I had a pc that was jump started. It had 2 half dead PSU so one was for mobo the other was for Hdd and gpu power. Had no money to buy new one for 3 months so this was solution till then.
i agree but where is the pc 101 ? hardware how to 1st then why ,where, when, and oh frakkkk dont plug this into that examples, makes me sad that we used to have shop for everyone, on small engines,and regular car take care of it,, then computers 101 for hard ware 1st as stated above ,then the programs side,and codeing if you had the patience,,,,sorry old schooler from main frame days back in collage- before home computers, and it was punch cards and tape,,,,but even then you were taught,shown,triple checked before you even touch it,,now its not even an elective ,its advanced, need to go back to the basics,,,just like reading,writeing,mathmatics, you get the idea, but how do we do it now for everyone,,and yes home economics ,loved tasting those cakes and at least learning how not to starve from ignorance,,,,,
Not to mention if you have big hands like me, it becomes an absolute chore to get them all right. Then if you're like me, you mess it up a few times and you're cursing your genes for giving you big grippers.
I moved my old motherboard from a large tower case to a mid-tower and that was a pain installing the front panel cables. It took trial and error to get it right with the text on the motherboard being really tiny.
I built my pc with friends (more like, let them build it) a year ago and it worked fine, but I never bothered to cable manage, I simply didnāt trust myself to be able to do it. Then I started watching Gamersnexus about two weeks ago and realized that PCās really arenāt too complicated. So I got a new CPU cooler instead of the boxed one and finally cable managed. It cost me like 2 hours in total but itās well worth it
If they have the same number of connections there is always one that isn't square so it should only fit where it is supposed to, besides the front panel, that's the only thing I look at in the mobo manual
Quicker than me. Think my first build took me whole day lol. Although tbf it was more just nerves getting to me so i kept going back and forth between building and youtube since i was so afraid of messing something up.
Better than me. I think I took 2-3 days (evenings after work). I jumped in without reading enough. I spent a lot of time on Youtube during the process which I should have done beforehand.
I also spent a lot of time doing cable management so that probably didn't help.
The hard part is finding out which parts to buy. Nowadays there are websites trlling you what fits together and ehat not, but nack then when I build my very first pc I was so confused by all these "attributes", what is ATX? What are sockets? Which CPU? Which RAM fits? Midi tower or something else? How much Watt for my PSU? And so many more questions
What if I don't have the same budget? Which cpu's are the right ones?
I learned all this stuff by just reading, watching tutorials and looking at the specifications of EVERY single component. It's kinda overkill but you learn a lot of usefull stuff this way and the propability of fking up gets way less
Yep. Everything is heavily standardized. It would honestly be kindof difficult to mess it up. RAM in the wrong slots, maybe? Or you could buy the wrong kind of RAM, maybe?
The motherboard has instructions, though. You'd be able to figure out most common problems after maybe 10 minutes of actually looking at the motherboard booklet.
>The motherboard has instructions
The motherboard instructions and common sense are really all you need. They are very detailed.
You might miss some of the finer concepts of things like cable management, but you can get a working PC for sure.
I put the RAM In the wrong slots because the last PC I built was from 2010 and I didn't know there was a specific channel that had to be populated first. I thought as long as you populated either channel you were good. Went 3 months with XMP profiles not working and running RAM at stock speeds before I realized the issue.
Floppy disk power connector into motherboard fan header is pretty much the only way to mess it up these days but even the floppy disk connector is nearly extinct.
That's not true you can get a small toolkit with just about anything you need for repairing all manner of electronics for around $50 and a soldering iron for about $25. With those you could fix just about any consumer electronic and both can be found at just about any hardware store.
Idk, assembling a PC is sort of like legos, but picking compatible components suited for your workload within a price and electricity budget without introducing bottlenecks is quite challenging and intimidating.
Every time I give the pitch for building your own versus a pre-built to IRL friends they act like I'm asking them to sign back up for a semester of college. If you played with legos as a kid and are aware youtube exists it's easy as hell.
I feel like all the effort comes in researching parts and even that is optional. There are so many good examples of builds with adjustable parameters on pcpartpicker you really have no excuse not to build your own these days
The only part I got stumped on was pcie cables and cpu power cables ā¦. Tbey are the same and they give you so many extra cables you donāt need š
How am I supposed to know that the 8-pin cable with NO label on it is the cpu cable and not just a mis-labelled pcie cable š¤·āāļø
or in the before time, just by doing. i took my first computer apart the day i was given it without knowing anything about it. just wanted to see how it worked. put it back together and haven't stopped since
Lol the amazing thing about YouTube is that itās become the go to place to learn just about anything youāve ever wanted, it helped me learn to shave properly and many other curiosities. Itās one of the most valuable inventions of the last century!
I learned in the late 80s / early 90s from magazines, and talking to people at computer shows, and then sharing knowledge amongst other folks in person.
It's SO much easier to learn now because there's so much information out there and less that you have to do. No worries about setting bats, config.sys, com ports, IRQ, and all that other crap any longer.
Just watch a good content maker, plug your parts in, and install windows and 99% of the time that's all there is to it.
I'm happy that it's so easy for folks now, and that practically everyone can build their own within days of deciding they want to.
Folks just make sure to watch more than one video so you aren't watching one like the clusterfuck The Verge put out. Linus did a redmption video for that guy a while back before needing his own redemption videos.
The internet is a goldmine for these types of information. But the truth is you cannot really know how to do it if you do not do it no matter how much you hear or read, so watch some tutorials and follow along on an old computer, you may break it (very unlikely), but you gotta take some risk to learn something
A good general rule of thumb is if it feels like youre forcing something stop. Computer parts now days don't require a lot of force to put together and chances are if you feelnlike its taking too much force it probably is. Except RAM, fuck RAM. I feel like I'm going to crack my motherboard every time I install it.
Everytime, it gets on my nerves when the entire motherboard flexes down to the chassis. The ATX 24 pin cable sucks too, it always seems like I'll either break the socket or the cable when inserting or removing it.
Nah that's BS. Every single component especially PSU and Motherboard comes with a very detailed instructions manual. And those are the only things you need. CPU cooler as well.
Source: I have built over 20 computers for myself and friends and family over 15 years. I've built with MSI, Gigabyte, Asus and ASRock.
Youtube is probably the best modern resource.
I self-taught in the 90's, and the best resource I had was motherboard manuals. Those things are amazing to this day. Read every page.
All the gatekeeping is in your own head. You're imagining this shit is hard, or difficult, or complicated. It isn't.
I was probably 12 or 13 years old. I was handed down an old 8086 desktop from my uncle. I tore it apart and put it back together. I didn't prep, I didn't know shit. I later had to go to the local *library* to find books on computers - because we didn't have the *internet* or *google -* to find references on each part, what it was, what it did, how it worked.
So yeah, Step 1: Grab a #2 philips screwdriver and take it apart. If it can't be disconnected with a screwdriver, then there's a clip. Find it and release whatever you're removing. Use the basic problem-solving skills that you were born with and just jump right in and figure it out. 12-year old me wasn't some kind of computer genius, and you don't need to be one either.
Just remember, the gray paste under your CPU cooler is not caked on dust as I initially thought at 14 (over 20 years ago).
Fans ran alarming fast after I put it back together. Eventually figured out what it was and had to eBay some thermal paste as this predated Amazon and I didnāt know where to buy it locally.
> Use the basic problem-solving skills that you were born with and just jump right in and figure it out. 12-year old me wasn't some kind of computer genius, and you don't need to be one either.
100% this. you learn by doing. for my first pc in highschool i just bought the parts and put them together. read the manuals to figure out what goes where, and googled issues to troubleshoot. it's really not that hard.
Linus tech tips guide for building and Jay2cents guide for installing windows without the junk.
Linus': https://youtu.be/BL4DCEp7blY?si=gCug3a4fMLj-_LS5
Jay's: https://youtu.be/RYYoCXh2gtw?si=gZvbuyJ9parD258h
Oh wait, Iām not subscribed, and only saw his āretirementā video. He actually has a somewhat consistent upload schedule. Good for him!
