Lad wants to build own computer - start cheap or not?

[UKSBD]

My lad (15) would like to have a go at building his own computer.

He's pretty good on the tech side of things regards benchmarking etc. but has never built anything before.

He's also in to his gaming, so if building his own system would want to build a good one.

Question is though, is it OK to just jump in at the deep end and buy expensive components or is it better when starting out to start with cheaper stuff?

 

[paulears]

Buy a builders package first. Motherboard, memory, video card, drives and a case and Ebay amongst others is a good source. If he gets this up and running, then flog it/keep it and then buy every component separately and do it again, with more tweaks. He'll either whizz through it or struggle. Putting a kit together is 'middle' difficulty, and for some people really simple. Hopefully he will breeze through it.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

What ever route you take make sure its PAT tested before its switched on, Most componants are simple connections but always the chance a inexperienced kid will make a mistake and either get a shock or have it set on fire

Me , I would give him a raspberry computer and some componants and let him practice on that at low voltage and when he understands that he is good to move onto bigger and better things

 

[paulears]

PAT? The power supply is the only thing that the tester would actually be able to test - and unless he's silly enough to pull it apart, then there's no more reason to test a self-build computer than there is your new vacuum cleaner or TV set bought new. I've never ever stuck any brand new device on a tester, despite having one.

Computer PSUs are short and open circuit protected and there's really no live parts he has access to here. The raspberry is presumably powered by some kind of mains power supply, unless it's purely battery driven, and you wouldn't test the power supply you use to drive that would you?

I'm all in favour of safe practices, but I've never yet seen a computer PSU put dangerous voltages out - but I have seen quite a few damaged by unnecessary current tests by a less aware tester.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

What ever route you take make sure its PAT tested before its switched on, Most componants are simple connections but always the chance a inexperienced kid will make a mistake and either get a shock or have it set on fire

Me , I would give him a raspberry computer and some componants and let him practice on that at low voltage and when he understands that he is good to move onto bigger and better things

Whats this ?
Don't tell me you did a risk assessment before you entered in to all your shenanigans when you were a teenager

 

[Clinton]

My lad (15) would like to have a go at building his own computer.

He's pretty good on the tech side of things regards benchmarking etc. but has never built anything before.

It's a piece of cake. I used to own a systems integration business once (PC manufacturer if you like) and my son put his first PC together when he was five. He's assembled all his own PCs since and the physical assembly takes him less than half an hour.

I'm sure your 15 year old will have no problem. Just make sure the parts are compatible ie. they fit together. There's no point buying a server motherboard for a small form factor case. If in doubt, buy a kit and let Scan or whoever put the right set of parts together and you can go as expensive as you like.

Me , I would give him a raspberry computer and some componants and let him practice on that at low voltage and when he understands that he is good to move onto bigger and better things

It's a bunch of nonsense to start at lower voltages and move up. That's not how it works. Have you ever put a PC together or is this your wisdom from decades of experience at the university of life?!

 

[The Byre]

What ever route you take make sure its PAT tested before its switched on, Most componants are simple connections but always the chance a inexperienced kid will make a mistake and either get a shock or have it set on fire

Not necessary - PCs have connectors that make plugging things incorrectly impossible - he would have to willfully cut the PSU cables to get things so wrong.

 

[bodgitt&scarperLTD]

Not necessary - PCs have connectors that make plugging things incorrectly impossible - he would have to willfully cut the PSU cables to get things so wrong.

Excellent- teach him to solder too !

 

[Nico Albrecht]

My general opinion is even a monkey can build a pc. There is almost no way of screwing that up apart from damaging components during the fitting e.g ram, gpu and cpu.

For spending money you can go all in and spend loads of money on parts but the end goal should be building a system that gives you the best performance for a specific game or app while spending the least amount of money. You can go out there buy an intel i9 + a £1000 gpu but only utilise 20% of it. So 80% of spending is just lost money and heat generation.

Buying off the shelf parts and adding them together might cost more than buying a base unit pc and upgrading certain components to it.

Benchmarks don't tell you the full story and most are either sponsored or poorly done and don't reflect real world data.

For example if you open a file in 200ms or 300ms in a real world it makes no difference but that extra 100ms can cost you 70% more. Same goes for games and frame rates.

There is too much marketing going on with pc parts and in 18 month they will be replaced by a newer generation anyway.

Most games might be able to take full advantage of 4 cpu cores running at full speed but cpu makers aim for 8 cores or more. Some rendering or cad apps might be taking full advantage of that many cores but for gaming 4 cores at highest max clock speed are preferred.


