Boy, building a PC is easy

[Murloc]

you can always copy somebody else's build and pay someone to build it for you.

It's not black and white.

 

[AdamK47]

I'd say jerky posters are the actual harm to AnandTech's readership.

And that.

 

[Darwin333]

Setting jumpers for IRQ, LPT, COM1, COM2, Sound Blaster, SCSI cards, terminators, SCSI ID, etc.

And then running memory managers for DOS to get the most low memory possible for games to run properly.
386Max, QEMM and MS DOS' memmaker were popular. I like QEMM and the "Quarterdeck Quickboot" was awesome to speed up booting as you didn't have to wait for add on controller dedicated BIOS, etc.

We can (sort of) do this stuff virtually now. I've loaded VMs of many systems and boy does it bring back memories of typing out lines for autoexec.bat and config.sys.

I remember the days of the turbo button as well. It was nice playing King's Quest with a DX50 at 8MHz and when I needed to "fast forward" kick it up to 50MHz.

Boy I remember those days. Hell most builds these days you don't even have to download and install drivers. I remember having to go to a friends house to download my NIC's drivers because I reformated my PC and forgot to download them ahead of time.

 

[lxskllr]

I remember having to go to a friends house to download my NIC's drivers because I reformated my PC and forgot to download them ahead of time.

A nic burned out on our company server and I added a new nic to the pcie port. Windows didn't have drivers for the exotic Intel hardware. This was last year :^S

 

[MrSquished]

Boy I remember those days. Hell most builds these days you don't even have to download and install drivers. I remember having to go to a friends house to download my NIC's drivers because I reformated my PC and forgot to download them ahead of time.

That happened a year ago with the build in my sig. I forgot to download the drivers for my wifi card and it wasn't recognized by Windows 10 during install. Luckily I have a laptop too so took care of it, but if I didn't I'd be going to a friends house to download it.

 

[ultimatebob]

Progress

Cool toy, but I wouldn't want to play Battlefield 1 or Civilization 6 on it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Lol speaking of NIC drivers I had a motherboard where on the driver CD it had all the drivers, except for the NIC, it told you to go download it. How silly is that. I used to laugh each time. I ended up putting them on a floppy so that I don't have to go through that each time. Back in the days when a NIC driver actually fit on a floppy. Why are drivers so bloated now? I've seen some push like over 100MB.

But now days it's rare I even need to deal with drivers as mostly everything works out of the box, even in Windows.

 

[ultimatebob]

A nic burned out on our company server and I added a new nic to the pcie port. Windows didn't have drivers for the exotic Intel hardware. This was last year :^S

Wait a minute... you run WINDOWS on your SERVERS? Shame on you!

 

[Kaido]

Cool toy, but I wouldn't want to play Battlefield 1 or Civilization 6 on it.

Eh. The new DaaS stuff is coming along pretty nicely. Case in point:

https://www.paperspace.com/pricing

 

[xthetenth]

especially hard if you ated most of the toob

https://zippy.gfycat.com/GraciousActiveCoral.webm

Huh. No idea why I can't embed it but it's a good one.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

A nic burned out on our company server and I added a new nic to the pcie port. Windows didn't have drivers for the exotic Intel hardware. This was last year :^S

There's a lot of stuff not included in Win Server because it's expected that you'll handle the drivers, instead of every damned server having like 30GB of esoteric drivers you'll never need.

EDIT: Also, OP is an embarrassment. I've put together more complicated lego sets than modern computers.

 

[NoTine42]

I recently participated in my 1st PC build in 15+ years (I started in the original Pentium days) ... physical assembly was a relative breeze.

But it seems CPU/Motherboard selection is still needlessly complex.
You don't just get a Core i3 CPU and motherboard... you have to know the code names, Skylake or Kaby Lake..and know they mean LGA1151 sockets or something.

 

[lxskllr]

Wait a minute... you run WINDOWS on your SERVERS? Shame on you!

Wasn't my choice. That was here when I got here. We have zero need for Windows on the server. I'd have used debian if I were setting it up.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I recently participated in my 1st PC build in 15+ years (I started in the original Pentium days) ... physical assembly was a relative breeze.

But it seems CPU/Motherboard selection is still needlessly complex.
You don't just get a Core i3 CPU and motherboard... you have to know the code names, Skylake or Kaby Lake..and know they mean LGA1151 sockets or something.

Which is the same as it's always been, for intel and AMD.

I won't give intel any props for their numbering convention retardedness, but it's easy to look up the socket for a given chipset.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Which is the same as it's always been, for intel and AMD.

I won't give intel any props for their numbering convention retardedness, but it's easy to look up the socket for a given chipset.

Yup. Also, we live in an age of compatibility filters. Plenty of websites basically build your PC for you.

The only time it gets a bit complicated, IMO, is with newer CPUs that require BIOS updates to older motherboards to work right. (i5-7xxx series CPUs on Z170 motherboards, for instance.)

But there's also a really easy answer there too: don't buy the old stuff. Get a 7xxx series chip, get a 2xx series motherboard. Done.

 

[BudAshes]

What happened to the good looking cases? My silver brushed aluminum coolermaster full atx case was a site to behold. I got rid of it after it got beat up and now had to get an ugly black one for my last computer.

 

[Fritzo]

It is easy. They have PC configurators now- just put in what level of PC you want, it tells you parts, shop around to get the best deal, and everything just fits together. Windows 10 means everything works (at least on a basic level) out of the box. Easy!

 

[ch33zw1z]

Matching cpu's and mobo's is not terribly diffucult. Pick a board, go to the support site for that board, look at cpu compatibility chart.

 

[Fritzo]

What happened to the good looking cases? My silver brushed aluminum coolermaster full atx case was a site to behold. I got rid of it after it got beat up and now had to get an ugly black one for my last computer.

I'm running this. It was designed by BMW, and...as you say...is a sight to behold

 

[ch33zw1z]

Looks like the Borg invaded your pc

 

[lxskllr]

Matching cpu's and mobo's is not terribly diffucult. Pick a board, go to the support site for that board, look at cpu compatibility chart.

And for picking a board, you only need to look at Asus, Gigabyte, and Intel AFAIC. That quickly narrows down the choices.

 

[BudAshes]

I'm running this. It was designed by BMW, and...as you say...is a sight to behold

Looks like it's from Ikea's case design team.

This was my old beauty.

You can't tell from the picture but the sides and top are the same brushed aluminum.

 

[NoTine42]

Which is the same as it's always been, for intel and AMD.

I won't give intel any props for their numbering convention retardedness, but it's easy to look up the socket for a given chipset.

You realize there used to be a time when AMD chips were compatible with "Intel" motherboards
I think it was the AMD K6 and PII "slot" that they split from compatibility.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Lol speaking of cases anyone remember that giant cube case on wheels? I remember seeing that thing as a kid and thinking "woaaaah that would be so cool for a server!" And now something like that would not really interest me, now it's all about going rackmount. There was a period of the mid 2000's where it was all about the bling too, there were much more case choices, and all sorts of mods etc like CFCL lighting, and case windows were pretty much standard. Fun times. Though now it seems that is making a come back with RGB Ram and stuff. I'm sure some people must be using LED strips too, you could make a pretty interesting blingy setup with the addressable ones and an arduino stashed in there that you can control from within the OS.

I think this is the one:

Think there was a brushed aluminium version too. If I recall you could fit two computer systems in there, like there was two separate motherboard, psu etc spaces.

 

[Fritzo]

Looks like it's from Ikea's case design team.

This was my old beauty.

You can't tell from the picture but the sides and top are the same brushed aluminum.

How DARE you sir! Just look at these lines...these curves...these nooks and crannies...

...(and the case ain't bad either)