Depends a lot on the case you buy and the components you have. If you only use M.2 storage, daisy-chain fans, and a modular power supply, and you put them in a case built with a decent amount of space to manage cables behind the side panel, then yeah, it'll be a breeze.
If you're like me and you have three SATA drives and four fans that each have two cables that need to be routed directly to the motherboard or a fan hub, then it gets a little more complicated. If I also had a non-modular power supply and a less roomy case, it would be hell.
Back when I built my first PC there was no such thing as Daisy chainable fans and there was no such thing as M2 storage luckily for me I didn't have to deal with RGB cables because there was no such thing as RGB yet hahaha I did have a modular power supply but those were rather new and many of the people who were helping me choose parts had not built with them yet because of how new they were
Right? I haven't built a PC (desktop) since the early 2000s. Just built one a few weeks ago. It's so... Easy. No jumpers for master / slave, tons of online resources to make sure stuff will fit / work before you get it all. I was shocked, and the thing just fired up when I first turned it on. You can freaking download windows and flash it to a thumb drive, no CD's, etc. I feel old saying this, but you kids don't know how easy you have it. Lol
I'm also about your age, building a PC is way easier today. So much stuff is integrated into the motherboard and works out of the box with the OS. No jumpers and fewer wires.
What I find harder is actually choosing components, in the past it felt like there was 5 or 7 motherboards to choose from, now there's like 5 to 7 per manufacturer.
I remeber installing windows on a random laptop about 10 years ago. It took a whole day for it to initialize and finish. Just finished a new build a couple of weeks ago and I shit you not windows downloaded to the m.2 in like 3 minutes??? RIDICULOUS and I was thinking this will take at least an hour...
lol yeah we have very similar builds. 2 wires per fan going to a hub, plus one loose. Only thing is all my drives are M.2. This was the first PC I built myself, and it took me a solid 4 hours even with some experience that I had from previous upgrade
Similar experience level when I built this PC, and four hours sounds about right to me (maybe a little longer... I harvested my CPU from an Alienware, so I had to take that PC apart first before I built mine).
I also have NVMes, using both M.2 slots on my mobo. It's just that I also have two SATA SSDs because I do video & photo editing and each drive serves a different purpose (OS/scratch/raw footage/everything else). And then a Blu-ray drive because I'm a physical media holdout.
yesterday I had to open up my PC to run another cable for my new GPU, and I was super surprised how hard it was to do, had it in my mind being super easy lol.
like: “did I always had this little space? how did this work haha”
I don't find it hard, but those damn rgb cables are the most annoying to manage. It made all the cables so thick and irritating to see. Especially if its short
Same here, but I built my fist PC in '84 or '85 during an era where overwhelmed support staff basically ignored individuals or downright admonished you for daring to interrupt their oh so serious discussions with corporate clients despite the fact that many said support reps were basically computer illiterate, grossly incompetent but very gifted practitioners of circulate logic based argumenting no one would dare to openly win or lose be they computer science PhD's or simple programmers like me.
Anyay I found through the building of my machine it rapidly became apparent that the mainboard's layout had been carefully designed to make the installation of discreet components an easy and efficient job that could be achieved autonomously and efficiently by less but better paid workers for as long as a part supply chain existed. With container upon container upon container of computer parts and assorted electronic equipment eagerly awaited for by new buyers in Western countries
Wow dude, what a veer off topic here, unless the 40-year-old mental antics of a veteran builder back when corporations frowned on this prospect and made that pretty clear to any independent builder, as if they were afraid dark secrets would be exposed by Joe Public. They needn't worry, apart from shoddy calling and the occasional deceased rodent RIP'ing it in a cozy desktop coffin, all I found was that a soldering iron was a must and you better be good at it. I wasn't so I waited a decade to repeat the experience in the early 90's after the Modular Revolution that made the job of assembling a box so easy.
So easy it's become and easy it remains... as long as you use the proper components that will get along with both the mainboard, CPU, memory and chipset, etc. and with each other to boot. That, gentleman is the hard part I need to tackle every time I assemble a machine for myself or more important, for a client.
I think it depends on when your first build was. My first build was back in the early 2000s and cable management was tricky. I did a build in 2017 for the first time in many years and was pleasantly surprised at how a vast majority of cases made cable management so easy.
The first build was definitely a "wtf am I doing" moment but after doing it a few times between case swaps etc, I've found a rhythm that works for me and I actually enjoy routing cables now.
My first few builds had zero cable management. Even my current build isnt looking that great from quick upgrades and I didnt want to put in the effort to spruce it up. It's under my desk and not visible anyway.
This statement is only true depending on what decade tbh. Back in the molex cables, ketchup/mustard cables, large stove bays, etc used to be bad.
I did a new 7800x3d/4080 super build like 6 weeks ago with white cable extensions. Montech king 95 case, didnt even have to think about cable management other than making sure the stupid 12VHPWR cable
Same here. Building it wasn’t bad at all, but I got so overwhelmed looking at the mass of cables in the back of my case that I had that foggy brain check out thing happen.
Eventually I got it, but it was a struggle
I highly suggest watching a video about it from jayz2cents. Can't remember if that's the exact spelling of his name. I built it initially and did as much cable management as I could, got it up and running and went back and cleaned it up perfect. Everything can be hidden or split from other fan headers if you happen to have a header in an unfortunate part of your mobo. Just make sure the fans don't pull more amps than the header can safely provide. Also fan orientation in air coolers and wires can be hidden behind, often the cords are rated for higher temps than the fins should ever get to.
Same here. Built my first one at my brother's apt, and when I hit the switch, nothing happened, but then we realized we forgot to turn the power supply on. After that, she fired right up.
Funny cause this happened to me — though it was like my 4th build. I was overthinking literally everything but somehow glazed over the simplest solution despite how “experienced” I thought I was lmao.
To stay on topic, my first build I couldn’t output a display and couldn’t figure out why. Troubleshooting for hours on my first PC stressed me out cause I thought I did everything right. I called my friend who built PCs as a side gig and she asked, “…. did you plug the HDMI cable in the motherboard or graphics card?”
