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How long did your first PC build take you?

Diseased Yak said:
Most of you may not be aware of this, but in the days before the Interwebs, us old farts had to read up on how to do it using these things made of "paper" called "magazines" or "books". I built my first 386 way back when, and I would say it probably took me the better part of a day.

Computer Shopper for most of my parts. (remember when that thing was the size of a 1920's Sears & Roebuck catalog?)
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My favourite part of any motherboard manual is the jumper configuration section which has the nonchalant warning at the bottom "oh hey, btw, fuck this up and there's a slight chance you'll fry your CPU, just fyi bro".
 
I had my dad help me (this was like, a month ago) so it didn't take too long the first time, but then we ran into several problems that I had to ask PC GAF for help on, so a little longer than I thought it was going to be. Maybe took an hour to put it together the first time, and then two hours or so get it figured out what I did wrong.

Unless you want to count the extra days I spent waiting for my case, monitor, windows 7, mouse and keyboard, and an ethernet cable snaking its way into my room. Then it would be several extra weeks.
 
Barely over an hour to get the hardware setup, but probably like 4 more to get everything functioning correctly. At some points I felt like the computer was purposefully playing tricks on me, I swear!
 
MrOogieBoogie said:
Why do people have so much trouble with Intel's heatsinks? That was one of the easier steps during my build process. Securing the pins/hatches into the motherboard was fairly easy. Didn't really need to apply much pressure at all.
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Mine was fairy easy too but I was left sitting there afterwards wondering if the thing was on right. They just dont feel right.

That said, I ditched the Intel heatsink and got myself a Scythe Mugen and that thing, while beastly and awesome, was a HUGE pain in the ass. I needed to call my brother down to help me out since there was no way my scrawny hands could position it, keep it steady, and screw it in. Well worth the hassle though.
 
jim-jam bongs said:
My favourite part of any motherboard manual is the jumper configuration section which has the nonchalant warning at the bottom "oh hey, btw, fuck this up and there's a slight chance you'll fry your CPU, just fyi bro".
Click to expand...

Yup hah, it should just say "Don't let out the magic smoke!"

As everyone knows, all electronics contain magic smoke, and if you ever let the magic smoke out... it's dead.
 
Took me ~6 hours which included using a CM Hyper 212+ instead of the stock heatsink, a HDD and a SSD, plus some issues with my RAM being too tall for some of the slots and taking additional time to Google the best orientation for my fans for my specific case.

But, it booted up first time no problem and all the external jacks worked, I didn't miss a single cable!
 
Not too long at all, just 2 hours or so. But the first PC I put together on my own was back in the Pentium II days - CPU installation was a cinch for those. I think I spent more time wrestling with the case back then than anything.

That said, I just put together my new PC a few weeks ago and it took about 90 min total spread out over a couple hours as I slowly put stuff together while busy working on something else at the same time.

Pics: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=31885718#post31885718
 
Did my first build together with my brother, so we did two identical builds at a time. Took us about 4 hours to do the two of them. I can only speculate that doing one alone would have taken about 3 hours work. If we're talking man hours you'd have to double the figures, but the second person wasn't necessary, more of a quality control addition.
 
My first PC build took me almost or about 3 hours, iirc. It was a total mess and I'm surprised the thing worked and last as long as it did lol.

In comparison, my second PC build took me like an hour to install the hardware and get it up and running....it was such a smooth process too.
 
Orayn said:
The design they used for earlier Core 2 Duo models was really, really awful. There were these horrendous push-through rotating plastic pins and it was just a fucking nightmare to work with.
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While I agree that it wasn't the best design, but it was so simple to attach. All you had to do was push the pin through the hole and it locked. You had to make sure the pin was in the correct orientation, but it shouldn't have taken more than a minute to figure out.

Some of the older heatsink configurations for some of the older P4's and athlons were downright abysmal though.
 
About 5 hours, including a custom cooler, fan controller, and cable management.