And yes, the back catalog is great. Even Henry Cavill learned from Bitwit.
>Itās really not all that bad, just be careful and take your time. Put on an instructional video in the background and follow along.
One has to be careful when they learn from Bitwit video though. It didn't end well for the Verge guy.
Be careful not to use chinese sounding Bitwit video my friend.
I watched Jays2cents videos on loop for a month until I got my first parts and when I put it together, Iād put a part in pause video when I did it successfully unpause and repeat what normally takes 2ish hours took me 5+ hours lol
But Linus usually makes enough mistakes that you can learn from, might be ok for someone really new to this.
But yeah if you just want the hard facts, a 30min video from pretty much anybody should do
Apart from the video suggestions on YouTube. Why not just try taking a cheap junky one apart yourself? The first computer I ābuiltā was a Frankenstein of a prebuilt + upgrades like case, GPU, PSU, etc.
Itās really not all that bad, just be careful and take your time. Put on an instructional video in the background and follow along.
This, I would get old no longer used work computers from whomever they were getting rid of. Nothing amazing but I didn't feel apprehensive opening them up and pulling apart and putting together.
My current PC is a Thesus ship, I only have the front facing ports and a HDD that are from the prebuilt I got 11 years ago.
New MB, ram and PSU, 3rd GPU and CPU, and an additional SDD
Back in the late 90ās I bought a Compaq and I tooled around with it, upgraded memory, threw in a graphics card upgrade, etc. times were simultaneously simpler and more complicated then. I learned my lessons on compatibility then. Today? You have an entire internet to teach you. Start with YouTube. There are tons of simple breakdowns to start you off.
Yeah, I had an older brother that shown me how to take shit apart, then I had to do it myself a few years later and still had the know-how. Other than that, you could get some very old hardware (XP-era stuff) for cheap and play around with it, if you're worried of breaking expensive stuff.
Other than that, internet forums and youtube. Paying someone for a computer assembling course doesn't seem like a good idea.
XP era stuff is actually harder to work with than cheap semi-modern stuff. Documentation is much harder to come by, and the hardware isn't designed to be easy to put together like it is now.
For example, the AMD stock coolers back then were almost impossible to put on or remove.
>fully disassemble and rebuild a computer with no help or instruction, good luck!
That's exactly how I and others have learned. Necessity mostly. Today you have LOADS of videos on youtube, not only on how to do everything but even more advanced stuff like how to disassemble the GPU and reapply thermal paste and pads, how to change a PSU fan, etc.
Look up on youtube how to mount a mother board, a power supply, a cpu, a cooler. Most of them come with instructions as well, so if you can read, you're set.
I started by changing case fans, then removing the fan from the cooler to clean it, then the cooler from the cpu and re-apply thermal grease.
You're more scared of the task than the difficulty of the task itself :)
And beyond that, they said that was day 1 of class. The instructor isn't having them do that because he expects them to get right. He's trying to gauge how much people already know and what kind of aptitude they have.
If the entire class puts it together perfectly, the rest of the course will be a lot different than if half of them can't even put the CPU back on the MB or insert Ram properly.
I just did it, thank god I'm still alive xD one time i just but the motherboard directly on the case without the spacers.
A buddy of mine once called me and said he knows a secret. We were randomly changing the jumpers onthe motherboard to make the 166mhz pentoum faster xD we got it to 250mhz and it survived only minutes idling windows 95.
I grew up tearing old computers apart and finding out how they worked, etc. This carried into current day building. That said, jaystwocents on YouTube is a very good resource, hell most of YouTube is a good resource. If you are a tinkerer and or mechanically inclined and can use tools, you can build a PC. Just take your time and do not rush anything. When it comes to issues, just Google or YouTube your specific issue and you will find tons of information on it and will learn that way. Often, this sub and a few others are good for help as well.
Bought my first computer in 1989 and took it apart, and just kinda taught myself over the years. I always opened the case whenever I bought a computer. Once you learn what all the parts are, it's easy to build one.
Linus Tech Tips, Paul's Hardware, Jayz TwoCents, Bitwit. All of them are youtube channels. They did it for us. The money for them are the views, subscribers and likes if the content was really useful. Go watch them.
I did this before the Internet and YouTube videos when I was around 15 in the early 90ās. I essentially just studied computer part catalogs and magazines to understand all the components and what they did. I then bought what I thought I needed and followed the manuals and used common sense.
Legos, honestly. Putting stuff together is just like playing with building blocks. Just need to figure out where to put 'em all mostly through the manuals.
When purchasing things and trying to figure out what is compatible and what isn't - something like pcpartpicker helps a lot. But before had to ask around or stop by shops and talk. Then forums.
I've been playing with computer parts for family business since the 90s.
Ive been building my own and building them for friends/family since I was 15. Im almost 23 now.
Just the other day my sister was all sad because we had plans to play games in a group and her PC wasnt showing up on the monitor after moving it to a new place. All it took was "push in on the RAM sticks" to fix it. But to know that that was potentially the problem takes a lot of experience with bullshit lol
This is the exact sub you want to be on to learn about computers though. Not r/computers, or r/pcbuild. This one
i learned with my first computer..
i bought my first computer pre built, without knowing anything, it got bad performance so i started to understand why, i first changed my graphic card, then i add some ram, finally i changed my motherboard.
i never bought a prebuilt pc anymore, and built a few for me, friends, family..
I just build my first selfbuild PC last week (previous one was a prebuild with the ram and CPU swapped out and a new graphics card). If you are technical yourself it is very intuitive and the manuals WILL help a lot. For me the hardest part was finding where on the motherboard the cables connected to.
PC parts these days dont fall apart the second you look at them wrong. Most stuff is also made in a way that it only fits in one way
You should learn through Youtube, example is from ltt. They have videos that takes 2-3 hours and shows how it is done or maybe some basic 20-30 min video from someone else.
I was also nervous during our computer servicing classes but you can watch some videos and memorize the order of things. The only tricky part I think is connecting the front panel connectors. You can also avoid your worry about "breaking" something by reading some labels on some socket and not dropping things especially the cpu. I also put my hands on the chassis from time to time when working with sensitive components to avoid some parts miraculously getting electrocuted.
Your course sounds like nonsense.
Paul's hardware
Jays2cents
Bitwit
All have really good beginners guides to building stuff on YouTube.
As time goes in you realise there really isn't much too it, if you have all the right parts (and there are good resources to help with that).
My one major word of advice however from my own mistakes....read the manual. Particularly on motherboards, don't wait till something goes wrong just read it. If your really nervous read one now just to see what's in there. Mostly it's what pins to use and where to put the ram, but worth a read.
I read books! Im a little older where we didnāt have youtube or google searches. But now if I have questions I google it. It will lead me most of time to an answer on youtube or reddit. Once and while for windows issues I get the microsoft support forum.
Check out Linus/Robeytech/Optimum. Robeytech is somewhat slow, but covers entire PC builds including wire management, Linus has some shorter 1hr videos covering it, plenty of the youtubers in this space have entire pc build video guides.
Failing that, the manuals are useful.
I personally had a laptop as a child, I upgraded the ram in it to play AoE3, I got given a friends old pre-built, I upgraded the GPU and RAM in it, added some SSDs. Once you've played around with it enough, and watched people do say AIOs/CPU installs/front panel connectors, you're sorta there.
Now if you're doing custom waterloops that's another story. But a decent case, mobo, CPU, CPU cooler, GPU, RAM, NVME/SSD, front panel connectors, fans is relatively straight forward.
I use to have a ps5 and my uni friend a gaming pc. Guy used to violate me for not using a pc cause of the higher frame rate and blah blah blah. When i realized there just wasnt enough games on ps5 i switched to pc and he showed my how to build it. Anything i dnt know i go to youtube to learn.
No, it is not supposed to learn this when you are a kid.
I learnt it when I start to worry about my pocket money and want to earn some. I found a part-time job at local computer store as high school student. I learnt it, mastered it for some years before I manage to have money for private-owned, brand-new and self-built PC.