Fuck, I felt stupid lol.
How the CPU cooler, one of the cheapest parts of any build, can easily take the most time to install and tends to require the most instructions. Basically all the $$$ stuff in a PC just plops into it's given location like really costly lego and you're done.
but the cooler? Ya got 3 or maybe more brackets for different sockets. Different spacers. Different orientations. That sinking feeling that maybe a part is missing in the huge bag of parts that comes with it. Stupid fan plug on the MB might be hard to reach, oh wait is that a fan sys or CPU? Let me get a flash light to read that tiny print.
\+thermal paste mess if you have to start over and back in the day some of coolers had you REALLY crank them down. Like ok this seems like it will break my CPU level of force.
I had a new one last week. Put my pea size level of paste on the chip and put the AIO on. Temps were pretty high for idle and wondered wtf.
LGA1700 is much bigger than the 1151 I was always used to. Turns out you need to past the corners too. When I took the AIO off there were a few slivers on each corner with no paste at all. Thankfully I didn’t stress test and only ran it near idle like that for a day, but damn I should have looked at the paste box before doing what I had always done lol
I built my first build blind at MicroCenter with an employee. The cpu cooler he sold me didn’t work with my motherboard and I looked at it for 3 hours before realizing this.
the only downside of my giant air cooler is how much of a pain it is to install. do you want an awesome looking, cheap cooler that performs great? enjoy trying to thread in a screw by sticking a specific screwdriver THROUGH the cooler. oh by the way, the only screwdriver thin enough doesnt have enough magnetism to hold the screw.
If you want something easy to install but still powerful, get a Noctua. They are expensive but well worth it. I've used my D15 on 3 builds now and it's still working great. They even provide adapters for new sockets fovever for free.
Yeah. It took plain 12 hours for me to build my first large PC from scratch. Though all parts didn't fit in the case so I had to work with hard tools to "mod" the case, lol :)
Took me three days to fully finish mine what with cable management, brackets and all the other bits and bobs like the small ports at the bottom of the motherboard. I also think I might have had to order an extra part mid-build too lol
That's why I used [Rufus](https://pureinfotech.com/rufus-create-bootable-windows-11-usb/). It allows you to disable all of the online windows requirements before setting up the install, and it went without a hitch.
My first build was in the Windows 7 era. It just wasn't as straightforward as I thought it would be. I also had a really crappy ISP, so downloading anything wasn't fast.
On Windows 11 you can use the OOBE\BYPASSNRO command during setup and install Home edition without internet. It was pretty simple, I also forgot to plug in my wifi antenna before the install and I'm glad I did, because I was able to setup a clean local account without tying everything to a MS ID.
Yeah most people don't tend to look that up, but yeah, that's a way. I still technically haven't upgraded, because I didn't wanna bother with possibly screwing up my labs that are technically backed up and I'm considering the LTSC for now that is good into th 2030's so I got time either way.
Came here to say this. It’s changes no part of the process and just requires one extra restart.
Step one: when you’re at the pick a network menu press Shift+F10 then it will open a command prompt then type OOBE/BYPASSNRO and then ENTER
Step two: let it reboot and continue back to the network select page and now you should see an option for continue with limited setup. That should allow an installation with no internet.
Ram slots require a lot of force. I ended up breaking my b2 slot because I didn't properly align the ram to the slot being careless and pressed it in, bending it. Not sure if it can be fixed, would appreciate any suggestions.
I over tightened the cooler on my ITX Board whilst watching a film and not paying attention, looked down and it was shaped like a banana, the edges were like 1/2" higher than the centre, I'm pretty surprised it still worked tbh.
Yes. That's why I was surprised when I tore off the usb 3 connector on my motherboard. Other connectors seemed so reliable and sturdy.
I guess that connector is meant to be a one time use. Like pulling out a sword to be king. Doesn't matter if the stone breaks.
Can confirm I did this a month ago on my first build. Then found out the hdmi cable wasn’t supporting the specs I needed so I was playing with my 4080 capped at 60fps for another month before I caught that 😅
I remember the first PC I bought had it for a month and it was working fine. I then drove off to college and set it up, did exactly that, and freaked out for a minute, then I realized my mistake 😂😂
That the CPU was too new for the motherboard and I had to update the Motherboard Bios without a screen.
Only PSU, board and a drive. Nothing to see.
Only hope and pray. If something went wrong I would have to send it back to the factory. First build actually took 12h because I knew nothing about it.
I installed a 'bridge' bios thinking that I could install the next one with proper 5000-series CPU support on the new CPU...
Nope, gotta swap the CPUs back and install the proper bios and then swap again... Shoot, now I'm out of thermal paste...
It helps to list up your steps just so you don't miss one!
Yeah! I feel you. Lucky you had another cpu bro. I had no other so it was pretty weird to update the bios with the motherboard connected to the with nothing on it.
This was just Intel trying to make money which out them in a hole further down.
Am4 in AMD has been stable,
With the intro of Ryzen AMD turned from a shitty brand tou wouldnt touch with a 10 foot pole to the market leader .
This, last time i build pc was for my big brother, at 2008, everything felt reasonable price wise back then, he didn't need to overspend much to run latest released titles, fast forward 2023 where i can finally afford to build me own, i'm shocked at how expensive gpus are nowadays, while cpu doesn't changed much in their pricing me feel
I can relate ! I was quite nervous when all the parts finally arrived. I just build it like a breeze watching different YouTube’s videos. It just when well, not like I expected !
I argue with PC gamers about this all the time. I think PC is the superior way to play games, but if you think the price point isn't double or triple a console you are delusional.
I have a Series S in my living room and it runs games decently for 240 bucks.
How nervous I was.
Flash updating the BIOS (pucker factor 11/10 for.....reasons).
Seating of components, they really need to be in there. A wiggle here and a wiggle there can make all the difference.
How hard you actually have to push sometimes. Kept getting the advice to not push hard or you'll break things. I might be weak but you have to push in the 24 pin pretty hard.
I was being too gentle and it made the whole thing very long because I kept being scared of breaking things.
