Feel free to post if you have any issues/questions. Good luck making your computer!
Tips:
- You will probably find that most of the cables you need (and more) will come with your motherboard - no need to buy them separately.
- A CPU cooler comes with the CPU, however it's usually quite small, so if you want to overclock your computer you'll need to get a bigger one.
- Remember to turn the PSU on (it took me a few minutes to figure out why the computer wouldn't power up
)
Links:
Q/A
Code:
Q: Should I get firewire?
A: Mainly used for webcams 'n' stuff (don't bother).
Q: Is water cooling worth it?
A: Tough question - mainly used by hardcore computerers.
Q: I don't want to loose data on my drive - which backup program should I use?
A: There are tons of them, choose for yourself: partimage, rsync, tar, and others.
Q: What does PCIe x1/x2/x4/x8/x16 mean?
A: Number of lanes in a PCIe slot, more lanes means more speed. Different devices use different amounts of lanes - a GPU uses x16.
Q: PSU - Some general info' please?
A: Get a good quality one or a smoke alarm. At least 500W.
Q: 64bit/32bit - Which should I get and what is the difference?
A: 32bit limits RAM usage to around 3GB. 32bit has stability, 64bit has speed. 32bit programs still run on 64bit systems.
Q: Is, for example, a CPU running at 1GHz equivalent to a GPU running at 1GHz?
A: No, because different devices do a different number of 'jobs' per Hz.
Q: Are AMD/Intel/ATI/NVidia all compatible with each other?
A: Yes but you can't use two different graphics cards at the same time and CPUs are motherboard-specific.
Q: Are dual processors worth it?
A: Yes. The more processors, the better.
Q: How should I best make use of my two HDDs, how should I partition them?
A: Simplest way would be to have the OS(s) on one and data on the other (larger) one. Although you may want to look into other methods such as RAID.
Q: A computer gets slower as it gets older: What makes it slow? Motherboard, CPU, GPU, etc?
A: The Operating System; Linux takes far longer to get slow than Windows.
Q: Wine - Is it easy to use, does it create lots of glitches?
A: You'll need a Nvidia GPU to stand a chance, even than you can't expect all games to work.
Q: What is so good about PS/2, PS/3, etc?
A: You don't need to setup your keyboard layout, it just works.
My Hardware:
- Case: Antec 300
- PSU: Antec EarthWatts 750W
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P 790FX - case fan control doesn't seem to work
- CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 710 2.6GHz
- GPU: ATi Radeon 3850 - bad Linux compatibility
- HDD: Western Digital 80GB
Upgrades:
- SDD: Looking into getting one of these to stick my / and /boot partitions on to speed up startup.
A huge thanks to everyone who posted replies to this topic - I found your information invaluable when selecting my hardware and finally building the computer.
Building Your First Computer
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) and the mouse is a G5 laser mouse I think (can't remember atm, not in front of it). Monitor is a 22" Acer. There are photos on my blog: 
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