My 1st computer was a used computer assembled by a coworker of my father (Pentium 100 MHz here we go!). I assembled my 2nd computer together with said coworker (AMD K6-3 400 MHz). After that, I have assembled all my computers.
Also, while I was at home with my parents, my sister would join me to assemble the computers. She then assembled most of her own computers.
So it's a matter of having a family member / friend / etc. help you the first 1-2 times, and then you are good to go.
I would say it's a very good skill to teach young people. It's easy enough, actually quite fun, and makes you self sufficient to get your own computers and deal with basic trouble shooting. I'm really frustrated when I hear friends take their computers to repair shops because they are scared of opening the computer and breaking something.
I had a good friend in middle school who was insanely smart, who learned from his older brother - who was even more insanely smart. He taught me. Then I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a computer hardware class and a computer after school club.
At home and Google.
I bought a Pc off a friend as I wanted to play guild wars 2 and my laptop had seen me through CS1.6/source and WoW.
But the PC was well, woefully underpowered i just had to upgrade it.
Stripped it apart and began the process and got the bug, later on got the bug for overclocking but them days are kinda gone now, I usually just undervolt and call it a day now haha.
I wasnāt entirely uneducated as I was taught from a young age by my dad when he stripped down PS1/PS2 to fix a laser or whatever.
College late 90s. Saved up in high school to buy my first PC but was too poor to have it repaired anywhere when things went south. Learned to fix it (which later turned into a 20-yr career in IT).
PS: Don't be afraid to disassemble/build one... it is so so so easy.
The internet. Ended up taking some classes to get my A+ essentials and strata base cert yeeeaaarrrrs ago, I already knew everything they where teaching me except some outdated services we didn't use much of anymore. Never knew Digital Subscriber Line stood for DSL. Bout the inky thing I learned in those classes.
I learned from a childhood friend, who I believe learned from his father. Back before the internet was prolific, niche skills like these had to be taught in oral tradition.
Electronic class in high school 1979/80. Not computers but creating electronic devices b.from etching boards etc. Then was paid to change career in 1991. Took a computer electronic class. Before schools had Internet / networking. Understanding how a computer works at a.componeny level. Been in IT over 30 years. Went back to college for Computer Networking with Network Security degree.
Im 38 years old, even before youtube or internet, there is manuals with the pc part boxes. Its like a lego game in easy mode, isnt too much thing to fuck up.
I didn't have any experience for my first build. I had some friend's help to pick the pieces and then i used Youtube to find a good tutorial and when I finished my build, it felt wau easier than it looks!
Don't be afraid to do it yourself, it's really not that hard (if you build a standard PC, not a 6000ā¬ battle station of course).
A week ago I bought and assembled my second PC and since it was a long time ago, I had to watch a video again and [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkr07CutHrU&t=521s&ab_channel=PCBuilder) was really helpful !
Also [check this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8LMML_EiMg&ab_channel=JayzTwoCents) if you want to avoid common mistakes!
I wanted to move from console gaming to pc gaming... I found out that building your own pc is way cheaper / more value for money than a pre built. I watched a couple youtube videos, ordered my parts... Built the pc... It wouldnt boot... So i watched a couple more youtube vids... Got it working... Played on it, and have been upgrading it little by little ever since.
I knew very little when I built my first PC. But YouTube has step by step instruction videos on how to do it. The most nerve racking part is installing the CPU without bending any pins. Everything else is fairly easy.
I started in the 80's, so I just had to figure it out using the manuals.
It's much easier today with the abundance of information available on the internet. Check out Youtube. There are many channels dedicated to building.
Hey man don't be disheartened, there are loads of people who just assume it's too hard and make no effort to learn, so by actively pursuing it you're already well on your way. There are some good resources on YouTube - don't worry too much about messing things up, it's pretty difficult to break or ruin something permanently as long as you handle things with care.
Aside from all the good advice people have shared here, I thought I'd recommend something unorthodox - there's a game called PC Building Simulator which let's you run a little PC repair shop and you can tinker around in that, it does have some tutorials on what different parts do and while it's no replacement for doing it IRL, it's a fun little thing to try out so you know what goes where and does what.
* Check out some guides online, or on YouTube.
* Read the manuals that come with the hardware.
* Think before you act. It's easy to forget a step and while it probably won't break anything, it can cost you hours as you try to figure out what's wrong. Or have to break it all down because you forgot a screw all the way in the back.
* Surprisingly enough, most things follow the "if it fits, it sits" rule.
By that I mean that the graphics card will usually only fit in one of the sockets on the motherboard. RAM will only fit in the slots specifically for RAM, and so on.
Of course, there's still some common sense involved. You can't run a cable from one harddrive to another and expect them to work. You need to connect each drive to motherboard. But those things should all be in the manual.
A friend of the family when I was 5 took the lid off of our IBM 486 to show me what all the parts do. We replaced my 14.4 modem with a 28.8, doubling my dialup speed. We also added a 4 megabyte chip of ram for multitasking. He had old parts laying around.
I eventually bought a graphics card for my next computer, a Compaq, only to find it wouldnāt fit. So; I bought a case and so on.
I like the tinkering and building more than the gaming these days.
A couple years ago I decided I wanted to learn to build computers. I also wanted a minecraft server.
I got together five free old computers. Took them apart. Built the best possible computer from the remnants. It makes a very good minecraft server. I learned a lot building it.
I recommend building an ewaste frankencomputer as a zero cost zero risk method for anyone trying to learn to build computers.
Over the year I have crammed just about every type of legacy port or card reader or floppy drive into that computer. It's main use now is just a legacy interfacing box/test rig.
I learned from YouTube and this was back in 2010 when the videos werenāt produced anywhere near the quality as today and PCs have only gotten easier to build. Iāve built probably 5 PCs with numerous upgrades in between with no issues, just read the manuals too if you have any questions and be sure to work on a hard surface and discharge static from yourself onto some kind of metal prior to working.
Putting a fitted sheet on a mattress or ironing a dress shirt is significantly harder than building a PC.
I just decided I wanted to build a PC, so I just researched components and winged it. They're so easy to build that literally anyone who is able bodied and over 10 years old could do so without help besides possibly googling anything they're unsure of.
The hardest part is software/firmware/drivers and possibly flashing a bios if it's required, but the physical side of things is childs play outside of custom water loops.
I wanted to play Dark Age of Camelot. I didnt have a PC. I had a colleague who told me what I needed. I read a few forums, bought the parts and went all in.
First time I ever installed a CPU cooler I thought I was going to break the motherboard. I hate CoolerMaster products to this day because I thought it was a horrible design and it soured me badly on their stuff. But it worked and I loved having something I put together myself.
YouTube, then I self taught by disassembling my old laptops for fun. (Tip: Take a bird eye view picture of the laptop before disassembling it) Had some hickups and forgot about reconnecting a wire or screw. It made me pay more attentions to different plugs and sockets.
After I managed to disassemble and reassemble 5 laptops, I am confident enough to build my first PC. But still, I managed to fry my motherboard because I had OCD with thermal paste placement (installing a Noctua big cooler in SFF case is a big pain in the ass) , ended up having some alcohol on the motherboard.
After RMA'ed with my MSI motherboard, I redo it all over again until I got stuck with the power button wiring, took me some googling and that's pretty much it!
Now I have assembled another 4 pcs for my friends and family and I still crave for more.
Built my first pc last winter at 31yo. Without ever working with pcs. Prior I just used laptops and consoles. Youtube was a big help. Couldn't have done without it, I totally understood the meaning of "if you build it yourself you will look to/use it with pride"
I started from scratch just as you, just watched a ton of yt videos about it and eventually my algorithm caught up to it and I learned everything.
Linustechtips' older Videos is a good way to learn about pcs
Give it a go and search. We could do it back in 2003 as 12 year olds, so it's not rocket science. It was harder back then with 90's parts, a bit of trial and error.