If he wants to learn something it would be in software or how computers work. I assume you pay for part of it so make it a condition he hast to install at least 3- 4 different operating systems on the machine with a boot loader W10 + Linux + Unix + MacOS getting them all to boot from one computer should keep him busy and he needs to learn some basic command and terminal commands for the os's along the way. Even Dos commands 30 years in are still being used today in Windows.

Maybe even a couple virtual machines running a proxy caching server for your home and a linux vm firewall. There is tons of stuff that can be done on a pc but playing stupid games.

 

[UKSBD]

Buying off the shelf parts and adding them together might cost more than buying a base unit pc and upgrading certain components to it.

Yes, I noticed this when buying him a system last year.

I got it pre-built from scan but noticed it was cheaper buying the ready made up system than buying the individual components.

I guess unless you know what you are doing, know where to get cheap components and know where to exchange components, there's no real advantage in building your own (apart from the experience you gain).

 

[Alison Moore]

Trouble is if you start expensive and something goes wrong then you've written off an expensive piece of kit. I used to work in a computer repair company and so many times we'd see inexperienced builders write off an expensive parts by forcing them and damaging the parts and the warranty won't cover that. Also often with higher end components they won't always be 100% compatible straight out of the box - for instance you might have to flash the motherboard to get it to work with one of the most recent CPUs. My advise - start cheap and let him cut his teeth on cheap components. Then if he shows passion and commitment, he can upgrade to more expensive parts. It's a catch 22 though as the cheaper components won't allow him to play the more powerful games. Good luck!

 

[Inkredible]

My recommendation, if you wanted to save money initially while he's learning, is to spend on a decent motherboard at least, that allows plenty of scope to upgrade to better components later, even if you skimp on lower end memory, graphics card, CPU at first... At least this way he can upgrade these items as and when he can afford to replace them and still build up to a decent gaming PC over time.

If you buy a cheap motherboard initially, that is the key to what components you're going to be able to use with it and future upgrades may involve having to replace everything at once to get a better machine.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

If you buy a cheap motherboard initially, that is the key to what components you're going to be able to use with it and future upgrades

Not sure if you are trying to troll him here or giving the most useless advice. Future upgrades on a 12 month timetable for Mainboard manufactures to push new tech and sockets out seems like the worst advice of the day on this forum.

 

[Inkredible]

12 month timetable for Mainboard manufactures to push new tech and sockets out

Apologies, not entirely sure you get what I was meaning here...

It's easy to buy a board that is cheap and already maybe a couple of years old in tech terms (I did this on Amazon warehouse deals last time I built a PC). This will probably limit your options in terms of the memory, CPU etc that you can use with it...

 

[SYN]

Does he need an expensive PC? What games does he play? Its not too difficult to build just need to take it slow and theres ton of YouTube build guides he can easily follow.

pcpartpicker.com is also another good place to pick parts/budget/guides etc.

 

[UKSBD]

Turns out he didn't really want to build his own system, was just his sly way of trying to get a better graphics card.

He's got a 1050ti in his system, he says if he builds a new system the one he wants is only £70 more

Only £70 more if he get's back what the original costs I told him, but he doesn't see it that way.

 

[SYN]

Turns out he didn't really want to build his own system, was just his sly way of trying to get a better graphics card.

He's got a 1050ti in his system, he says if he builds a new system the one he wants is only £70 more

Only £70 more if he get's back what the original costs I told him, but he doesn't see it that way.

You'd be very lucky if you got anything close to how much it originally cost unless its pretty new. Checking prices on ebay sold listings for same/similar config would give good idea.

If CPU/RAM etc is all good then he can just sell the card and get new graphics card, it is easy to replace just bare in mind your PSU wattage and what pin connector is used for the current card vs new.

 

[Karimbo]

ahh reminds me when I was 15.

I did search marketing for a company called searchtraffic.com, I had a roms website hosted on goecities and it would get ranked high on yahoo search.

I made $300 on my first paycheck, before I had a bank account and I needed to open a bank account to put the cheque in. I remember my school, the bank clerk thought I was an absolute genius and would tell me I would go far in life.

Well I didn't become a millionaire by age 25. But I've always earnt my own money and never relied on a paycheck from anyone.

I used the money to buy my own PC parts and build my own computer. I did it through reading instructions on computeractive and didn't seek any help from anyone.

With an adult supervision and youtube tutorials, it should be a walk in the park.