Building Your Own PC
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In Mauritius, most people who buy a PC will go to a reseller such as (We are not allowed mention the vendors name) to purchase one that suits their needs. These PCs when are unpacked, they are inclusive of many different options depending on the manufacturer and model of PC that was purchased. An alternative to buying a PC pre-installed with hardware and software is to assemble your own.
 

Building a PC is easy, it can be done by a 12 years old child, but building a PC for the first time requires researching and then obtaining the parts and components that are needed. A PC can have many types of hardware that can be added or upgraded on the machine.

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You will first need to find a computer case and then a suitable motherboard and processor. Most processors sold today are known as Dual Core and provides faster performance than a single core processor. You will also need to purchase an adequate amount of RAM to use on the system. The amount which you need, will vary depending on the applications you plan to use but 2 gigabytes should be well sufficient. The PC will also need a hard drive with plenty of storage and as well as a DVD writer. You can find your computer from us, but keep in mind that you should first decide what the PC is going to be used for before buying any parts or components.

You will also need to have adequate sound and video capabilities available on your new PC. Most of the motherboards, such as MSI, BioStar, Asus, Asrok and Abit, include and on-board sound and graphic controller that can be used. If you want the best sound and graphic quality a separate sound card and video or graphics card will be needed. One of the best known brands for sound cards is SoundBlaster but there are others available as well. Two well known manufacturers of video cards are ATI and Nvidia which can also be found online from us. When looking for a video card you will want one that has at least 256 megabytes of video RAM. If you plan to play games on your PC you may want to purchase a high end video card that supports 3D functionality.

After you have all of the parts and components available you are now ready to start assembling your new PC. During assembly the most important tool you will be using is a screwdriver, some small pliers and (a VOM meter sometime necessary, but not required). You will first need to secure the motherboard to the case before adding any additional hardware to the system. Once the motherboard is secured within the casing, you can add the RAM as well as other internal components such as the hard drive, sound card and video card. You will then need to place the DVD writer into a drive bay and secure it to the case. Connect all of the power and data cables before closing the case and installing the operating system. In fact, there is no need for you to worry for all these things are clearly illustrated in an assembly manual supplied with your kit.

About The PCMU Technician Club

The PCMU Technician Club (in Mauritius only) has been designed to benefit PC users, hobbyists, students, and Computer amateurs specifically, as most problems occurring on your home PC can be rectified by a simple “log to your membership forum”

From your membership account you have the benefits to diagnose the symptoms by yourself and during your membership you would have acquire all the knowledge and valuable resources during the time you assemble your own PC.

There are several advantages and benefits of joining PCMU Technician Club and these advantages can be resumed below:

BUILDING YOUR OWN PC.

Saving Money - Getting More Performance for your Rupees.
Knowing how a computer works -- Spend Less Time with Hard to Reach PC Technician Staff

Being Prepared to Upgrade your PC Components by yourself. PC prices have plummeted during the past few years. We`re constantly being bombarded with ads for PC`s in the few Rs20.000 range, and in some cases with free printer, free scanner, free monitor, free trial internet account, free operating system and so on…

Look carefully at the low cost name brand systems (i.e. a new PC for only Rs10,000) While they may be a significant bargain for a pre-assembled ready to run system, and may offer significant performance gains over what was offered only weeks ago, there are still likely to be several limitations with regards to the up-gradability of these systems.

While the name brand systems often offer the same processors and motherboard chipsets as do the motherboards available for do-it-yourselfers, the name brand motherboards are generally LESS flexible with regards to which processors will run, and which bus and memory settings you may select. The big system vendors would very much appreciate if you never opened the machine, and simply discarded it every few months, and purchased one of their newer and faster systems.

Let`s take a look at what you really need components wise, what they cost, and then take another look at costs.