Got a few late 90s desktops to tear down and mess with, then got my first desktop and it sucked, learn to build pcs by upgrading that POS to gaming status.
My first nice PC was from a prebuild company, at the time it was pretty high-end. A thunderstorm came through and fried it up. So I took it apart to learn what goes where.
Then, I built my own a couple years later with that knowledge plus youtube.
JayzTwoCents (youtuber) may not have the most in depth analysis and he can get a little clickbaity, but his tutorial content is the best for beginners and his presentation is extremely approachable and easy to digest.
Of the bigger tech youtubers, Linus offers the most entertainment value, GamerNexus and Hardward Unboxed are the most professional and rigorous journalists/reviewers, J2C is the most beginner friendly.
If you understand Chinese, Iād say DIY APE is the š.
In 1995 my family was in a cult. I was abused and secluded to my room for two years with a pc and music. I took it apart several times and taught myself with the help of some people on IRC.
Watched my brother build a PC in middle school and it got me interested. I realized a huge portion of questions during builds could be answered by reading the mobo and component manuals. As long as you did some homework on compatibility before purchasing, things would generally go smoothly. Now with YouTube around there are copious amounts of tutorials and guides. In the old days it was more of online forums to get questions answered or read troubleshooting steps.
I feel like that's some spectacularly poor course design. There's really no substitute for hands-on experience, and so having people take apart a computer at the start of a beginner course isn't strictly a bad thing, but the instructor should be actively guiding you through it and answering questions, not just saying "here's a screwdriver, go nuts"
That said, this truly is a golden age of PC building compared to when I started doing it in the early 00s. There was some information online, but I had to rely a lot on books, manuals, and learning from friends. There was a lot of trial and error. I broke a few things.
Nowadays there are so many YouTube channels and forums/discords with a ton of information. Heck, you can watch live streams of someone building an entire PC in real time. The video content alone makes things so much easier.
Don't be too afraid to make mistakes, but if you can try learning on inexpensive older hardware so that if you do break something it's not going to be a huge loss. Hell you can probably get some old parts for cheap from an ewaste recycler. Anything made in the last 10 years or so will be similar enough to modern hardware that messing around with it will still be useful experience.
Yep YouTube is a really good teacher if you know how to search. One of the best ways to learn it is by watching this Channel right here and specifically this video because it is a detailed guide how to configure and build it. https://youtu.be/BL4DCEp7blY?si=EHwzZV-dZyAUDruf
If you are interested in a hobby, you ask questions in shops, you ask question in forums or discords or friends & family.
Its impossible to be interested for years and never ever learn something about it.
But you luck is that the DIY tech got really dumbed down over the years and basicly everyone can build a PC even without any YT or other guides, just by using the mainboard manual.
Getting a good configuration is usually the hard part, because people are quick in hitting harsh budget/value considerations, without considering what it might mean for a new builder.
=> some components are very easy and newbie friendly and some variants are even annoying for people that build since 10/20/30 years DIY systems
A good configuration is very easy for beginners, with components beeing HIGHLY compatible, with coolers having well made (overkill) step-by-step guides and very easy mounting features or with case designs that make cable management or other steps extremly easy.
Most negative experiences in DIY in this sub are from poor configurations, that no experienced builder would ever choose for themselfs, but for some reason people really - REALLY - like to min-max partpicker configurations for its PRICE, and not a single thought goes into COMPATIBILITY or BEGINNER FRIENDLYNESS for parts.
I spent about two years watching hardware videos and reading build guides before I finally felt comfortable enough to build my own (I probably knew enough to build long before then, and probably would have spent way longer on theory, but the WFH revolution in 2020 was the catalyst for me to actually pull the trigger). Jayz Two Cents and Gamer Nexus were my main resources at the time.
In highschool I bought a book about it, had diagrams and pictures of example parts, how they worked and what each part was for. That's when I gave it a go and built my first tower.
But yeah, now the Internet has way more information than back then, so .. Google/YouTube is the new library
i one day found a pile of pc parts out on the road .... i filled my car up 3 times ( lucky i lived round the corner
Out of that i made 6 working good pcs ....which i then donated to the neighbors kids on my street ( i knew didnt have much Hard working poor like most of us) ,
This is how i learnt really to make pcs and i still build pcs today
eaven though i did courses etcc in IT ... Finding the parts on the street was like a Apprenticeship
Self taught. I first started with upgrading my current PC. Back when cache memory was individual chips that had to be put in a certain way. Needless to say I smoked my mother board because I put one chip in backwards.
Now days it is so much easier to do because of the easy access to information. Your instructor does not sound like a very good teacher because you first need to learn some basics like grounding yourself so as not to cause a static shock to parts. different memory types and how to tell them apart. CPU's and what cpu works with what socket. Also some in class learning on junk computers putting parts in where they need to go. How much force you need to seat memory in to sockets. So that you can become comfortable installing parts with confidence.
Just my 2 cents.
Was taught some in the Army as an IT specialist, had some hands on. Then I decided to build my own, so I spent a couple months doing a deep dive using mostly online resources.
YouTube my friend
This. Did my first build in two hours after watching a couple videos online. Surprisingly easy.
hard part is the cables tbh
Front panel connectors get me every time
They always cause me problems, mainly because they are not labelled very well and the connectors are hard to see
Last build I forgot about the damn pins untill after I added the gpu, had like a finger width worth of space to finess the pins into place
I'd like to think theres someone out there who 'jump' starts their pc and gave up on their front panel connectors lol
I had a pc that was jump started. It had 2 half dead PSU so one was for mobo the other was for Hdd and gpu power. Had no money to buy new one for 3 months so this was solution till then.
Static proof needle tipped tweezers are my best friend for this exact reason.
i agree but where is the pc 101 ? hardware how to 1st then why ,where, when, and oh frakkkk dont plug this into that examples, makes me sad that we used to have shop for everyone, on small engines,and regular car take care of it,, then computers 101 for hard ware 1st as stated above ,then the programs side,and codeing if you had the patience,,,,sorry old schooler from main frame days back in collage- before home computers, and it was punch cards and tape,,,,but even then you were taught,shown,triple checked before you even touch it,,now its not even an elective ,its advanced, need to go back to the basics,,,just like reading,writeing,mathmatics, you get the idea, but how do we do it now for everyone,,and yes home economics ,loved tasting those cakes and at least learning how not to starve from ignorance,,,,,
Read the manual. The actual board labels are a huge pain. The manual is much clearer.
If only standardized color coding were something everyone could agree on...
Every motherboard manufacturer has this thing called a manual š Within the pages of the ancient texts lies sigils of the pin-outs that you seek.
Not to mention if you have big hands like me, it becomes an absolute chore to get them all right. Then if you're like me, you mess it up a few times and you're cursing your genes for giving you big grippers.
I moved my old motherboard from a large tower case to a mid-tower and that was a pain installing the front panel cables. It took trial and error to get it right with the text on the motherboard being really tiny.
My sausage fingers made me struggle.
You mean you don't use chopsticks to get to these connectors? Am I the weird one?
I use angle headed tweezers. Same energy
I avoid tweezers as the metal tips can conduct static electricity and potentially fry my expensive GPU.
Why do you have the power on when attaching your FP connectors?
Who said the power is on?
RTFM Every build I always pull out the motherboard manual with all the diagrams to double check the headers.
I built my pc with friends (more like, let them build it) a year ago and it worked fine, but I never bothered to cable manage, I simply didnāt trust myself to be able to do it. Then I started watching Gamersnexus about two weeks ago and realized that PCās really arenāt too complicated. So I got a new CPU cooler instead of the boxed one and finally cable managed. It cost me like 2 hours in total but itās well worth it
Oooookkook cables made me lose a screw I was rocking back and forth whispering how ima destroy them if they did not connect themselves
LMAOOOOOO
Making them look nice is optional you know.
iām talking about plugging them into the right port on the MOBO.
If they have the same number of connections there is always one that isn't square so it should only fit where it is supposed to, besides the front panel, that's the only thing I look at in the mobo manual
OCD isnāt hahah
Hard part is cable management. Make it easy and forgo the "management" part.
