When it comes to picking up a PC, we’re massive advocates of the “do it yourself” route. The fact is that just about anyone should be able to put together a machine if they’re given all of the right parts; it’s mostly a question of ‘insert tab A into slot B’ from start to finish. The difficult part tends to be in choosing parts in the first place without going overboard, which is one of the big reasons we’re happy to put together builds on the blog as much as we do.

You'd be surprised how often a little mistake can utterly knacker things...

Still, when it comes to building your own PC, there are a few issues that tend not to come up in many “Build Your Own” articles, but that we do see and hear people talking about a lot. This post is basically just a run down of some really common issues that we encounter that could very well set you back a fairly substantial amount of money if you’re not careful. Some won’t cost a thing no matter how badly they do, but the others… well, let’s just say it’s no walk in the park.

Given that we’ve got our Build Your Own PC classes coming up, we thought it’d be worth a look at some of the little things that can go wrong…

Bent Pins:

Something that we tend to see a lot of just after Christmas is on the socket of 775, 1156, and 1336 motherboards. For those not in the know, these boards have physical pins in the CPU socket on the motherboard itself. These should line up and simply fit into place when you slot the processor onto the board (y’know, before you pop the hatch back down on the whole affair).

On slightly closer inspection, you can actually see the damage fairly clearly...

The problem stems from a couple of different points. The first is that, when it comes to putting together a machine, people tend to be as gentle as possible, ramping up force as necessary. This means that when someone is telling you how to fit RAM or a GPU, they’ll often say something along the lines of,

“Now it won’t just fit in, you’ll need to force it a bit.”

To which the general response is, “… oh, okay. How much should I force it?” Invariably, you’ll hear something along the lines of,

“Oh, if you just keep applying pressure until it’s a little more than you’re comfortable with then you should feel it all click into place.”

While this is solid advice in some situations, the fact of the matter is that there’s an impression created that, when in doubt, the person putting things together should just apply a touch more force, increasing until things ‘snap into place…’ at which point, you’re equally likely to have broken something as to have installed something.

It’s simple enough, but the general rule is, when you’re installing a CPU you should sit down and seat it fairly carefully; once those pins are bent, you’re in for a world of hurt… While one pin might reasonably be bent back into place, even that’s not a sure-fire solution, and who knows what issues it might cause down the line.

Since we do sometimes see motherboards come back through our RMA department with bent pins, it’s something that people should probably be aware of. The fact is that, because of the way they’re manufactured, it’s unspeakably rare for a motherboard to arrive with bent pins, which makes returning a board with bent pins a little difficult…

Go for a Quality Power Supply:

When people go shopping for a power supply, one of the things that we see all too often is that they’ll start to lovingly assemble a nice, high-end rig and before you know it you’re into the kind of territory where you’re going to need a very serious piece of kit indeed to work as your power supply.

Nothing like a nice five year guarantee

A lot of the time, this leads to a little time spent soul-searching while people figure out how to mitigate their new power concerns with their various budgetary obstacles… nobody wants to drop their fancy graphics card in favour of a nice power supply, but the fact is that it’s not an entirely unreasonable thing to do.

If you’re looking at a machine that’s going to need a fair whack of power, you’ll do very well indeed to spend a little time making sure you’re happy with the quality of your power supply. In this respect, we’ve always found Corsair to be entirely admirable, offering as it does a five-year warranty on just about every PSU it sells. It’s also reflected very nicely by the sheer number of solid, 5/5 reviews that Corsair power supplies tend to receive, to say nothing of the raft of awards…

Beware of your Case Sizing:

This one is related to the point above, and both come from roughly the same sources. The fact is that there are a few bits and pieces that tend to be either last or very far down the list when you’re starting to put together a new PC. Among these is the case itself.

Often, there's a reason you'd budgeted as closely as you did for the case...

All this means is that, by the time you get down to the case, you’ve likely whittled away at your budget with any number of interesting justifications for spending “just a little” more on that GPU or CPU. So, your choices are to either go back up your list and start haemorrhaging parts that were nice enough to justify initially, or to just take the hit and buy yourself a cheap case.

Unfortunately, and you’d be surprised how often this happens, when you cheap out on a case, or even if you just pick up a case without checking a little first, you can end up not being able to fit your ludicrous GPU into the case… Now, if you’re an industrious sort, not one to shy away from taking a hacksaw to the less essential parts of your case, then by all means, feel free to jump at whichever case takes your fancy.

Of course, you do tend to hear less about these cases, because, when you get right down to it, it’s just a touch embarrassing to by the guy saying, “What? Oh… no, I was building a PC but the graphics card doesn’t physically fit into the case.”

Keep it Tidy:

You’d be surprised how often people tend to opt for the quick and dirty solutions over something that’ll take five minutes work when a machine is being assembled. Naturally, we’re all human, and there’s a tendency to say, “I’ll get to it later,” even when, deep down, we all know that ‘later’ is very unlikely to arrive.

Honestly, this really isn't doing anyone any good in the long run

To that extent, Shelton reminds us, persistently, that dust collecting inside a machine creates a few different issues. The first is plain and simple overheating, caused by the gradual accumulation of an insulator inside the machine itself… fairly simple stuff there, overheating is bad for reasons we can all get our heads around.

The second, as Ryan point out at great, and just a little disturbing, length whenever given an opportunity, is that dust, by virtue of being composed predominantly of human skin, is also an electrical conductor. Sure, a little probably won’t do you too much harm, but if you’ve got a machine that’s literally sitting around gathering dust, you’re not doing it too much good.

Similarly, when it comes to cabling, you’re far better off keeping everything tied up as neat and out of the way as possible from the moment you put a machine together. The fact is that cables have a way of making a dreadful headache of themselves if you’re not resolved to keep it neat and tidy from the beginning, which makes things

Closing

There are a few other hints and tips that could well go into another post like this, but for the moment we just wanted to have the main points covered so that any of you attending our upcoming build your own PC classes could have a read over and get a feel for the kinds of things we’ll be talking about.

In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions as any other bits and pieces that people tend not to think of when they’re building a PC, we’d be more than happy to hear them. Given the fact that these are all things that are relatively simple to run into if you’re building a machine for the first time (and we were all beginners once upon a time).