Son's & Dad PC Builds....updated 6/21/14

[denali7432]

looking good man, goodluck with the rest of the build, teck seems to know what hes talking about..lol so im sure if you run into some speed bumps or snags he will chime in and steer the ship in the right direction

[Admin]

Holy Fan Batman! Are you sure that case doesn't second as a vacuum cleaner too? lol!

Thats a great project and big A+ to you for supporting your son and doing a project like that. Its nice to see families actually do stuff together and its also very educational what you are doing. Remember, Apple started off just playing around! You just might be sparking the next Bill Gates!

[Teck1337]

however...all of those wires from just the front USBs, switches, fans, and others parts makes me a little uneasy at this point. I'm not sure if I'll be able to figure out where they all connect.

With stuff like that... You either have to be very careful, OR you have to just straight up tackle the issue.


I've used a lot of products to deal with cable management... The best thing I've found is these:
   
--They are just these things for zipties with a sticky backing. I've gone through using a lot of different ones... The white ones are nice if the cables aren't heavy & its a small spot. The black ones work better when you have lots of heaver cables OR you just have lots of room to work with.

Sometimes If I have a lot of cables that are kinda heavy, I'll even put 2-3 black ones spaced out a bit. In post cases it's overkill, and I like to use them sparingly.

If I remember correctly, You can buy them at the local hardware store. I think they run less than $15 per bag of 50-100... I normally buy them in bulk, few thousand at a time.

Chances are he will only need 1-2 of them in a case like that... A large $150k server you use them all over (hence why I buy them in bulk).



Tips/Instructions:

• ONLY stick them to the case. --I once gave someone a few and they thought it was good idea to stick them on the CPU Heatsink. That person had an I.Q. of 135... Okay... So now I always tell people that.
  
• Clean the surface first, then let it dry.
  
• Stick the zip-tie through the little sticky thing... I like to put them on, then loosely put the zip-tie around the cables (this lets you do some small adjusting)... Then I take the adhesive backing off, and stick it in place. Stick it on firmly, Hold for a second or two... You can now tighten the zip-tie. (** All demonstrated in the picture above **)
  

A picture of them in action:
   

(You notice the adhesive on the top of that case with no plastic ziptie thing on it... That's from not letting the surface dry.)



Anywho... That is, In my opinion, the best way to deal with most cables... Beyond that, many cables can be just zip tied together.. nothing else needed.

For now... If you have neither (zip ties nor this zip tie adhesive things), I would just be careful.

P.S. If you need some I can drop some in a standard envelope.

[nayslayer]

Be very carefule putting cpu in. Watch the orientation of cpu and make sure you touch case to eliminated esd

[Jimmie the Mum]

Wow, this is very very cool. Jan, let us know how much you're into this dollar wise.

[Hunlock]

Awesome Jan!!!!

Looks great!

[Tonto]

looking good man, goodluck with the rest of the build, teck seems to know what hes talking about..lol so im sure if you run into some speed bumps or snags he will chime in and steer the ship in the right direction

Without the advice of Dustin (Teck1337) (and a few others) I don't think I would have even attempted it.

Thanks again Dustin!!!


The cable management I think I can handle Ok....it's knowing where they all plug in that looks little scary right now. Slow & steady will win this race, along with a healthy dose of reading & re-reading the instructions!

[Tonto]

Wow, this is very very cool. Jan, let us know how much you're into this dollar wise.

Jimmie...It's not costing me that much at all. My son saved for a long time, any money that he was given as a gift (Christmas, Birthday) and any that he earned helping around the house & even helping me clean the snow at a few of our elderly neighbors. He put part of the money in the bank & part of it for the build.

We still need to pick up a monitor (maybe today) and the OS. Then maybe some small stuff we might have overlooked. When I get the final total, I'll post it.

my son researched the whole thing himself & then I ran the parts list by Teck to get his input & we adjusted from there. We used a local Microcenter for most of the parts. Yeah I had to pay tax, but they matched NewEgg prices & they had rebates on 1/2 of the items. Anything they didn't have in stock (like the case), I ordered from Newegg...1 day free shipping from New Jersey!

[Jimmie the Mum]

Jan, can you keep a complete list of parts (Inventory - detail deccription ) of where you purchased them, cost etc.

I might want to attempt to try this myself or maybe others from SC.
I just re built a laptop with decent success and using that built was able to clone the second one. My son had a couple of laptops from work in his desk draw. One needed a hard drive and the other needed to be re formatted etc as it was a company build and you couldn't log into it.

Building a desktop might be my next project to keep me busy.

[tafdom]

Most of us have on old tower. That would save $100 if it would work to knock the price down. Then a sys board, CPU, memory and the drives. That sure sounds simple enough. LOL The op system is a kick in the teeth @ $200 though. Seems cheaper to buy off the shelf for a non gamer.