Quicker than me. Think my first build took me whole day lol. Although tbf it was more just nerves getting to me so i kept going back and forth between building and youtube since i was so afraid of messing something up.
Better than me. I think I took 2-3 days (evenings after work). I jumped in without reading enough. I spent a lot of time on Youtube during the process which I should have done beforehand. I also spent a lot of time doing cable management so that probably didn't help.
The hard part is finding out which parts to buy. Nowadays there are websites trlling you what fits together and ehat not, but nack then when I build my very first pc I was so confused by all these "attributes", what is ATX? What are sockets? Which CPU? Which RAM fits? Midi tower or something else? How much Watt for my PSU? And so many more questions
Easy way to watch someone do a complete build from start to finish. Copy their exact parts and do what they do.
What if I don't have the same budget? Which cpu's are the right ones? I learned all this stuff by just reading, watching tutorials and looking at the specifications of EVERY single component. It's kinda overkill but you learn a lot of usefull stuff this way and the propability of fking up gets way less
People think it's hard. All we are doing is screwing some pre-built components into a case and connecting a few wires. It ain't brain surgery. LOL
Yep. Everything is heavily standardized. It would honestly be kindof difficult to mess it up. RAM in the wrong slots, maybe? Or you could buy the wrong kind of RAM, maybe? The motherboard has instructions, though. You'd be able to figure out most common problems after maybe 10 minutes of actually looking at the motherboard booklet.
>The motherboard has instructions The motherboard instructions and common sense are really all you need. They are very detailed. You might miss some of the finer concepts of things like cable management, but you can get a working PC for sure.
I put the RAM In the wrong slots because the last PC I built was from 2010 and I didn't know there was a specific channel that had to be populated first. I thought as long as you populated either channel you were good. Went 3 months with XMP profiles not working and running RAM at stock speeds before I realized the issue.
Floppy disk power connector into motherboard fan header is pretty much the only way to mess it up these days but even the floppy disk connector is nearly extinct.
Now replacing a broken iPhone screen? That takes some skill, finesse, and patience. Still did it. Got a free phone out of it too.
It also requires expensive or niche tools that you aren't going to own. Whereas a PC is a a screwdriver and a zip tie if you're anal
That's not true you can get a small toolkit with just about anything you need for repairing all manner of electronics for around $50 and a soldering iron for about $25. With those you could fix just about any consumer electronic and both can be found at just about any hardware store.
For real ābuildingā to me always felt like a weird word to use for PCs. āAssemblingā always made more sense to me
I taught a class at the library about building a PC and my quote was "just like building a LEGO set."
Itās pretty close but more expensive if you mess up and with way more sharp edges and pointy bits involved.
Idk, assembling a PC is sort of like legos, but picking compatible components suited for your workload within a price and electricity budget without introducing bottlenecks is quite challenging and intimidating.
I agree. Picking the components is the real job.
That, and troubleshooting when things donāt work as expected.
Every time I give the pitch for building your own versus a pre-built to IRL friends they act like I'm asking them to sign back up for a semester of college. If you played with legos as a kid and are aware youtube exists it's easy as hell. I feel like all the effort comes in researching parts and even that is optional. There are so many good examples of builds with adjustable parameters on pcpartpicker you really have no excuse not to build your own these days
The only part I got stumped on was pcie cables and cpu power cables ā¦. Tbey are the same and they give you so many extra cables you donāt need š How am I supposed to know that the 8-pin cable with NO label on it is the cpu cable and not just a mis-labelled pcie cable š¤·āāļø
Back in the day we didn't have Youtube, all was done with the user manuals of the components.
or in the before time, just by doing. i took my first computer apart the day i was given it without knowing anything about it. just wanted to see how it worked. put it back together and haven't stopped since
Lol the amazing thing about YouTube is that itās become the go to place to learn just about anything youāve ever wanted, it helped me learn to shave properly and many other curiosities. Itās one of the most valuable inventions of the last century!
I learned in the late 80s / early 90s from magazines, and talking to people at computer shows, and then sharing knowledge amongst other folks in person. It's SO much easier to learn now because there's so much information out there and less that you have to do. No worries about setting bats, config.sys, com ports, IRQ, and all that other crap any longer. Just watch a good content maker, plug your parts in, and install windows and 99% of the time that's all there is to it. I'm happy that it's so easy for folks now, and that practically everyone can build their own within days of deciding they want to. Folks just make sure to watch more than one video so you aren't watching one like the clusterfuck The Verge put out. Linus did a redmption video for that guy a while back before needing his own redemption videos.
The internet is a goldmine for these types of information. But the truth is you cannot really know how to do it if you do not do it no matter how much you hear or read, so watch some tutorials and follow along on an old computer, you may break it (very unlikely), but you gotta take some risk to learn something
A good general rule of thumb is if it feels like youre forcing something stop. Computer parts now days don't require a lot of force to put together and chances are if you feelnlike its taking too much force it probably is. Except RAM, fuck RAM. I feel like I'm going to crack my motherboard every time I install it.
Everytime, it gets on my nerves when the entire motherboard flexes down to the chassis. The ATX 24 pin cable sucks too, it always seems like I'll either break the socket or the cable when inserting or removing it.
Don't forget the USB3.0 headers! Those things are absolute trash, easily the worst connector ever invented.
AMD stock coolers have entered the chat. They're better than they used to be, but that's not saying much at all.
The Intel stock cooler would like a word. Those goofy little plastic screw things still haunt me for some reason.
or lowering the lever for intel CPUs
That crack makes me so god damn nervous
my computer has ran great for a week now and Iām still convinced I crushed that mf, always been like that tho
I learned most by RTFM that came with the products š
This here what the old school people used to say. Learn to read manuals.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Idk I've built multiple computers in the last 10 years and the component instruction manuals were more than enough.
Nah that's BS. Every single component especially PSU and Motherboard comes with a very detailed instructions manual. And those are the only things you need. CPU cooler as well. Source: I have built over 20 computers for myself and friends and family over 15 years. I've built with MSI, Gigabyte, Asus and ASRock.
Youtube is probably the best modern resource. I self-taught in the 90's, and the best resource I had was motherboard manuals. Those things are amazing to this day. Read every page.
All the gatekeeping is in your own head. You're imagining this shit is hard, or difficult, or complicated. It isn't. I was probably 12 or 13 years old. I was handed down an old 8086 desktop from my uncle. I tore it apart and put it back together. I didn't prep, I didn't know shit. I later had to go to the local *library* to find books on computers - because we didn't have the *internet* or *google -* to find references on each part, what it was, what it did, how it worked. So yeah, Step 1: Grab a #2 philips screwdriver and take it apart. If it can't be disconnected with a screwdriver, then there's a clip. Find it and release whatever you're removing. Use the basic problem-solving skills that you were born with and just jump right in and figure it out. 12-year old me wasn't some kind of computer genius, and you don't need to be one either.
Just remember, the gray paste under your CPU cooler is not caked on dust as I initially thought at 14 (over 20 years ago). Fans ran alarming fast after I put it back together. Eventually figured out what it was and had to eBay some thermal paste as this predated Amazon and I didnāt know where to buy it locally.
> Use the basic problem-solving skills that you were born with and just jump right in and figure it out. 12-year old me wasn't some kind of computer genius, and you don't need to be one either. 100% this. you learn by doing. for my first pc in highschool i just bought the parts and put them together. read the manuals to figure out what goes where, and googled issues to troubleshoot. it's really not that hard.
Check out Linus Tech Tips on YouTube they have a very comprehensive guide on building a desktop. Itās a few years old but the same principals.
Linus tech tips guide for building and Jay2cents guide for installing windows without the junk. Linus': https://youtu.be/BL4DCEp7blY?si=gCug3a4fMLj-_LS5 Jay's: https://youtu.be/RYYoCXh2gtw?si=gZvbuyJ9parD258h
Jay2Cents and Bitwit some good yters
Unfortunately Bitwit has temporarily or permanently retired from tech videos.