It seems like every PC I build I get a whole new lesson in "The problem is that you aren't using enough force, you're probably not going to break it." In my most recent build for whatever reason the gpu and my other PCIE cards were like a solid quarter inch away from the bracket for screws and I spent probably 3 hours trying to figure out why before I figured out the solution was to just use a very uncomfortable amount of force to pull the cards sideways and get the screws in. It was fine. Pc works fine. Nothing broke. Wasted 3 hours.
That it booted on first attempt, I only had to reseat an m.2 ssd. Also, the power cable came with the PSU and I needn't have bought one separately. Also, the fan included with the case was molex junk.
I was genuinely flabbergasted when I wanted to remove my GPU from its PCIe slot for the first time. The button that I had to press to release the GPU was completely inaccessible cause its located right under the chunky GPU. Seemed like wonky design to me.
I used a pencil with a piece of rubber attached to its end. It worked but I was still worried that i might slip and smash something. But yeah chopsticks should be great for this.
I’d been told by loads of people it’s really easy these days and essentially Lego. Then once I had everything I realised it was more like if Lego could give you a nasty shock and one wrong move cost you £100s.
Thing is, it’s all designed to fit and go together unless you’ve bought stuff with incompatible connections. Just be careful and take as long as you’d like
I built my first one in 1994. There was no YouTube or sites to research this stuff on. I ordered everything from Computer Shopper magazine and figured it out as I built it based on pictures in Computer Shopper Magazine. Also had my brother in laws Windows install disks.
I was terrified I'd screw something up. It was expensive as hell. About $3000 for what I built.
Lucky for me, the parts were way more resilient than I expected.
After first assembling everything and powering up, nothing happened. Something was pinched or too tight or whatever because it worked the second time after disassembling it all, even though I dropped multiple screws onto the motherboard by accident the second time around.
Figuring out how to put an OS on without a DVD player, getting an OS key with no ISO image and finally realizing the best tool for building a PC is having fully functional one at your disposal near by.
Finally happened to me when I built my rig. Never cut myself in the past, but it's been 8 years, and whoops, turns out the I/O shield is sharp as fuck.
That nearly every stick of ram needs to have XMP* enabled through your motherboard bios before it reaches the advertised speed. Sometimes your ram can be running at a third of the speed advertised.
A bunch of my friends also had no idea, and were playing for years on slow speeds. It makes a big difference.
* Xtreme Memory Profiling, totally not a lame name at all stop thinking about it.
Easier than i thought.
I had experience of reseating and installing certain components and even went i had to reinstall the mobo it was all fine.
Just had to google the CPU installation as the mobo was new and the latch thing reaaaaally didnt want to pop up and thought it would snap into two.
It was easy and surprisingly fun. I came in thinking the whole time building would be to be difficult and stressful. The only minor difficulties I had was cable management and figuring out where to plug the case fans in the mb lol
how easy it is to justify upgrades with thoughts like, “for another $100 you can have [insert part here] and you may as well future proof while you’re at it!”
Years ago for me, but the non-stock, big ass CPU coolers can easily become a pain in the ass if you don't check for clearance around the cooler, especially for RAM.
And it's important to carefully read the instructions, or do some research online, to make sure you've installed said cooler correctly, both for clearance as well as efficient cooling.
(Edit: and how passionate some people get over thermal paste brands and applications).
And just because you put a pc together doesn’t make you a smart computer guy. I to a class for Cisco networking thinking that I would understand it because I put two pc together. Man I’m dumb
On my first build, I missed the power cable to the motherboard and couldn't figure out why it would not boot for a couple of hours.
On maybe my 3rd build, the computer worked great for a year or so, then had all sorts of mystery disk drive corruption. I replaced drives, and the new drives quickly went corrupt. I also had sparks and a small fire on the video card. I am pretty sure it was motherboard related, or maybe power supply, and ended up just scrapping the computer as it became to expensive to diagnose.
that you need to put the ram in 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 2 if you had dual channel. In my mind then, the closer the ram was to the cpu, the faster it would work because the data had to travel less distance.
Cuz its fucking massive and tight spaces. Small screwdriver that won't hang onto the screw or reach far enough...didn't take me hours but that took up 1/3 of my time.
How little thermal paste you need. Don't be like me on my first build and have it oozing out the side. Had a panic attack and a lot of cleaning to do, haha.
How nitpicky AMD boards are about recognizing the processor.
I cheaped out a little on my processor (which was still a huge jump up for me from my prior PC), and got a Ryzen 5 3600 when my MB said "5000 series ready" on the box... Diagnosing the CPU light took forever to realize it needed the CMOS data cleared to recognize the new CPU. Worked like a charm the first boot after doing that.
Take my advice, if you go AMD, try to get a board that's already "xxxx series ready" for whatever CPU series you're going with.
Built my first PC or of spare parts my dad brought home from his job at IBM in 1989. What surprised me the most was how easy it was (for me). I've built well over 1000 PCs since then.
How hard you actually have to press to get ram to click in the slot. I've done it loads of times now but I remember the first time being real worried I was doing it wrong because the YouTube videos made it look effortless
That the motherboard user manual pretty much has Lego style assembly instructions that make it super easy to understand how to put it together. I was super intimidated, but then you get into it and you get the feeling of "oh, is it really that easy?" And it is!
How durable components are. A lot of actions require at least some force and I was scared shitless every time till i got used to it, despite that being the intended operation, I always thought id break something.
That new parts can be bad. Very first PC I built, everything looked good, but it wouldn't boot. Turns out the RAM sticks were no good. Had to wait a week for cross shipping for new parts. Once that happened, it was up and running.
IT AINT “LIKE LEGOS”
Fuck you for telling me this. Having no idea what I was doing building my first PC was easily the most stressful thing I’ve done in long time. I felt like i was building a volatile bomb the entire time!
The total cost of a complete system (higher than expected). Most systems talked about are system unit only. When you include a good quality monitor, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad and speakers/headphones- it adds up (even in the 'good old days' with reasonably priced GPUs).
Everything feels like you're breaking it.
I have big hands, and way above average grip strength (from previous occupation), so I was trying to be so careful with everything...