A typical mid-range desktop system consists of the following:

15" or 17" VGA Monitor

ATX Mini Tower Case

ATX Motherboard (Intel 440BX)

Pentium Class CPU (400Mhz Celeron to 600Mhz PIII)

AGP Video Card

EIDE Hard Disk (6-13GB)

3.5" Floppy Drive

CD-ROM Drive

128MB RAM (PC 100 compliant 168 pin SDRAM)

Keyboard and Mouse

A System with the above components would run Windows 98, NT 4, Windows 2000, Linux, and FreeBSD very well, and should satisfy most PC users as of the time of this writing (August 3, 1999).

A system from a name brand vendor, for example a Dell Dimension L with no monitor, and a 433Mhz Intel Celeron Processor, 128MB RAM, 13.6GB IDE drive, and 40X CD-ROM drive costs about Rs32,000

Couple the above Dell system with a nice 17" monitor, and network card or modem, and you have a pretty good state-of-the art office system and with a few modifications a nice office or web server...for a few months. While it is generally trivial to add external peripherals, and to an extent, even internal upgrades such as CDR or DVD drives, internal ZIP drives, advanced graphics cards, etc., it is extremely difficult to upgrade the main Intel processor, which decrease in price almost weekly, and increase in speeds almost monthly.

Here`s an alternative:

Buy all of the above components as above and put them together yourself in an hour or two. Buy a motherboard that will support the affordable Intel Celeron today, as well as the fastest Intel Pentium III`s available today (and possibly even processors not yet released!), so you can simply upgrade processors as their price comes down significantly in the coming months.

Here`s a sample system that you can build yourself, with prices. As with the Dell, we will assume you either already have a Monitor, or will be acquiring it separately.

ATX Mini Tower Case Rs1,100
ATX Motherboard (Intel 440BX) Rs3,000 (Asus BX6 R2)

Pentium Class CPU (400Mhz Celeron to 600Mhz PIII) Rs4,000 (Intel Celeron 433A)

AGP Video Card Rs1,000 (4MB SGRAM)

EIDE Hard Disk (6-13GB) Rs5,000 (Maxtor)

3.5" Floppy Drive Rs600
CD-ROM Drive Rs1,300 (40X)

128MB RAM (PC 100 compliant 168 pin SDRAM) Rs3,680
Keyboard and Mouse Rs700

The above prices came from www.atacom.com, and can be closely matched by prices at www.astak.com or www.mwave.com, or even www.buycomp.com -- check the buying section at www.tedm.com and also check the price comparison sites such as www.pricewatch.com and check the product reviews and lowest price tables at www.cnet.com.

With our home built system we`re at about Rs13,000, significantly less than the name brand system, and even more significantly, easily upgradable. The motherboard and BIOS in the system above will fully support the fastest Intel Pentium IV 3.0 GHz or Dual Core Processor 2.4 Giga which today cost about $800 for the CPU itself, versus the 433Mhz Celeron selected in the above systems and priced out for the home built system at $124.


HOW TO JOIN PCMU MEMBERSHIP CLUB
Join PCMU Technician Club now with a REFUNDABLE fee of US$150. This fee is a lifetime membership and is DEDUCTED from the bill of your first purchase. For example, if the purchase of your first kit is Rs13,000, and upon delivery of your parcel, you pay 13.000 less 4.800 (the conversion of US$150 to Mauritian Rupees) which resumes into a payable amount of Rs8.200.

Why we require a refundable membership fee of US$150, it is simply because we want to screen out all those who do not have a real intention to purchase PC coaching kit. There are too many guys are just joining FREE membership online just for fun, without taking into consideration that it costs us so much to build and to host our web site and to register our web domain name.

HOW TO PAY
One of the first and main options to join the PCMU Tech Club, is to pay online with your credit card via PayPal. We do NOT recommend you to send us your credit card information by email as it is not safe. You can also send us a cheque (by Physical Mail) in the amount of Rs5000 payable to EV Tech Ltd. Epervier 16th, Justice Street, Port Louis. In this case, the amount is considered paid only when your cheque is cleared at the bank but can sometime be unnecessarily delayed.

Join Your PC CLUB Membership Now | Buy Your First Computer Kit