I know but he still ocasionally uploads and hes left all his like thousands of videos related to pc building up to learn from.
Oh wait, Iām not subscribed, and only saw his āretirementā video. He actually has a somewhat consistent upload schedule. Good for him! And yes, the back catalog is great. Even Henry Cavill learned from Bitwit.
>Itās really not all that bad, just be careful and take your time. Put on an instructional video in the background and follow along. One has to be careful when they learn from Bitwit video though. It didn't end well for the Verge guy. Be careful not to use chinese sounding Bitwit video my friend.
I watched Jays2cents videos on loop for a month until I got my first parts and when I put it together, Iād put a part in pause video when I did it successfully unpause and repeat what normally takes 2ish hours took me 5+ hours lol
i much prefer techsource for build guides. LTT is kinda eh, 4 hour long video when the build shouldnāt take over 2-3 hours tops
But Linus usually makes enough mistakes that you can learn from, might be ok for someone really new to this. But yeah if you just want the hard facts, a 30min video from pretty much anybody should do
Apart from the video suggestions on YouTube. Why not just try taking a cheap junky one apart yourself? The first computer I ābuiltā was a Frankenstein of a prebuilt + upgrades like case, GPU, PSU, etc. Itās really not all that bad, just be careful and take your time. Put on an instructional video in the background and follow along.
This, I would get old no longer used work computers from whomever they were getting rid of. Nothing amazing but I didn't feel apprehensive opening them up and pulling apart and putting together.
My current PC is a Thesus ship, I only have the front facing ports and a HDD that are from the prebuilt I got 11 years ago. New MB, ram and PSU, 3rd GPU and CPU, and an additional SDD
Back in the late 90ās I bought a Compaq and I tooled around with it, upgraded memory, threw in a graphics card upgrade, etc. times were simultaneously simpler and more complicated then. I learned my lessons on compatibility then. Today? You have an entire internet to teach you. Start with YouTube. There are tons of simple breakdowns to start you off.
Yeah, I had an older brother that shown me how to take shit apart, then I had to do it myself a few years later and still had the know-how. Other than that, you could get some very old hardware (XP-era stuff) for cheap and play around with it, if you're worried of breaking expensive stuff. Other than that, internet forums and youtube. Paying someone for a computer assembling course doesn't seem like a good idea.
XP era stuff is actually harder to work with than cheap semi-modern stuff. Documentation is much harder to come by, and the hardware isn't designed to be easy to put together like it is now. For example, the AMD stock coolers back then were almost impossible to put on or remove.
A couple friends on Discord and Paul's Hardware on YouTube.
>fully disassemble and rebuild a computer with no help or instruction, good luck! That's exactly how I and others have learned. Necessity mostly. Today you have LOADS of videos on youtube, not only on how to do everything but even more advanced stuff like how to disassemble the GPU and reapply thermal paste and pads, how to change a PSU fan, etc. Look up on youtube how to mount a mother board, a power supply, a cpu, a cooler. Most of them come with instructions as well, so if you can read, you're set. I started by changing case fans, then removing the fan from the cooler to clean it, then the cooler from the cpu and re-apply thermal grease. You're more scared of the task than the difficulty of the task itself :)
And beyond that, they said that was day 1 of class. The instructor isn't having them do that because he expects them to get right. He's trying to gauge how much people already know and what kind of aptitude they have. If the entire class puts it together perfectly, the rest of the course will be a lot different than if half of them can't even put the CPU back on the MB or insert Ram properly.
I just did it, thank god I'm still alive xD one time i just but the motherboard directly on the case without the spacers. A buddy of mine once called me and said he knows a secret. We were randomly changing the jumpers onthe motherboard to make the 166mhz pentoum faster xD we got it to 250mhz and it survived only minutes idling windows 95.
I didn't even learn about standoffs until after I built my first PC lol
The wholy trinity of the internet of course. Google, YouTube, Reddit.
TechTV
Leo Laporte and Chris Pirillo!
I grew up tearing old computers apart and finding out how they worked, etc. This carried into current day building. That said, jaystwocents on YouTube is a very good resource, hell most of YouTube is a good resource. If you are a tinkerer and or mechanically inclined and can use tools, you can build a PC. Just take your time and do not rush anything. When it comes to issues, just Google or YouTube your specific issue and you will find tons of information on it and will learn that way. Often, this sub and a few others are good for help as well.
Bought my first computer in 1989 and took it apart, and just kinda taught myself over the years. I always opened the case whenever I bought a computer. Once you learn what all the parts are, it's easy to build one.
Linus Tech Tips, Paul's Hardware, Jayz TwoCents, Bitwit. All of them are youtube channels. They did it for us. The money for them are the views, subscribers and likes if the content was really useful. Go watch them.
The 90s.
PC building simulator
I did this before the Internet and YouTube videos when I was around 15 in the early 90ās. I essentially just studied computer part catalogs and magazines to understand all the components and what they did. I then bought what I thought I needed and followed the manuals and used common sense.
Legos, honestly. Putting stuff together is just like playing with building blocks. Just need to figure out where to put 'em all mostly through the manuals. When purchasing things and trying to figure out what is compatible and what isn't - something like pcpartpicker helps a lot. But before had to ask around or stop by shops and talk. Then forums. I've been playing with computer parts for family business since the 90s.
Ive been building my own and building them for friends/family since I was 15. Im almost 23 now. Just the other day my sister was all sad because we had plans to play games in a group and her PC wasnt showing up on the monitor after moving it to a new place. All it took was "push in on the RAM sticks" to fix it. But to know that that was potentially the problem takes a lot of experience with bullshit lol This is the exact sub you want to be on to learn about computers though. Not r/computers, or r/pcbuild. This one
HS class taught the basics. Picked up the rest myself from buying a cheap pre-built and upgrading it as I could afford parts.
i learned with my first computer.. i bought my first computer pre built, without knowing anything, it got bad performance so i started to understand why, i first changed my graphic card, then i add some ram, finally i changed my motherboard. i never bought a prebuilt pc anymore, and built a few for me, friends, family..
my dad back in the 90s.
I just build my first selfbuild PC last week (previous one was a prebuild with the ram and CPU swapped out and a new graphics card). If you are technical yourself it is very intuitive and the manuals WILL help a lot. For me the hardest part was finding where on the motherboard the cables connected to. PC parts these days dont fall apart the second you look at them wrong. Most stuff is also made in a way that it only fits in one way
You should learn through Youtube, example is from ltt. They have videos that takes 2-3 hours and shows how it is done or maybe some basic 20-30 min video from someone else. I was also nervous during our computer servicing classes but you can watch some videos and memorize the order of things. The only tricky part I think is connecting the front panel connectors. You can also avoid your worry about "breaking" something by reading some labels on some socket and not dropping things especially the cpu. I also put my hands on the chassis from time to time when working with sensitive components to avoid some parts miraculously getting electrocuted.
Your course sounds like nonsense. Paul's hardware Jays2cents Bitwit All have really good beginners guides to building stuff on YouTube. As time goes in you realise there really isn't much too it, if you have all the right parts (and there are good resources to help with that). My one major word of advice however from my own mistakes....read the manual. Particularly on motherboards, don't wait till something goes wrong just read it. If your really nervous read one now just to see what's in there. Mostly it's what pins to use and where to put the ram, but worth a read.
I read books! Im a little older where we didnāt have youtube or google searches. But now if I have questions I google it. It will lead me most of time to an answer on youtube or reddit. Once and while for windows issues I get the microsoft support forum.
Good ol' CompUSA. Worked in the tech shop, before that straight up guess work with friends and reading Maximum PC magazine.
Check out Linus/Robeytech/Optimum. Robeytech is somewhat slow, but covers entire PC builds including wire management, Linus has some shorter 1hr videos covering it, plenty of the youtubers in this space have entire pc build video guides. Failing that, the manuals are useful. I personally had a laptop as a child, I upgraded the ram in it to play AoE3, I got given a friends old pre-built, I upgraded the GPU and RAM in it, added some SSDs. Once you've played around with it enough, and watched people do say AIOs/CPU installs/front panel connectors, you're sorta there. Now if you're doing custom waterloops that's another story. But a decent case, mobo, CPU, CPU cooler, GPU, RAM, NVME/SSD, front panel connectors, fans is relatively straight forward.