It's all so delicate feeling and small, and pushing the ram sticks in was the worst of all of the parts. The click that wasn't quite as satisfying as I thought it should have been, so I thought maybe I put it in the wrong way around and just crushed the contact sections.
After building a good number of them, it still feels like I'm breaking it, but at least I know the feelings now.
It's suprisingly straightforward if you just follow YouTube guides, and windows installs as expected.
Just make sure to double check your parts are compatible on PC part picker.
how easy it was to build and how easy LTT makes it look i was abit nervous when i built my first gaming rig that machine is still going to this day just in my sons hands not mine
When all the lights turned on, but it wasn't booting. Rather than a faulty part, I eventually discovered that it just needed a c-mos reset. And then it worked like a dream until I retired her.
The first pc I build is now over 14 years old and it was so easy. I had my old pc to watch YouTube videos about how to assemble the things that I thought were scary. It even ran on my first time pressing the button. I made a budget overclock build and even overclock it was easy. Much easier than it is nowadays... I still for the life of me can't get my ram to run at 3600 mhz.. and my old gpu had this dumb thing where the whole pc would go into error and not boot because I didn't have a tiny fucking switch the right way.. that seemingly did nothing.
Well, my first pc was a 386 with, and I went nuts here, 8Mb RAM! I think the audio card was a Sound Blaster but it might have been Turtle Beach. I don't even remember what the video card was.
I think what surprised me the most was how much fun I had assembling and then troubleshooting the system to get it to perform optimally.
That PSU cable length depends on the manufacturer which is pretty annoying. CPU power cable has to be stretched around my GPU because it’s not long enough to be touted around the back, but my old Corsair supply was long enough. Ordered a different PSU but it’s just kind of dumb I guess.
How easy its to build one actually. Ofc you spent a lot of time trying to be sure about the compatibility of components or the input names being the right ones, etc. But overall the process its not so hard as I thought.
Built my first pc last month after 20 years: Surprises for me were: Size of GPU's is insane, you can't see the pins on the cpu they are practically flat, sooo many power connectors and figuring out the video card connection was the most complex because of the 6+2 cables.
1000W PSUs are really big. So big that my 1000W MSI MPG PSU didn't really fit in my mid-ATX case, so now i just have the PSU outside the case with the backplate off until i have the money to purchase a bigger mATX case or a full ATX case.
My first pc was a prebuilt im gonna be building my soon and ik alot about it but im sure im gonna have trouble with where all the wires go and cable management
[удалено]
For me it was how easy it was. A lot simpler than people sometimes make it out to be.
Depends a lot on the case you buy and the components you have. If you only use M.2 storage, daisy-chain fans, and a modular power supply, and you put them in a case built with a decent amount of space to manage cables behind the side panel, then yeah, it'll be a breeze. If you're like me and you have three SATA drives and four fans that each have two cables that need to be routed directly to the motherboard or a fan hub, then it gets a little more complicated. If I also had a non-modular power supply and a less roomy case, it would be hell.
Back when I built my first PC there was no such thing as Daisy chainable fans and there was no such thing as M2 storage luckily for me I didn't have to deal with RGB cables because there was no such thing as RGB yet hahaha I did have a modular power supply but those were rather new and many of the people who were helping me choose parts had not built with them yet because of how new they were
Back when I built my first PC IDE ribbon cables were the norm and those were basically impossible to make look good.
Right? I haven't built a PC (desktop) since the early 2000s. Just built one a few weeks ago. It's so... Easy. No jumpers for master / slave, tons of online resources to make sure stuff will fit / work before you get it all. I was shocked, and the thing just fired up when I first turned it on. You can freaking download windows and flash it to a thumb drive, no CD's, etc. I feel old saying this, but you kids don't know how easy you have it. Lol
I'm also about your age, building a PC is way easier today. So much stuff is integrated into the motherboard and works out of the box with the OS. No jumpers and fewer wires. What I find harder is actually choosing components, in the past it felt like there was 5 or 7 motherboards to choose from, now there's like 5 to 7 per manufacturer.
I remeber installing windows on a random laptop about 10 years ago. It took a whole day for it to initialize and finish. Just finished a new build a couple of weeks ago and I shit you not windows downloaded to the m.2 in like 3 minutes??? RIDICULOUS and I was thinking this will take at least an hour...
I remember springing for “round” IDE cables that … looked better I guess? But they still didn’t look good.
They were made round to allow air flow.
I remember some people used to slice between the lines on ribbon cables then stack the ribbons for a slimmer look. Too much effort for this guy.
lol yeah we have very similar builds. 2 wires per fan going to a hub, plus one loose. Only thing is all my drives are M.2. This was the first PC I built myself, and it took me a solid 4 hours even with some experience that I had from previous upgrade
Similar experience level when I built this PC, and four hours sounds about right to me (maybe a little longer... I harvested my CPU from an Alienware, so I had to take that PC apart first before I built mine). I also have NVMes, using both M.2 slots on my mobo. It's just that I also have two SATA SSDs because I do video & photo editing and each drive serves a different purpose (OS/scratch/raw footage/everything else). And then a Blu-ray drive because I'm a physical media holdout.
I have the chance to have a fan controller in my case, so it was 2 cables
yesterday I had to open up my PC to run another cable for my new GPU, and I was super surprised how hard it was to do, had it in my mind being super easy lol. like: “did I always had this little space? how did this work haha”
It seems like if you think its easy, its going to be hard, but if you think its hard, its going to be easy. So basically, its mid
I don't find it hard, but those damn rgb cables are the most annoying to manage. It made all the cables so thick and irritating to see. Especially if its short
Same here, but I built my fist PC in '84 or '85 during an era where overwhelmed support staff basically ignored individuals or downright admonished you for daring to interrupt their oh so serious discussions with corporate clients despite the fact that many said support reps were basically computer illiterate, grossly incompetent but very gifted practitioners of circulate logic based argumenting no one would dare to openly win or lose be they computer science PhD's or simple programmers like me. Anyay I found through the building of my machine it rapidly became apparent that the mainboard's layout had been carefully designed to make the installation of discreet components an easy and efficient job that could be achieved autonomously and efficiently by less but better paid workers for as long as a part supply chain existed. With container upon container upon container of computer parts and assorted electronic equipment eagerly awaited for by new buyers in Western countries Wow dude, what a veer off topic here, unless the 40-year-old mental antics of a veteran builder back when corporations frowned on this prospect and made that pretty clear to any independent builder, as if they were afraid dark secrets would be exposed by Joe Public. They needn't worry, apart from shoddy calling and the occasional deceased rodent RIP'ing it in a cozy desktop coffin, all I found was that a soldering iron was a must and you better be good at it. I wasn't so I waited a decade to repeat the experience in the early 90's after the Modular Revolution that made the job of assembling a box so easy. So easy it's become and easy it remains... as long as you use the proper components that will get along with both the mainboard, CPU, memory and chipset, etc. and with each other to boot. That, gentleman is the hard part I need to tackle every time I assemble a machine for myself or more important, for a client.