Now it would take me about an hour to put together a PC with basic cable management and using a stock cooler. If I half assed it, it could be done in <30 minutes.
 
MrOogieBoogie said:
Took me about four hours honestly. I was super careful with everything, and Newegg's PC building video tutorial was my only guide (excellent tutorial, by the way). I remember how terrified I was trying to lock the processor in place; it seemed like I was applying far more pressure than I thought I'd needed to the lock mechanism. I first assembled the motherboard, video card, processor, heatsink, and RAM outside the case and tested them to make sure I had no defective components. Then it was pretty smooth sailing from there. Though I was also nervous when placing the motherboard onto the standoffs, but that's about it.

Only post-build issue I had was my power button not working, but I quickly resolved that once I realized I connected the wire to the wrong port on the mobo. :p

So yeah, total build process took about four hours, and then another hour or so for Windows installation.
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Same for me...exactly the same....lol
 
Took about an hour or two since I had a friend do it. When I spent that much money I'm not going to screw around when I have no idea what I'm doing and risk breaking something.
 
Hmm I really don't remember, it was back in 97 I think. Also does Windows install time count? Took a while to setup Windows 98 and all the drivers back in the day. Had to install several drivers such as network drivers from a floppy disk.

Actually I did a case mod with my first install so it took a while. Had to cut out fan bays in the front and side of the case, and then drill holes for tapping screws. The Heatsink was a pain as well, I had to clip some of the pins b/c it was too big (big Alpha heatsink). Also the power supply didn't fit so It sat on top of the case and was secured with zip-ties. That case looked so bad but it was awesome.
 
plc268 said:
While I agree that it wasn't the best design, but it was so simple to attach. All you had to do was push the pin through the hole and it locked. You had to make sure the pin was in the correct orientation, but it shouldn't have taken more than a minute to figure out.

Some of the older heatsink configurations for some of the older P4's and athlons were downright abysmal though.
Click to expand...
The problem came from how fragile the pins/sheathes were, coupled with the horrible amount of force they could take to attach. When I got an aftermarket heatsink, the nice, solid bracket on the underside of my motherboard was pretty much the best thing about it.
 
MikeE21286 said:
I'm actually impressed that some of you even knew what cable management was the first time you built a PC. Hell, I just wanted it to work.

Maybe cable management wasn't even a thing when I built my first PC, or maybe I just didn't even know about it...
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I didn't care about cable management in my PC until like a year after building it. I would see the pics people would post of their PCs and it made me want to pull mine apart and re-route everything. It was fun, actually.
 
Orayn said:
The problem came from how fragile the pins/sheathes were, coupled with the horrible amount of force they could take to attach. When I got an aftermarket heatsink, the nice, solid bracket on the underside of my motherboard was pretty much the best thing about it.
Click to expand...

I'll concede that the pins weren't very durable and that I've seen my fair share of busted pins. But assuming you had a perfect one, it should take very little force to pop it in.

I had an aftermarket heatsink (still do actually) that had the stock intel design to attach it to the motherboard, but I eventually cut off those pins and used a bolt thru kit because the pins start to mess up after repeated installs.
 
MrOogieBoogie said:
Took me about four hours honestly. I was super careful with everything, and Newegg's PC building video tutorial was my only guide (excellent tutorial, by the way). I remember how terrified I was trying to lock the processor in place; it seemed like I was applying far more pressure than I thought I'd needed to the lock mechanism. I first assembled the motherboard, video card, processor, heatsink, and RAM outside the case and tested them to make sure I had no defective components. Then it was pretty smooth sailing from there. Though I was also nervous when placing the motherboard onto the standoffs, but that's about it.

Only post-build issue I had was my power button not working, but I quickly resolved that once I realized I connected the wire to the wrong port on the mobo. :p

So yeah, total build process took about four hours, and then another hour or so for Windows installation.
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I almost gave up entirely on my first build because, of all the stupid things, I had no idea how to hook the power/HDD LED etc wiring up to the front of the case. No idea. It's one of those little things...

