motherboard's CPU support and run the model number through Intel Ark to make sure it's only has 2 "Max # of Memory Channels".

>but you can definitely still buy Xeon chips that run on the last desktop socket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lake#Workstation_proces...

The linked article also says "These CPUs support ECC memory and require Intel W480 or W580 chipset". That seems to suggest that unless you already have a workstation motherboard, those CPUs aren't upgrade options.

Retired servers with Xeon can readily be bought used. Be aware the RAM will be ECC, which can also be bought used. Some motherboards are set up for two CPU sockets.

I have three older server-class machines like this. With SSD they are workhorses.

To add, registered ecc ram sells for rather cheap used. But servers in general tend to use much more power and generate much more noise than their home/office equivalents.

I came here to say the same, and to add that with a good case (I've a Fractal) there is plenty of room to work.

I'd go as far to claim that it's almost impossible to mis-assemble. Throw a bunch of computer parts on a bench and treat it like it's a jigsaw puzzle. You'll observe that it's much easier to assemble as a) there are many fewer parts and b) they can only go together the right way.

I built my new desktop four years ago and it's been purring along ever since. It runs near 24/7 and has all the local VMs involved in my life and work.

> I'd go as far to claim that it's almost impossible to mis-assemble.

You may still need to know how to read the fine MB manual to not leave performance on the table (which is what you're trying to solve in the first place).

I don't know how brand-spanking-new motherboards are; I remember that around the time when Intel's 8-9th gen core CPUs were all the rage, they had a ridiculously low number of PCIe lanes, even though some motherboards came with multiple 16x sized PCIe ports. Only one actually had the 16 lanes, the others had at best 4.

You may or may not care about this, but seeing how OP talks about GPUs, he may.

One fun bit is that you need 2 RAM sticks, and to install them (usually) with 1 socket of gap in between, or you're leaving memory bandwidth and CPU performance on the table (especially on AMD).

Honestly, I don't think it's any easier than in the late 90s.

If you research well enough and get components that work together (or are just lucky), then it will work, if you put it together correctly, otherwise it won't.

I mean, there are Youtube videos that probably help if you've never done it, and then you still sometimes make these small errors that you make if you don't do it all the time. I certainly had to reassemble everything twice due to some cabling mistakes (new case) and not having done it in like 7 years because the hardware just won't be obsolete so fast.

But I can totally understand why people would not find it easy. Mainboard manuals are still mostly a joke of a few sketches, you can be lucky if your case has a single sheet of instructions, there are now even more different sorts of screws, etc.pp.

> Honestly, I don't think it's any easier than in the late 90s.

IRQ conflicts, DIP switches, flaky PNP… it’s not a ton easier, but there are definitely some improvements!

I don't remember IRQ problems since the removal of the last ISA network card, with just one sound card it worked most of the time. Maybe I should've written very late 90s/early 00s to be fair :)

I have to agree, it's like building legos except you're getting paid $1k to do it (saving on prebuilts!) although of course there can be good prebuilts as well.. but in my experience they're usually cutting corners somewhere.

As a kid, I always saw brands like Alienware like fancy brands for rich people and never understood their value (kinda like paying €100 for a t-shirt). I'd never met anyone who came close to affording such things either.

As an adult, I understand that not everyone has the know-how or time to assemble their own computer, but I still don't get why somebody would by from Alienware instead of having your local computer shop assemble one for you. The price difference is still ridiculous. Is it just good marketing?

I've been using an old Lanboy 2 case for years, I just update the MB and CPU. Swapping out parts is really easy IF you have some instruction materials to help out. (I don't need instructs anymore because I'm done it so many times now.) Adding memory, as mentioned by others is easy. Buying pre-built computers is both expensive and frustrating because they become outdated, parts wise, fairly quickly. When my computer becomes slower or new tech comes along I just do the updating myself and save a ton of money, not to mention learning something new.

> Don't be intimidated! If you can turn a screwdriver, you can build a PC.

However, be prepared to sacrifice some skin and blood.

Many times you need to get into awkward angles with your hands with a bunch of sharp edges all around.

Having built dozens of PCs over two decades, I have not had the experience you're describing in at least 15 years.

If this has been a recent experience for you, were you using an old case/enclosure, or a very inexpensive one?

For someone with large hands like myself, it can be a pain sometimes to deal with the space issues and angles. And those tiny screws.

Also have large hands! I have had issues with screws - especially when my case was under my desk and I was trying to swap out a GPU like that. Though in the building process, where I place the case on a table or counter, I have a lot less issues with the screws! (And none of those issues involved sharp edges!)

My most recent build was a micro atx case. The hard drive cage was especially a pain to work with. I've been thinking about a mini ITX but I'm not sure my poor knuckles could handle it.

I have to agree. Fit and finish on cases has come a long way in the last decade or two. I do agree with GP that there used to be plenty of sharp edges and burrs lurking inside cases demanding their due of blood from the fool unwary enough to poke around inside, but that has greatly fallen by the wayside.

The giant power connector that connects to the mobo. The one I have practically cold-welds itself in place: getting them to separate is on par with getting two stubborn lego flat 2x2s to separate. You can kiss your nail goodbye while trying to wedge it between the plastics.

Ha it can be a challenge, yes. I even have a really hard time with the plastic clip on the GPU's PCI Express slot sometimes!

The last desktop PC I worked on was an old Dell Xps Tower that I ended up upgrading a lot of motherboard components.

That thing was like an Indiana Jones trap in terms of slicing my hands.

It's a PC, not a railroad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com