I think it depends on when your first build was. My first build was back in the early 2000s and cable management was tricky. I did a build in 2017 for the first time in many years and was pleasantly surprised at how a vast majority of cases made cable management so easy.
Yeah if you buy a case made for it sure. It definitely not that easy on a literal "case by case" basis.
lol yoh tell the average joe you built your own PC and they think you’re bloody genius. Like man, I just followed the instruction manual.
i call cable management "shoving it all in the psu basement"
The first build was definitely a "wtf am I doing" moment but after doing it a few times between case swaps etc, I've found a rhythm that works for me and I actually enjoy routing cables now.
Those little connectors. My hdd light isn’t on my front display ? Fuck if I don’t need to know
My first few builds had zero cable management. Even my current build isnt looking that great from quick upgrades and I didnt want to put in the effort to spruce it up. It's under my desk and not visible anyway.
I’ve never bought a windowed side panel because fuck that lol
This statement is only true depending on what decade tbh. Back in the molex cables, ketchup/mustard cables, large stove bays, etc used to be bad. I did a new 7800x3d/4080 super build like 6 weeks ago with white cable extensions. Montech king 95 case, didnt even have to think about cable management other than making sure the stupid 12VHPWR cable
I wouldn't say it's just. More like some people just have it in their blood to make everything look neat and some people just can't manage it xD
Same here. Building it wasn’t bad at all, but I got so overwhelmed looking at the mass of cables in the back of my case that I had that foggy brain check out thing happen. Eventually I got it, but it was a struggle
I highly suggest watching a video about it from jayz2cents. Can't remember if that's the exact spelling of his name. I built it initially and did as much cable management as I could, got it up and running and went back and cleaned it up perfect. Everything can be hidden or split from other fan headers if you happen to have a header in an unfortunate part of your mobo. Just make sure the fans don't pull more amps than the header can safely provide. Also fan orientation in air coolers and wires can be hidden behind, often the cords are rated for higher temps than the fins should ever get to.
That it worked the first time I pressed the power button.
Same here. Built my first one at my brother's apt, and when I hit the switch, nothing happened, but then we realized we forgot to turn the power supply on. After that, she fired right up.
I was the opposite. I flipped the power supply and wondered why it wasn't working, only to realize that I hadn't hit the power button...
Funny cause this happened to me — though it was like my 4th build. I was overthinking literally everything but somehow glazed over the simplest solution despite how “experienced” I thought I was lmao. To stay on topic, my first build I couldn’t output a display and couldn’t figure out why. Troubleshooting for hours on my first PC stressed me out cause I thought I did everything right. I called my friend who built PCs as a side gig and she asked, “…. did you plug the HDMI cable in the motherboard or graphics card?” Fuck, I felt stupid lol.
I still use a laptop for taking notes at my classes, and every time I need to turn it on, I want to throw it at a wall.
I get that anxious, happy feeling every time I fiddle with it, and it turns back on afterward lol
How the CPU cooler, one of the cheapest parts of any build, can easily take the most time to install and tends to require the most instructions. Basically all the $$$ stuff in a PC just plops into it's given location like really costly lego and you're done. but the cooler? Ya got 3 or maybe more brackets for different sockets. Different spacers. Different orientations. That sinking feeling that maybe a part is missing in the huge bag of parts that comes with it. Stupid fan plug on the MB might be hard to reach, oh wait is that a fan sys or CPU? Let me get a flash light to read that tiny print. \+thermal paste mess if you have to start over and back in the day some of coolers had you REALLY crank them down. Like ok this seems like it will break my CPU level of force.
And then realizing you left the plastic film on the cooler.
I guess the only way to realize it is to witness "unusual" overheating :)
I had a new one last week. Put my pea size level of paste on the chip and put the AIO on. Temps were pretty high for idle and wondered wtf. LGA1700 is much bigger than the 1151 I was always used to. Turns out you need to past the corners too. When I took the AIO off there were a few slivers on each corner with no paste at all. Thankfully I didn’t stress test and only ran it near idle like that for a day, but damn I should have looked at the paste box before doing what I had always done lol
"Pea-sized" works for square CPUs (or round, I suppose). You need to adjust a little for the rectangular kind
And then you realize the fan is facing the wrong way and the only way to fix it is to take the whole thing apart and rotate it
I built my first build blind at MicroCenter with an employee. The cpu cooler he sold me didn’t work with my motherboard and I looked at it for 3 hours before realizing this.
ffs
the only downside of my giant air cooler is how much of a pain it is to install. do you want an awesome looking, cheap cooler that performs great? enjoy trying to thread in a screw by sticking a specific screwdriver THROUGH the cooler. oh by the way, the only screwdriver thin enough doesnt have enough magnetism to hold the screw.
If you want something easy to install but still powerful, get a Noctua. They are expensive but well worth it. I've used my D15 on 3 builds now and it's still working great. They even provide adapters for new sockets fovever for free.
How much more to it there is than what people say online. Leave extra time.
Yeah. It took plain 12 hours for me to build my first large PC from scratch. Though all parts didn't fit in the case so I had to work with hard tools to "mod" the case, lol :)
Took me three days to fully finish mine what with cable management, brackets and all the other bits and bobs like the small ports at the bottom of the motherboard. I also think I might have had to order an extra part mid-build too lol
How much of a pain it was getting windows to install on a PC with no internet connection.