Luckily I found help online in a forum. But I really was pretty close to throwing up my hands and saying "building your own PC is too hard for me". Course that was many years ago...

Another time I didn't realize motherboards have a 2nd power plug that connects into the center now, couldn't figure out why it wouldn't boot at all for a few minutes, was thinking it was a dead board.

Other than I've had few issues. Never had a bad component that ruined a build or anything (would really suck to get say a defective mobo and have to do the whole return rigamarole)
 
plc268 said:
While I agree that it wasn't the best design, but it was so simple to attach. All you had to do was push the pin through the hole and it locked. You had to make sure the pin was in the correct orientation, but it shouldn't have taken more than a minute to figure out.

Some of the older heatsink configurations for some of the older P4's and athlons were downright abysmal though.
Click to expand...

It took me a while the first time since I kept thinking it was something tightened like a screw till it was snug. I had to read the directions.

But yeah, the older ones were much worse. I couldn't stand the Slot 1 processors, these clips on these things never seemed to catch for me:

DSCN0310.JPG
 
MrOogieBoogie said:
Why do people have so much trouble with Intel's heatsinks? That was one of the easier steps during my build process. Securing the pins/hatches into the motherboard was fairly easy. Didn't really need to apply much pressure at all.
Click to expand...

Building 6 PCs in the past couple years (one for myself, 5 for others) only twice has that Intel cooler had four good pins on it. At least one was always a pain, and once I had to deal with 3 of them being annoying, which was a pita. Maybe the newer ones have improved though?
 
3 hours. But I had watched so many videos and done so much research I knew exactly what I was doing. I must have spent six months reading and watching videos.
 
With my first assemble, like, 2 hours probably from when I had all of the parts to when I was booting up. Maybe less, really. I remember mounting the motherboard taking the most time probably, but I had put in things like processors and stuff before, piece meal, so I wasn't that cautious or slow about it.
 
larvi said:
It took me a while the first time since I kept thinking it was something tightened like a screw till it was snug. I had to read the directions.

But yeah, the older ones were much worse. I couldn't stand the Slot 1 processors, these clips on these things never seemed to catch for me:

DSCN0310.JPG
Click to expand...
Slot 1 were utterly terrible. I remember having to put folded paper sheets on both sides so that it wouldn't move around.
That and VLB video cards with connectors that were so long that you could get them to not get disconnected all the time (same paper trick) were the most dreadful stuff I had to use on a PC. And I've without a doubt assembled way more than a hundred PC in my 14 years at work.
My first build (not really a build, but close) was when I upgraded my 386sx16 to a 486sx25. Back then the CPU was soldered to the motherboard, but it still took me at least 2 hours to change the motherboard and reconnect all the cables. I remember writing carefully where all the wires were connected and stuff.
J-Rzez said:
Building 6 PCs in the past couple years (one for myself, 5 for others) only twice has that Intel cooler had four good pins on it. At least one was always a pain, and once I had to deal with 3 of them being annoying, which was a pita. Maybe the newer ones have improved though?
Click to expand...
Really? I *never* ever had a bad pin with the intel cpu coolers, and I'm talking about at least 20 pcs assembled using these.
 
One thing I would advise builders is plan the build out and buy everything at once.

My last build in like 2008, I was indecisive and kind of trying to do it a bit at a time over a few weeks, ended up costing me a couple hundred more than it needed too. Do it right the first time and buy everything ground up from newegg in one go...
 
Orayn said:
The design they used for earlier Core 2 Duo models was really, really awful. There were these horrendous push-through rotating plastic pins and it was just a fucking nightmare to work with.
Click to expand...

Broke 2 of them on a computer once. Didn't really worry about it... thing still runs as a backup / media computer in my basement, going on 3 years now, so I'm not too worried about it. But those stupid "push through and rotate" jiggers... freaking hate them.
 
First build probably took me about an hour and a half, not including fidgeting with the CMOS since my overclocks didn't stick.
 