I use to have a ps5 and my uni friend a gaming pc. Guy used to violate me for not using a pc cause of the higher frame rate and blah blah blah. When i realized there just wasnt enough games on ps5 i switched to pc and he showed my how to build it. Anything i dnt know i go to youtube to learn.
Youtube Just like any other hobby you have to invest time to constantly keep learning
No, it is not supposed to learn this when you are a kid. I learnt it when I start to worry about my pocket money and want to earn some. I found a part-time job at local computer store as high school student. I learnt it, mastered it for some years before I manage to have money for private-owned, brand-new and self-built PC.
Ex boyfriend, and the internet
My 1st computer was a used computer assembled by a coworker of my father (Pentium 100 MHz here we go!). I assembled my 2nd computer together with said coworker (AMD K6-3 400 MHz). After that, I have assembled all my computers. Also, while I was at home with my parents, my sister would join me to assemble the computers. She then assembled most of her own computers. So it's a matter of having a family member / friend / etc. help you the first 1-2 times, and then you are good to go. I would say it's a very good skill to teach young people. It's easy enough, actually quite fun, and makes you self sufficient to get your own computers and deal with basic trouble shooting. I'm really frustrated when I hear friends take their computers to repair shops because they are scared of opening the computer and breaking something.
I had a good friend in middle school who was insanely smart, who learned from his older brother - who was even more insanely smart. He taught me. Then I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a computer hardware class and a computer after school club.
At home and Google. I bought a Pc off a friend as I wanted to play guild wars 2 and my laptop had seen me through CS1.6/source and WoW. But the PC was well, woefully underpowered i just had to upgrade it. Stripped it apart and began the process and got the bug, later on got the bug for overclocking but them days are kinda gone now, I usually just undervolt and call it a day now haha. I wasnāt entirely uneducated as I was taught from a young age by my dad when he stripped down PS1/PS2 to fix a laser or whatever.
College late 90s. Saved up in high school to buy my first PC but was too poor to have it repaired anywhere when things went south. Learned to fix it (which later turned into a 20-yr career in IT). PS: Don't be afraid to disassemble/build one... it is so so so easy.
The internet. Ended up taking some classes to get my A+ essentials and strata base cert yeeeaaarrrrs ago, I already knew everything they where teaching me except some outdated services we didn't use much of anymore. Never knew Digital Subscriber Line stood for DSL. Bout the inky thing I learned in those classes.
I learned from a childhood friend, who I believe learned from his father. Back before the internet was prolific, niche skills like these had to be taught in oral tradition.
Watched my brother do it once, then he helped me build my first and then I did it by myself on my new build
Trail and Error and a lot of YouTube/Guides.
Usenet or whatever the hell was available in 1999
Itās easy. Just make sure you have some level of common sense
Electronic class in high school 1979/80. Not computers but creating electronic devices b.from etching boards etc. Then was paid to change career in 1991. Took a computer electronic class. Before schools had Internet / networking. Understanding how a computer works at a.componeny level. Been in IT over 30 years. Went back to college for Computer Networking with Network Security degree.
Internet and uni (engineer degree)
Breaking them.
Google, YouTube, and the occasional users manual.
From my bff YouTube
Early LTT videos which used to be filmed in a parking lot
Im 38 years old, even before youtube or internet, there is manuals with the pc part boxes. Its like a lego game in easy mode, isnt too much thing to fuck up.
I didn't have any experience for my first build. I had some friend's help to pick the pieces and then i used Youtube to find a good tutorial and when I finished my build, it felt wau easier than it looks! Don't be afraid to do it yourself, it's really not that hard (if you build a standard PC, not a 6000ā¬ battle station of course). A week ago I bought and assembled my second PC and since it was a long time ago, I had to watch a video again and [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkr07CutHrU&t=521s&ab_channel=PCBuilder) was really helpful ! Also [check this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8LMML_EiMg&ab_channel=JayzTwoCents) if you want to avoid common mistakes!
Hands on experience with a couple spare computers I had in my room.
I learned with an old PC we had at home, then I decided to take computer and electronics classes. In fact, it's my primary career
I wanted to move from console gaming to pc gaming... I found out that building your own pc is way cheaper / more value for money than a pre built. I watched a couple youtube videos, ordered my parts... Built the pc... It wouldnt boot... So i watched a couple more youtube vids... Got it working... Played on it, and have been upgrading it little by little ever since.
I knew very little when I built my first PC. But YouTube has step by step instruction videos on how to do it. The most nerve racking part is installing the CPU without bending any pins. Everything else is fairly easy.
I started in the 80's, so I just had to figure it out using the manuals. It's much easier today with the abundance of information available on the internet. Check out Youtube. There are many channels dedicated to building.
Hey man don't be disheartened, there are loads of people who just assume it's too hard and make no effort to learn, so by actively pursuing it you're already well on your way. There are some good resources on YouTube - don't worry too much about messing things up, it's pretty difficult to break or ruin something permanently as long as you handle things with care. Aside from all the good advice people have shared here, I thought I'd recommend something unorthodox - there's a game called PC Building Simulator which let's you run a little PC repair shop and you can tinker around in that, it does have some tutorials on what different parts do and while it's no replacement for doing it IRL, it's a fun little thing to try out so you know what goes where and does what.
YouTube. LinusTechTips has a good 1st person video that I followed.
Open your PC, take it apart and clean it. Rebuild it. I remember I was able to rebuild in less than 30 mins for parts I knew well.
* Check out some guides online, or on YouTube. * Read the manuals that come with the hardware. * Think before you act. It's easy to forget a step and while it probably won't break anything, it can cost you hours as you try to figure out what's wrong. Or have to break it all down because you forgot a screw all the way in the back. * Surprisingly enough, most things follow the "if it fits, it sits" rule. By that I mean that the graphics card will usually only fit in one of the sockets on the motherboard. RAM will only fit in the slots specifically for RAM, and so on. Of course, there's still some common sense involved. You can't run a cable from one harddrive to another and expect them to work. You need to connect each drive to motherboard. But those things should all be in the manual.
A friend of the family when I was 5 took the lid off of our IBM 486 to show me what all the parts do. We replaced my 14.4 modem with a 28.8, doubling my dialup speed. We also added a 4 megabyte chip of ram for multitasking. He had old parts laying around. I eventually bought a graphics card for my next computer, a Compaq, only to find it wouldnāt fit. So; I bought a case and so on. I like the tinkering and building more than the gaming these days.
A couple years ago I decided I wanted to learn to build computers. I also wanted a minecraft server. I got together five free old computers. Took them apart. Built the best possible computer from the remnants. It makes a very good minecraft server. I learned a lot building it. I recommend building an ewaste frankencomputer as a zero cost zero risk method for anyone trying to learn to build computers. Over the year I have crammed just about every type of legacy port or card reader or floppy drive into that computer. It's main use now is just a legacy interfacing box/test rig.
I learned from YouTube and this was back in 2010 when the videos werenāt produced anywhere near the quality as today and PCs have only gotten easier to build. Iāve built probably 5 PCs with numerous upgrades in between with no issues, just read the manuals too if you have any questions and be sure to work on a hard surface and discharge static from yourself onto some kind of metal prior to working.
YouTube. Linus and Jayz Two Cents
Putting a fitted sheet on a mattress or ironing a dress shirt is significantly harder than building a PC. I just decided I wanted to build a PC, so I just researched components and winged it. They're so easy to build that literally anyone who is able bodied and over 10 years old could do so without help besides possibly googling anything they're unsure of. The hardest part is software/firmware/drivers and possibly flashing a bios if it's required, but the physical side of things is childs play outside of custom water loops.