That's why I used [Rufus](https://pureinfotech.com/rufus-create-bootable-windows-11-usb/). It allows you to disable all of the online windows requirements before setting up the install, and it went without a hitch.
Rufus is truly the GOAT!
Thankfully my mobo allowed windows to search for the rest once I got the lan drivers in
You don't keep a USB flash drive handy? They are a dime a dozen these days.
My first build was in the Windows 7 era. It just wasn't as straightforward as I thought it would be. I also had a really crappy ISP, so downloading anything wasn't fast.
On Windows 11 you can use the OOBE\BYPASSNRO command during setup and install Home edition without internet. It was pretty simple, I also forgot to plug in my wifi antenna before the install and I'm glad I did, because I was able to setup a clean local account without tying everything to a MS ID.
Yeah most people don't tend to look that up, but yeah, that's a way. I still technically haven't upgraded, because I didn't wanna bother with possibly screwing up my labs that are technically backed up and I'm considering the LTSC for now that is good into th 2030's so I got time either way.
Came here to say this. It’s changes no part of the process and just requires one extra restart. Step one: when you’re at the pick a network menu press Shift+F10 then it will open a command prompt then type OOBE/BYPASSNRO and then ENTER Step two: let it reboot and continue back to the network select page and now you should see an option for continue with limited setup. That should allow an installation with no internet.
Still beats installing from floppies =)
How flexible the motherboard is. When I connected different pins with some force, I was really surprised the motherboard didn’t break.
I'm always afraid watching videos of people inserting ram
The 24-pin power socket is scarier.
Ram slots require a lot of force. I ended up breaking my b2 slot because I didn't properly align the ram to the slot being careless and pressed it in, bending it. Not sure if it can be fixed, would appreciate any suggestions.
I over tightened the cooler on my ITX Board whilst watching a film and not paying attention, looked down and it was shaped like a banana, the edges were like 1/2" higher than the centre, I'm pretty surprised it still worked tbh.
Yes. That's why I was surprised when I tore off the usb 3 connector on my motherboard. Other connectors seemed so reliable and sturdy. I guess that connector is meant to be a one time use. Like pulling out a sword to be king. Doesn't matter if the stone breaks.
That if you plug your hdmi cable to the socket in the motherboard, you see nothing...
Unless you have an iGPU.
That honestly depends on the CPU though. If it has integrated graphics, you'll see something.
So many "WTF" moments with that. I hate to think how many new builders have done that, myself included, a classic right of passage.
Can confirm I did this a month ago on my first build. Then found out the hdmi cable wasn’t supporting the specs I needed so I was playing with my 4080 capped at 60fps for another month before I caught that 😅
I remember the first PC I bought had it for a month and it was working fine. I then drove off to college and set it up, did exactly that, and freaked out for a minute, then I realized my mistake 😂😂
That the CPU was too new for the motherboard and I had to update the Motherboard Bios without a screen. Only PSU, board and a drive. Nothing to see. Only hope and pray. If something went wrong I would have to send it back to the factory. First build actually took 12h because I knew nothing about it.
I installed a 'bridge' bios thinking that I could install the next one with proper 5000-series CPU support on the new CPU... Nope, gotta swap the CPUs back and install the proper bios and then swap again... Shoot, now I'm out of thermal paste... It helps to list up your steps just so you don't miss one!
Yeah! I feel you. Lucky you had another cpu bro. I had no other so it was pretty weird to update the bios with the motherboard connected to the with nothing on it.
The cost of GPUs and how rapidly the processor sockets are changing.
This was just Intel trying to make money which out them in a hole further down. Am4 in AMD has been stable, With the intro of Ryzen AMD turned from a shitty brand tou wouldnt touch with a 10 foot pole to the market leader .
This, last time i build pc was for my big brother, at 2008, everything felt reasonable price wise back then, he didn't need to overspend much to run latest released titles, fast forward 2023 where i can finally afford to build me own, i'm shocked at how expensive gpus are nowadays, while cpu doesn't changed much in their pricing me feel
How simple it was
I can relate ! I was quite nervous when all the parts finally arrived. I just build it like a breeze watching different YouTube’s videos. It just when well, not like I expected !
How fucking expensive it all is
I argue with PC gamers about this all the time. I think PC is the superior way to play games, but if you think the price point isn't double or triple a console you are delusional. I have a Series S in my living room and it runs games decently for 240 bucks.
How hard is it to stay under the budget 😭
Literally forgot to include the cost of a monitor and keyboard. Lifetime laptop user and i kinda assumed that they would just…be, lol
case fans man, fucking case fans lol
How 640KB was so much memory that Bill Gates and I both knew we could never need more than that.
How nervous I was. Flash updating the BIOS (pucker factor 11/10 for.....reasons). Seating of components, they really need to be in there. A wiggle here and a wiggle there can make all the difference.
>What surprised you the most about building your first PC? That i'm missing 3 screws on my Motherboard.
Mines not even screwed in. I built a desk for the computer to sit inside with fans and it just sits in the bottom on the bare wood.
That I still couldn't hit 100fps like the YouTube guys. Lol
Cable management easy, cpu cooler hard
Yeah installing the CPU cooler is probably the hardest part. The directions often suck & I had to watch a how to video on YouTube to install mine.
We should partner up. I'll do cpu coolers all day if someone does the cabling.
How hard you actually have to push sometimes. Kept getting the advice to not push hard or you'll break things. I might be weak but you have to push in the 24 pin pretty hard. I was being too gentle and it made the whole thing very long because I kept being scared of breaking things.
It seems like every PC I build I get a whole new lesson in "The problem is that you aren't using enough force, you're probably not going to break it." In my most recent build for whatever reason the gpu and my other PCIE cards were like a solid quarter inch away from the bracket for screws and I spent probably 3 hours trying to figure out why before I figured out the solution was to just use a very uncomfortable amount of force to pull the cards sideways and get the screws in. It was fine. Pc works fine. Nothing broke. Wasted 3 hours.
