If this post helps anybody in anyway, you really do have problems.
So you want to know how to fix computers don’t we all, well the best place to start is with a computer that isn’t even broken yet, when it comes to learning about computers you can’t beat having a go at building your own, whether its building one with all shiny new parts, or collecting a pile of bits no one else wants and nailing them together to form something you can be proud of, even if nobody else in their right mind would give it houseroom, if everything goes to plan and it works straight out of the box you’ve obviously done something wrong so take it all apart and start again, the idea isn’t to get it right first time the idea is to learn, if you do have problems look on the bright side, everyone else has got problems as well which is actually a good thing for you, most peoples homepage on their browser is google and if yours isn’t it should be, type in what your problem is and a few seconds later you will find there are hundreds if not thousands who have had the same problem, unless its something really weird like your computer has been possessed by the devil I guarantee its happened to someone else, and actually I googled that as well and apparently you wouldn’t be the first person to have their computer taken over by a demonic entity, another thing you will need is something called networking, not the networking that connects computers together the making contacts sort of networking, back in the old days it was known as finding someone daft enough to lend you something with absolutely no guarantee they would get it back in one piece, the simplest way to diagnose a fault is simply swapping out parts one at a time with a computer that’s working and preferably borrowed just in case you mess things up, this method not only saves money it also generates more work for the future, just deny all responsibility and whatever you do don’t offer to fix it on the cheap they will only get suspicious, you tend not to have many friends doing this, but what the hell you spend all your time on the computer anyway they’re not going to miss you, and remember your aspiring to be a computer repair technician and they’ve never got any friends.
When it comes to choosing CPU’s remember six months ago a core 2 quad was considered to be the dogs wotsits, now it’s a has been everyone wants a core i7 and in six months time that will have been bettered either by a new stepping version or the new octo-core i7’s, chasing the state of the art ideal becomes very expensive when the goal posts keep moving, a couple of years back a gaming computer without an athlon chip would have earned you nothing but mockery from fellow gamers, they are past their best for games but for day to day general computing they are excellent, and if they get any cheaper they will be paying us to take them out of the shop, in twelve months time the same will be true of core2 duo and quads, whatever chip you decide on, the good news is they are pretty much bullet proof as far as wear and tear, virus’s and even overclocking are concerned as long as you keep them cool, the one thing that can and will damage them is you, if you damage the pins the chances are it will never work again no matter how hard you try to straighten them so be careful, I’m a great believer in swapping suspect items for parts that are known to be working, the one exception is the chip put it in carefully lock it down and leave it alone.
As for choosing a motherboard don’t limit yourself, most sata boards have ide and floppy connections anyway, most have four slots for memory and considering the prices at this moment ddr2 would seem the obvious choice, two or three pci-e slots will come in handy even if its got onboard graphics, and try for as many pci-e x16 or pci-e x8, you will find pci-e x1 cards offer far less variety and are a bit more expensive, also x1 cards should work fine in x2 and above, x2 will work in x4 and above etc etc, don’t forget the socket type, on most boards the socket type LGA775, Socket 939, Socket 478 etc are printed on the board and stamped into the socket itself, and if the heatsink has fallen off it’s a Socket AM2.
Graphics cards are like cpu’s if you want the best your gonna pay, go for a mid to low range card unless your planning on playing high end games you will never notice the difference.
Memory the more the better but ive run Vista on 512mb without problems, and don't forget if you've got a 32bit operating system it will only be able to use 3-3.25gb, if you want to use more memory than that your going to need a 64bit os, most memory comes with a lifetime warranty so keep the receipt and stick to the standard cheap memory unless your going to frame it and hang it on the wall.
The PSU has to be powerful enough to run everything so check on the link below, but unless you’re a gamer with multiple high end graphics cards and peltiers for cooling it doesn’t have to be all that big, forget the big numbers and look for quality go with a power supply with a more modest rating from the likes of Enermax or Seasonic etc., rather than buying a million watt power supply with a guarantee written in crayon.
eXtreme Power Supply Calculator
Hard drives for me the bigger the better, but I wouldn’t recommend you rush out and buy a 1Tb hard drive for two reasons, in my eyes hard drives seem to get more fragile the larger they get, better to get two 500gb drives if they are roughly the same price as a 1Tb drive, that way you can buy them one at a time and play around with raid arrays when you get the second, also if one dies on you you’ve still got 500 Gb to play with while you send the other for replacement, oh and remember to switch off the power before plugging molex connecters in, or just check their the right way round, the hard drive wont go BANG! but it wont make any other noises either if you don’t.
Optical drive’s is it worth getting anything less than a DVD/RW/DL Lightscribe.
Case yeah why not, as time goes by you will find most of the innards hard drive optical drives etc will actually be on the outside of the case as you keep swapping stuff around.
OS has got to be windows hasn’t it, hasn’t it, well for me Vista does just fine but i have tried Linux and didn’t find it any worse than reverting back to XP, then again cant think of many things that are worse, might even have another bash at it this weekend, as for windows 7 there are ways Vista could be made better but your not going to find them there, I personally wouldn’t have it given me it lasted a matter of weeks before I reinstalled Vista, the main decision you need to make is retail or oem, if you plan to keep the motherboard and not upgrade it oem is fine but if you plan to upgrade your board at any time consider the retail version, you could download a copy off sites like uTorrent or emule but be warned, it wouldn’t surprise me if most of them are uploaded by a certain Mr William Gates, you want to test your anti virus and anti spyware nows your chance.
Talking of anti virus and spyware, everybody seems to believe they have virus’s despite the fact they are running every anti virus and anti spyware known to man, and every registry cleaners, and every pc tune up they can find, they think their computer is infected because its running slow, duh what the hell do you expect with all that running in the background all the time.
If you’ve got any questions ask someone else.
And remember If it ain’t broke – YOUR NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH.