The problem#

So you've built a new computer with fresh blank storage. How do you actually do anything with that computer that has no software? Navigating the BIOS menus can only hold your interest for so long.

The solution#

The old way of doing things was to have a bootable CD or DVD, but now that most computers don't even have an optical drive, the common way to handle this with bootable USB flash drives.

Most Linux distributions' default download is an image for a bootable "live" flash drive (or DVD) that runs the OS in addition to having an option to perform a permanent install. Some of the most popular ones are Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora.

You can boot Windows off a flash drive using Hiren's BootCD, which also includes a lot of recovery and diagnostic tools.

While most boot drives will boot into Linux or Windows, there's a small set of specialized lower-level tools. One very useful one is Memtest86+ (included in many Linux distros), which will determine if your RAM is functional. As bad RAM can cause very weird and different to track down problems, you should always test new RAM.

The details#

The problem#

Last week, I shared some thoughts on how to buy parts for a homebuilt computer. But what do you do once all the boxes show up?

The solution#

Text is a poor medium for explaining how to physically put things together. I'll share some tips, but for the actual processes, look at the manuals for the components you bought, some of which will probably point to official videos showing how to do things. And there's probably plenty of videos online of people demonstrating every step.

The details#

The problem#

I recently helped a friend with building a computer. While there's plenty of guides online, I thought I'd write down my own thoughts of everything I was considering for this recent computer build.

The intended use of the computer was as an inexpensive but expandable gaming PC. Meaning it should be able to comfortably play relatively recent games at an acceptable framerate, but not at max settings. And hopefully that should continue to be true for at least a year or two. And when it does get to be too underpowered for even low-end gaming, it should be possible to fix that by replacing parts, not the entire computer.

The solution#

Most of planning a computer build is using PCPartPicker and NewEgg to search for the components and NewEgg and Tom's Hardware for reviews (the former for specific components, the latter for selecting things like how powerful a CPU/GPU you need).

I am intentionally avoiding specific component recommendations in this post because those would be out-of-date pretty much immediately.

The PCPartPicker interface will guide you to what categories of components you will need, and help you determine which parts are compatible with each other. The required components for a functioning computer are a motherboard, a CPU (and cooler if not included), memory (RAM), and a power supply. You will almost always also want storage (an SSD), a case, and additional cooling (usually fans to install in the case). Most of the time you will also want a video card (GPU), but modern processors often have a very underpowered one built-in, which is usually sufficient if you aren't playing games or otherwise using a GPU.

Note that I am not including peripherals. To actually use the computer, you will probably want a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and possibly speakers. But those are easily moved among different computers.

The details#