my first time

Bill Ford · Post by **Bill Ford** » 21 Jan 2015 1:34 pm

Just built one from the ground up, everything new out of the packages AMD A10-5800, 8gig memory,500 watt power supply, Asus A88X-plus board, 2T storage,etc,etc. All is looking good. Had a couple of old computers to play around with, and establish a learning curve. I think it turned out pretty OK.

Bill

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 21 Jan 2015 9:42 pm

It's fun building your own logic boxes. I've built every desktop PC I owned, starting in 1994 with Windows 3.1. I upgraded it to Windows 95. Eventually, I took it to Windows 98. Then I gave it to my Daughter and built a Windows 2000 Professional PC.

Each PC got more RAM and CPU speed, bells and whistles, etc. I'm typing this at home from my self-built Windows 7 PC. I decided to skip Windows 8 and will move straight into Windows 10, which I will hopefully build myself.

The first task I performed on my Windows 7 PC, after setting up all the most basic stuff, was to save a system image to another disk. If I had a mind to, I could roll back to 2011 in under an hour. Not so for installing and upgrading programs. That takes a week for me. ;-)

Bill Ford · Post by **Bill Ford** » 22 Jan 2015 4:56 am

"Not so for installing and upgrading programs. That takes a week for me.

"

That's the biggest pain for me, remembering all the "stuff", my biggest thing is the audio & recorder/burner programs, I do the Sermon CDs for my Church..

Thanks to all for the help,advise,etc...Bill

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 22 Jan 2015 6:17 am

I've built the last couple of desktops, as I also use them for my recording studio. I can buy almost as cheap but doing it myself I can control everything including sound proofing the case. I use a Thermatake liquid cooler for the CPU with "quiet" fans for the radiator. My CPU cores idle below 30 deg C and rarely go above 40 deg C. I find these work better than a conventional CPU cooler.

I only use Intel CPU's. They are more $$ than AMD but generally out perform AMD's. My main system, which was built almost 3 years ago has an i7 3770 CPU and 16GB of RAM, and an SSD for the OS and my recording program.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 22 Jan 2015 8:14 am

Bill Ford wrote:"Not so for installing and upgrading programs. That takes a week for me. ;-)"

That's the biggest pain for me, remembering all the "stuff", my biggest thing is the audio & recorder/burner programs, I do the Sermon CDs for my Church..

Thanks to all for the help,advise,etc...Bill

Bill;
What I didn't mention is that I use both Acronis True Image and Windows Backup to save complete system images every weekend. My website files (websites I work on) get backed up every night and my documents folder once a week (it doesn't change as often).

The images contain everything installed, all settings, accounts, licenses, passwords, and partitions. I can be back to one week ago at the longest, or as little as one day ago, depending on when s_it happens.

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 22 Jan 2015 8:52 am

I too decided to try my hand at scratch-building a PC a couple of boxes ago. It was a worthwhile learning experience, and it turned out OK - the parts can only go where they're supposed to, so it's sorta' hard to get it wrong.

But there are components, and there are "components". They'll all "fit", but some will give better performance and be more compatible with everything else than others. Getting those nuances just right involves a learning curve and experience. I decided that for future projects, I'd just let the pros who do it for a living make those decisions, and benefit from their experience.

I bought my currrent PC from OriginPC, a boutique builder online. They let you select your own configuration from a long list of options, all of which meet their strict standards for functionality and quality - their name is on it. Since I use it not only for audio, but also photo/video editiing, flight simulation, and occasional gaming [gasp!], I up-spec'ed it some.

Like Jack, I prefer Intel, and the CPU is an i7 4930K overclocked to 4.4Ghz, liquid-cooled by an Origin Frostbite 360 system. Mobo is an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme with an EVGA 1300W power supply. For video, it has 3 (yes, 3) overclocked Nvidia 3GB GTX 780 ti video cards in SLI. It has 32GB RAM installed to support the memory-intensive apps. I run 3 monitors, either in Nvidia extended desktop or surround, depending on application. It has 2 internal drives, and a 5-drive hot swap cage, with 2 more HDs installed there. OS and one other drive are SSD. There's also a combo Blu-Ray/DVD read-write drive.

This bad boy arrived in a wooden shipping crate - it's a serious PC. I've been enjoying it a lot.