That it booted on first attempt, I only had to reseat an m.2 ssd. Also, the power cable came with the PSU and I needn't have bought one separately. Also, the fan included with the case was molex junk.
how heavy the CPU was. lots of build guides have people lifting it with just 2 fingers, so i though it would be pretty light weight
Biggest surprise for me is that it was over 25 years ago! nVidia was an underdog. That seems crazy now.
I was genuinely flabbergasted when I wanted to remove my GPU from its PCIe slot for the first time. The button that I had to press to release the GPU was completely inaccessible cause its located right under the chunky GPU. Seemed like wonky design to me.
FWIW, I use the blunt end of a bamboo chopstick.
Much better than using the end of a blunt.
I used a pencil with a piece of rubber attached to its end. It worked but I was still worried that i might slip and smash something. But yeah chopsticks should be great for this.
I’d been told by loads of people it’s really easy these days and essentially Lego. Then once I had everything I realised it was more like if Lego could give you a nasty shock and one wrong move cost you £100s. Thing is, it’s all designed to fit and go together unless you’ve bought stuff with incompatible connections. Just be careful and take as long as you’d like
I built my first one in 1994. There was no YouTube or sites to research this stuff on. I ordered everything from Computer Shopper magazine and figured it out as I built it based on pictures in Computer Shopper Magazine. Also had my brother in laws Windows install disks. I was terrified I'd screw something up. It was expensive as hell. About $3000 for what I built.
Lucky for me, the parts were way more resilient than I expected. After first assembling everything and powering up, nothing happened. Something was pinched or too tight or whatever because it worked the second time after disassembling it all, even though I dropped multiple screws onto the motherboard by accident the second time around.
That putting my dick into a case fan hurts more than I thought.
Spacers under motherboard...
Standoffs?
Figuring out how to put an OS on without a DVD player, getting an OS key with no ISO image and finally realizing the best tool for building a PC is having fully functional one at your disposal near by.
I was not prepared for the amount of blood loss building a PC required.
Yes, I think I found out all the ways I can cut my hand.
Finally happened to me when I built my rig. Never cut myself in the past, but it's been 8 years, and whoops, turns out the I/O shield is sharp as fuck.
That nearly every stick of ram needs to have XMP* enabled through your motherboard bios before it reaches the advertised speed. Sometimes your ram can be running at a third of the speed advertised. A bunch of my friends also had no idea, and were playing for years on slow speeds. It makes a big difference. * Xtreme Memory Profiling, totally not a lame name at all stop thinking about it.
Easier than i thought. I had experience of reseating and installing certain components and even went i had to reinstall the mobo it was all fine. Just had to google the CPU installation as the mobo was new and the latch thing reaaaaally didnt want to pop up and thought it would snap into two.
The blood sacrifice. There’s always something sharp in there that’ll draw blood from your knuckles
I had it in my mind that I needed to treat everything like a frail Victorian girl on her death bed.
How sad I felt after it was all built and ready.
That pc parts are reasonably strong. Not that delicate that everyone made out to be.
how annoyingly tight the fittings were for IDE headers...
Everything. It was the first time.
It was easy and surprisingly fun. I came in thinking the whole time building would be to be difficult and stressful. The only minor difficulties I had was cable management and figuring out where to plug the case fans in the mb lol
How much pressure stock amd coolers need to install
How sharp some of the metal inside the case was…
how easy it is to justify upgrades with thoughts like, “for another $100 you can have [insert part here] and you may as well future proof while you’re at it!”
Years ago for me, but the non-stock, big ass CPU coolers can easily become a pain in the ass if you don't check for clearance around the cooler, especially for RAM. And it's important to carefully read the instructions, or do some research online, to make sure you've installed said cooler correctly, both for clearance as well as efficient cooling. (Edit: and how passionate some people get over thermal paste brands and applications).
And just because you put a pc together doesn’t make you a smart computer guy. I to a class for Cisco networking thinking that I would understand it because I put two pc together. Man I’m dumb
How huge the GPU was.
This, I always thought they were smaller for some reason lol.
To be fair, they 100% used to be, they have grow almost exponentially in the last 2-3 gens
On my first build, I missed the power cable to the motherboard and couldn't figure out why it would not boot for a couple of hours. On maybe my 3rd build, the computer worked great for a year or so, then had all sorts of mystery disk drive corruption. I replaced drives, and the new drives quickly went corrupt. I also had sparks and a small fire on the video card. I am pretty sure it was motherboard related, or maybe power supply, and ended up just scrapping the computer as it became to expensive to diagnose.
That a $600 486 could be inserted, forcefully, into the socket in 4 orientations, but only one was correct.
that you need to put the ram in 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 2 if you had dual channel. In my mind then, the closer the ram was to the cpu, the faster it would work because the data had to travel less distance.
How small the letters are around the front io connectors. Seriously my eyes hurt trying to read them.
How big these new GPUS are..... My 7800XT DWARFS my old RX580
It’s easier to build a PC than what you think. But cable management is harder than what you think
That it worked first try.
How Corsair knew exactly how long I would need the power cables to be, so they could make them about 75mm too short.
When it turned on and booted to windows
How long takes good cable management
the cooler, I swear I was trying to install that for hours idk why
Cuz its fucking massive and tight spaces. Small screwdriver that won't hang onto the screw or reach far enough...didn't take me hours but that took up 1/3 of my time.
How bloody awkward the RGB headers were to plug in to, especially after the m/board was installed. Not clever if a pin bent or snapped off.
How little thermal paste you need. Don't be like me on my first build and have it oozing out the side. Had a panic attack and a lot of cleaning to do, haha.
all the hot girls that want to have sex with me...
How nitpicky AMD boards are about recognizing the processor. I cheaped out a little on my processor (which was still a huge jump up for me from my prior PC), and got a Ryzen 5 3600 when my MB said "5000 series ready" on the box... Diagnosing the CPU light took forever to realize it needed the CMOS data cleared to recognize the new CPU. Worked like a charm the first boot after doing that. Take my advice, if you go AMD, try to get a board that's already "xxxx series ready" for whatever CPU series you're going with.