Well I was about 6-7 years old and maybe one hour or something to that degree. It helped that we didn't have youtube videos or anything fancy like that. You just used your logical thinking to where things were going.
 
mmm first one took almost 1 day.

Now its more like 2 hours give or take some time depending on the type of cooler for the CPU because good those things, could they be any more terrible of making good instructions for those.... :|
 
I'm not really sure how long it took since I didn't time it but it couldn't of been more than two hours... 90% of it was absolutely painless, the most time was spent on getting the processor fan seated and plugging in the dozen or so tiny little wires for the case's button/led lights as well as some wires to the sound card. I'm trying to imagine how someone could take an entire day or even 5/6 hours. Is it because somethings doesn't work and you start researching it?

To be fair I had upgraded probably every piece of my computer beforehand piecemeal before putting together a brand new one from scratch. Short of mounting a motherboard (which is just screwing some stand-offs in the the case) it was nothing new. I had no wire management.
 
The Albatross said:
Broke 2 of them on a computer once. Didn't really worry about it... thing still runs as a backup / media computer in my basement, going on 3 years now, so I'm not too worried about it. But those stupid "push through and rotate" jiggers... freaking hate them.
Click to expand...
"Push... Then rotate? Rotate then push? Is that one in the little plastic sheathe? Is it supposed to be? Why won't this one stay in place? Did that one just BREAK? Fuck the world."
The instructions barely help.
 
Blimblim said:
Really? I *never* ever had a bad pin with the intel cpu coolers, and I'm talking about at least 20 pcs assembled using these.
Click to expand...

Yep. Now none of these were the newest processors, as I'll find out how that goes in a couple weeks with my new build. Though I remember reading how people said the newest coolers aren't too bad at all compared to older models like I dealt with. They were such junk, especially the one's on the C2D processors that I put together. I was more shocked when those few went together easily than the one's that had problems lol.

Orayn said:
"Push... Then rotate? Rotate then push? Is that one in the little plastic sheathe? Is it supposed to be? Why won't this one stay in place? Did that one just BREAK? Fuck the world."
The instructions barely help.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they cheaped out, and even after you did your first one knowing how to "do it right", they still broke. Annoying as hell.
 
The hardware itself, 2 hours. Took me the rest of the day to install, setup Windows and my programs the way I wanted and to transfer all my stuff.
 
About an hour and a half for me, then a few weeks to wait for an RMA on a bad cpu. Then another few weeks to RMA bad RAM.

I'd done a bit of taking a part/upgrading PCs in the past on my own time just to learn the ins and outs, so I wasn't really going in blind.
 
In 1986 my father and I built our first non-apple PC. We ordered the parts out of the computer shopper. It was a intel 8088 10Mhz :), I think it took us a good 4-5 hours to get it up and running off of a 5.25 MS-DOS 3.2 boot disc.

Good times.
 
I just went through my first build in June. It took me about 3-4 hours and I used the Tested.Com video tutorial from Will Smith for guidance. Everything went smooth so I suppose I was a bit lucky considering I had no bad parts.

The whole process was a lot of fun really and I think i'll continue building my own here on out.
 
Two hours? It took far longer to install the software. Hell, it took more time to do the cable management than it took to put the PC together. Building a PC is truly about as easy as it is to snap Legos together.
 
My first custom made computer took me like 5-6 hours, the newest took me like 4 hours but mostly was cable management work.

Each preventive maintenance (I do it like every 6 months or so) take a couple hours to finish.
 
Just built my 2nd PC ever last Friday. Took about 2.5 hours but I suck at cable management and I took my time. My first PC build (5 years ago at least) took about 4 hours but I was new, so it's expected.

Longest part was updating Windows 7 and installing everything.
 
Took me 5 hours to get everything up and running.

I was so excited when I heard that 'beep' and the BIOS screen popped up. Then my excitement quickly turned into frustration because all I had in the house was IDE DVD Drives, so I couldn't install Windows until I bought a SATA drive the next day.

Learned a hell of a lot about building computers that day.
 
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