Building a PC

[bottlecat]

Could anyone kindly point me in the direction of a very easy to understand (but reliable) and up to date guide to building a PC? Either a book or online would be great.

Books go out of date very fast - a magazine article would be better!

Failing that, try the latest 'Build a Better PC' magbook by David Ludlow. I think 2013 was the last one, downloadable from zinio. The Haynes manual is a good visual guide too: the principles of building a desktop PC don't change much. The components will be very out of date though.

Lots of info online, so it's hard to pick amongst it. This a straightforward video, though it doesn't cover everything:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=n3WIZqQKYjQ

....plenty more on youtube.

Computer Shopper magazine gives information on the latest components.

Remember to buy an anti static wrist strap. An anti static mat is a good investment too :-)

thankyou

I was looking at the books on amazon, but some of the reviews said exactly what you have stated about the components being out of date. My head is spinning with it all!

The best and most current advice you can get is by looking at blogs, forums etc.

I used to do it, back in the days when a decent PC was over £1000 and it was actually rather good fun to buy a cheap AMD processor and overclock it as far as you dare take it, but don't have the interest now. The only people who are still doing it, that I know, are building high end gaming machines and still getting excited about the best graphics cards.

Oh - and at the other end of the spectrum, they're using old components and building linux boxes.

thankyou

Do you know about Raspberry Pi? They are only £25, plus you need the monitor, keyboard and mouse.

I don't know anything about how powerful they can be made to go, but I think there are two million in use now:

www.raspberrypi.org/about/

www.raspberrypi.org/help/

thanks - we have a raspberry pi and have never used it!

Custom PC and Micromart used to be the best magazines (one monthly/one fortnightly) on building and upgrading a PC. They run different articles but they regularly do a "build from scratch" budget/water cooled/all sorts.

It's pretty straightforward unless you are planning on building something specialist.

Toms hardware is also a good website for checking specs of components.