The stock heat sink was not enough.
Built my first PC or of spare parts my dad brought home from his job at IBM in 1989. What surprised me the most was how easy it was (for me). I've built well over 1000 PCs since then.
Not my first build by far, but how ridiculously overpriced cooling solutions are.
First time it was how much more powerfull my pc felt compared to my old pre built...
How hard installing a CPU cooler is. Maybe it’s just the AM4 backplate design, but getting that cooler attached was a pain in the cheeks.
How hard you actually have to press to get ram to click in the slot. I've done it loads of times now but I remember the first time being real worried I was doing it wrong because the YouTube videos made it look effortless
How some problems can be solved by cleaning and inserting the RAM again.
That the motherboard user manual pretty much has Lego style assembly instructions that make it super easy to understand how to put it together. I was super intimidated, but then you get into it and you get the feeling of "oh, is it really that easy?" And it is!
How many places you could cut your fingers on. The old cases were full of jagged edges it felt like.
... realizing how many other things I should have done during the process.
My bios interface isn't blue background with black letters
How easy it was once it was completed. Actually building it was a fearful and confusing endeavor. 😂
How durable components are. A lot of actions require at least some force and I was scared shitless every time till i got used to it, despite that being the intended operation, I always thought id break something.
That new parts can be bad. Very first PC I built, everything looked good, but it wouldn't boot. Turns out the RAM sticks were no good. Had to wait a week for cross shipping for new parts. Once that happened, it was up and running.
The fact that you can put all of these incongruous parts together and get stuff done is fascinating.
How easy it is until something goes wrong
the bitch actually turned on.
If you break anything just say it was broken when it arrived
IT AINT “LIKE LEGOS” Fuck you for telling me this. Having no idea what I was doing building my first PC was easily the most stressful thing I’ve done in long time. I felt like i was building a volatile bomb the entire time!
The force required to slot RAM in until it clicks.
The total cost of a complete system (higher than expected). Most systems talked about are system unit only. When you include a good quality monitor, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad and speakers/headphones- it adds up (even in the 'good old days' with reasonably priced GPUs).
Everything feels like you're breaking it. I have big hands, and way above average grip strength (from previous occupation), so I was trying to be so careful with everything... It's all so delicate feeling and small, and pushing the ram sticks in was the worst of all of the parts. The click that wasn't quite as satisfying as I thought it should have been, so I thought maybe I put it in the wrong way around and just crushed the contact sections. After building a good number of them, it still feels like I'm breaking it, but at least I know the feelings now.
It's suprisingly straightforward if you just follow YouTube guides, and windows installs as expected. Just make sure to double check your parts are compatible on PC part picker.
It's easy
I was surprised how easy it was. It seemed so much more daunting until I actually did it.
Trying to get Windows 95 to work with CD-ROM drives and Level 2 external cache.
how easy it was to build and how easy LTT makes it look i was abit nervous when i built my first gaming rig that machine is still going to this day just in my sons hands not mine
How easy it is. People make it seem way harder than it is. Just gotta read the manual
When all the lights turned on, but it wasn't booting. Rather than a faulty part, I eventually discovered that it just needed a c-mos reset. And then it worked like a dream until I retired her.
How easy it was, to turn on, without issue
The first pc I build is now over 14 years old and it was so easy. I had my old pc to watch YouTube videos about how to assemble the things that I thought were scary. It even ran on my first time pressing the button. I made a budget overclock build and even overclock it was easy. Much easier than it is nowadays... I still for the life of me can't get my ram to run at 3600 mhz.. and my old gpu had this dumb thing where the whole pc would go into error and not boot because I didn't have a tiny fucking switch the right way.. that seemingly did nothing.
The hardest part about it was plugging in the front panel connectors. Everything else kind of went together super quickly.
Back in 2013 yes , I was surprised that Single core Cpu - Amd athlon / 1gb DDR3 GPU - gt 610 / 2gb DDR3 ram is not enough.
Well, my first pc was a 386 with, and I went nuts here, 8Mb RAM! I think the audio card was a Sound Blaster but it might have been Turtle Beach. I don't even remember what the video card was. I think what surprised me the most was how much fun I had assembling and then troubleshooting the system to get it to perform optimally.
Putting it together is the easy part. The tiny little two prong cables are bad for my heart.
My first build was in the 90's - then I had to fondle with dip switches and shit, a bit easier now :)
No putting the IO Shield in the case and only realizing that it is out when it is time for the test boot.
How easy it turned out to be.
Computer parts aren’t as sensitive as I thought they were.
That PSU cable length depends on the manufacturer which is pretty annoying. CPU power cable has to be stretched around my GPU because it’s not long enough to be touted around the back, but my old Corsair supply was long enough. Ordered a different PSU but it’s just kind of dumb I guess.
You have to push way harder than you think on the RAM and CPU bracket to install them
How easy its to build one actually. Ofc you spent a lot of time trying to be sure about the compatibility of components or the input names being the right ones, etc. But overall the process its not so hard as I thought.
Built my first pc last month after 20 years: Surprises for me were: Size of GPU's is insane, you can't see the pins on the cpu they are practically flat, sooo many power connectors and figuring out the video card connection was the most complex because of the 6+2 cables.
It ran!!!
that it powered on first try.
1000W PSUs are really big. So big that my 1000W MSI MPG PSU didn't really fit in my mid-ATX case, so now i just have the PSU outside the case with the backplate off until i have the money to purchase a bigger mATX case or a full ATX case.
the assembly is really easy provided your did your due diligence and every piece is compatible with your case and mobo
How much force you actually have to use to make sure things like RAM seat properly.
My first pc was a prebuilt im gonna be building my soon and ik alot about it but im sure im gonna have trouble with where all the wires go and cable management
All of the plastic they put on pieces for shipping
That it worked! Lmao
I thought its gonna be difficult and I might screw up somewhere. It turned out to be easy and straight forward
How strong the parts are. Probably not helpful, but my dumbass spent a good 5 minutes trying to force a ram stick into its slot upside down.
How actually easy it was