Has anyone built a PC from scratch?
Is it worth it with the cost of all the bits? I have plenty of time.
I dont want a superfast thing for games, just something as a project with my own choice of hardware & software.
I priced all the bits up from a magazine but it seemed as expensive as a bespoke from my regular supplier
Computer fairs are the place to buy!
look out for them in your local paper! I have built many for friends but top spec machines, look around get to know what you need in a PC and you can build one for a lot less than anyone could sell you one!
Computer fairs are good or go here:
http://custom1.farnell.com/cpc/Default.asp?cookie_test=1
Their prices are better than what you would find in the PC Mags. They also supply “built systems” which are also quite inexpensive.
I priced all the bits that I wanted in my new box off the net. Like you Wheel Nut, nothing special just good quality gear to get me up to a reasonable speed.
Then I took my spec’ sheet, with makes and models/sizes, to my local computer shop. Their quote was £5 or £10 more than I could DIY it for, but it came with a guarantee that it would boot-up and a 1 year warranty. I didn’t get it preloaded with any software at all. It had all the disc’s with the drivers for all my hardware which had the usual software extras on them.
When I got my box home, I pulled all the boards, to check that my spec had been followed. Which they had been. It was simple enough, if you’ve ever done something similar before, you should have no probs.
I get a magazine every month called P.C.Answers, they did a complete run through on building a box a couple of months ago. Their web site is at www.pcanswers.co.uk and they have a forum at forum.pcanswers.co.uk, which is also very good. You might like to have a look and get a copy of that issue.
I’ve built a quite a few over the years and it used to be cheaper to self build but these days there isn’t much in it. Buy the bits online from the likes of Dabs, ebuyer, Watford Electronics etc or from computer fairs as that will be way cheaper than from the likes of PC Shed.
Self build is more fun though. 
This computer was built out of bits,well good bits and I would never buy a off the shelf machine again.
Belive me people you will get the very best machine for your money 
This computer is the most reliable machine I have ever seen,and I built it my self,
Ex advent p4 steel case cost £0
Abbit BD711-RAID mother board £110
pentium 4 2.4 mhz chip £140
768MB of ram £80 approx
Windows xp-pro £80
oh and a tv card and dab card,gf4 128 graphics card.
Two 80 gig hard drives,one opp system one games and the very big juke box
I will leave a link here for a reliable sorce of parts,have a look for yer selves 
overclockers.co.uk/
I’m in the middle of building my first system, I have a Dell system at the moment, but when I decided to upgrade it, I found out that the internal components ( motherboard in paticular ) were not very good. So I have decided to build my own, then I will know it has good quality stuff inside.
another good site is, ebuyer.com/customer/home/
Paul
hi
i always build my own always use a tower if you can and leave room for more.
everone talks about what bits /cards etc but one thing to make sure you have is a good power supply as the more you add thew more power etc you will need.
As well as looking at sites like dabs you really should look around recycling centres… you would be AMAZED at what people throw away. Boxed printers, packaged hard drives, my brother even found a 21" monitor. Mrs runaroundtel
A woman who goes to the computer college I use spilled coffee on her keyboard, She went to PC Shed and spent £1800 on a new PC because they told her it couldnt be repaired. She threw the old complete computer with the printer, monitor and scanner in the skip and said the tip man took it all home.
I bet she was gutted when she found out a keyboard is less than £20