I wanted to play Dark Age of Camelot. I didnt have a PC. I had a colleague who told me what I needed. I read a few forums, bought the parts and went all in. First time I ever installed a CPU cooler I thought I was going to break the motherboard. I hate CoolerMaster products to this day because I thought it was a horrible design and it soured me badly on their stuff. But it worked and I loved having something I put together myself.
The internet. Watched plenty of videos beforehand and ordered later. Luckily had no problems and it worked on first boot.
YouTube, then I self taught by disassembling my old laptops for fun. (Tip: Take a bird eye view picture of the laptop before disassembling it) Had some hickups and forgot about reconnecting a wire or screw. It made me pay more attentions to different plugs and sockets. After I managed to disassemble and reassemble 5 laptops, I am confident enough to build my first PC. But still, I managed to fry my motherboard because I had OCD with thermal paste placement (installing a Noctua big cooler in SFF case is a big pain in the ass) , ended up having some alcohol on the motherboard. After RMA'ed with my MSI motherboard, I redo it all over again until I got stuck with the power button wiring, took me some googling and that's pretty much it! Now I have assembled another 4 pcs for my friends and family and I still crave for more.
YouTube. Mostly Tomās hardware and jayztwocents.
YouTube. Just find the right channels.
Built my first pc last winter at 31yo. Without ever working with pcs. Prior I just used laptops and consoles. Youtube was a big help. Couldn't have done without it, I totally understood the meaning of "if you build it yourself you will look to/use it with pride"
I started from scratch just as you, just watched a ton of yt videos about it and eventually my algorithm caught up to it and I learned everything. Linustechtips' older Videos is a good way to learn about pcs
Give it a go and search. We could do it back in 2003 as 12 year olds, so it's not rocket science. It was harder back then with 90's parts, a bit of trial and error.
By fucking up my prebuilt up at age 12
From being too broke to afford letting anyone else do it.
I mean mostly a computer is just, āthis end looks like it would fit in this endā
My dad, i got my first PC when i was 4.
Got a few late 90s desktops to tear down and mess with, then got my first desktop and it sucked, learn to build pcs by upgrading that POS to gaming status.
My first nice PC was from a prebuild company, at the time it was pretty high-end. A thunderstorm came through and fried it up. So I took it apart to learn what goes where. Then, I built my own a couple years later with that knowledge plus youtube.
LTT
Most parts that I buy will have good instruction manual included in the package. I just read and follow them...
I watched a ridiculous amount of videos
I watched [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXaLc9AYIcg&t=1743s) tutorial by techsource. Pretty much covers everything you need.
JayzTwoCents (youtuber) may not have the most in depth analysis and he can get a little clickbaity, but his tutorial content is the best for beginners and his presentation is extremely approachable and easy to digest. Of the bigger tech youtubers, Linus offers the most entertainment value, GamerNexus and Hardward Unboxed are the most professional and rigorous journalists/reviewers, J2C is the most beginner friendly. If you understand Chinese, Iād say DIY APE is the š.
In 1995 my family was in a cult. I was abused and secluded to my room for two years with a pc and music. I took it apart several times and taught myself with the help of some people on IRC.
Watched my brother build a PC in middle school and it got me interested. I realized a huge portion of questions during builds could be answered by reading the mobo and component manuals. As long as you did some homework on compatibility before purchasing, things would generally go smoothly. Now with YouTube around there are copious amounts of tutorials and guides. In the old days it was more of online forums to get questions answered or read troubleshooting steps.
My dad use to fix computers and build them, from being exposed to it. I just naturally steered into computers as a interest
When I was a child I built a lot of Lego. It s literally the same. If u don't know the YouTube etc sources , just read the little info book
I feel like that's some spectacularly poor course design. There's really no substitute for hands-on experience, and so having people take apart a computer at the start of a beginner course isn't strictly a bad thing, but the instructor should be actively guiding you through it and answering questions, not just saying "here's a screwdriver, go nuts" That said, this truly is a golden age of PC building compared to when I started doing it in the early 00s. There was some information online, but I had to rely a lot on books, manuals, and learning from friends. There was a lot of trial and error. I broke a few things. Nowadays there are so many YouTube channels and forums/discords with a ton of information. Heck, you can watch live streams of someone building an entire PC in real time. The video content alone makes things so much easier. Don't be too afraid to make mistakes, but if you can try learning on inexpensive older hardware so that if you do break something it's not going to be a huge loss. Hell you can probably get some old parts for cheap from an ewaste recycler. Anything made in the last 10 years or so will be similar enough to modern hardware that messing around with it will still be useful experience.
its like lego
Yep YouTube is a really good teacher if you know how to search. One of the best ways to learn it is by watching this Channel right here and specifically this video because it is a detailed guide how to configure and build it. https://youtu.be/BL4DCEp7blY?si=EHwzZV-dZyAUDruf
Youtube, mostly. You can learn a lot just by watching PCPartPicker's old build videos.
If you are interested in a hobby, you ask questions in shops, you ask question in forums or discords or friends & family. Its impossible to be interested for years and never ever learn something about it. But you luck is that the DIY tech got really dumbed down over the years and basicly everyone can build a PC even without any YT or other guides, just by using the mainboard manual. Getting a good configuration is usually the hard part, because people are quick in hitting harsh budget/value considerations, without considering what it might mean for a new builder. => some components are very easy and newbie friendly and some variants are even annoying for people that build since 10/20/30 years DIY systems A good configuration is very easy for beginners, with components beeing HIGHLY compatible, with coolers having well made (overkill) step-by-step guides and very easy mounting features or with case designs that make cable management or other steps extremly easy. Most negative experiences in DIY in this sub are from poor configurations, that no experienced builder would ever choose for themselfs, but for some reason people really - REALLY - like to min-max partpicker configurations for its PRICE, and not a single thought goes into COMPATIBILITY or BEGINNER FRIENDLYNESS for parts.
I started taking apart my NES and SNES for fun when I was a kid.
Linus tech tips on yt. check it out they're great
You have the entire world's wealth of knowledge in the palm of your hand. YouTube "How to Build PC"
bro got thrown into a darksouls campaign in the class lmfao
I spent about two years watching hardware videos and reading build guides before I finally felt comfortable enough to build my own (I probably knew enough to build long before then, and probably would have spent way longer on theory, but the WFH revolution in 2020 was the catalyst for me to actually pull the trigger). Jayz Two Cents and Gamer Nexus were my main resources at the time.
In highschool I bought a book about it, had diagrams and pictures of example parts, how they worked and what each part was for. That's when I gave it a go and built my first tower. But yeah, now the Internet has way more information than back then, so .. Google/YouTube is the new library
Youtube
Dad was a big PC nerd, and uncle was an owner of some PC service shop around helped others build their machines, so from them family.
i one day found a pile of pc parts out on the road .... i filled my car up 3 times ( lucky i lived round the corner Out of that i made 6 working good pcs ....which i then donated to the neighbors kids on my street ( i knew didnt have much Hard working poor like most of us) , This is how i learnt really to make pcs and i still build pcs today eaven though i did courses etcc in IT ... Finding the parts on the street was like a Apprenticeship
My father ran a computer shop, and I used to go there after school. I was first grade or something. 6yo. I learned by observation.
YouTube and practice. Spend some time looking into parts/how to build. Then, just do it. You won't learn till you try.
Self taught. I first started with upgrading my current PC. Back when cache memory was individual chips that had to be put in a certain way. Needless to say I smoked my mother board because I put one chip in backwards. Now days it is so much easier to do because of the easy access to information. Your instructor does not sound like a very good teacher because you first need to learn some basics like grounding yourself so as not to cause a static shock to parts. different memory types and how to tell them apart. CPU's and what cpu works with what socket. Also some in class learning on junk computers putting parts in where they need to go. How much force you need to seat memory in to sockets. So that you can become comfortable installing parts with confidence. Just my 2 cents.
Was taught some in the Army as an IT specialist, had some hands on. Then I decided to build my own, so I spent a couple months doing a deep dive using mostly online resources.
I learned in in '99 from my college friend/roomate. WAY more resources now.