kirbypuff Wrote:It's not *that* easy. You have to be extremely careful when doing it or you may risk damaging your hardware.
It is piss easy compared to most everyday tasks and can be done by anyone with an intelligence greater than a pineapple with just 5-15 minutes of reading the instruction manuals that come with the components. Even if they're too stupid to google it. Even if they're too stupid to read the manuals the chances they'll successfully fuck something up is extremely small. I have watched with amazement over the last 15 years as hardware has gradually become more and more idiot proof. Your statements have some truth to them but are gross exaggerations that should not deter newbies. Everyone here started their first build with no knowledge of the subject and yet here we all are. Why not convince the next generation to do the same?
kirbypuff Wrote:* Static electricity can pemanently damage your PC components
Unless you live in an extreme environment the chances of this happening are literally one in a million. Most PC builders don't even take any kind of protective measures against this at all no matter how many builds they do and yet stories of this happening are virtually non existent. It's very hard to build up enough SE under normal conditions to actually damage electronic components. This should not deter a newbie from trying.
kirbypuff Wrote:* Installing an aftermarket cooler such as the Hyper EVO can be a pain in the butt, epecially with AMD motheboards, where you have to remove the retention bracket first and then install the heatsink base (it's tricky). Small METAL screws, nuts and bolts are bad stuff, especially when dropped accidentally.
It can be time consuming and annoying. But difficult? Hardly. Just follow the instructions.
kirbypuff Wrote:* Applying too much force on the metal screws can SCREW your motherboard (LOL)
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here. Are you implying that newbies should be worried about screwing their motherboard screws onto the standoffs so hard that they actually crush the board in between? That would likely require several thousand pounds of pressure at least, far above what normal humans are capable of. And even if it was possible I don't think we could judge anyone who did that as mentally sane.
kirbypuff Wrote:* Some motherboard / PSU ATX connector combinations are a nightmare. The ATX power connector slides easily into the socket, but it locks so tight that it's IMPOSSIBLE to remove it afterwards.
I have never had any significant difficulty with this or anyone else I know that builds computers. I have on one occasion had one that was a bit too loose. But that is a minor annoyance at best, it won't actually cause any problems.
kirbypuff Wrote:* Silver-based thermal pastes are dangerous
Only if you're a complete moron that doesn't read instructions. Look at the number of newbies who successfully damage components this way vs the number that use it. It's pretty hard to apply it messily enough to actually cause problems.
kirbypuff Wrote:* BIOS tweaking is not for beginners
Maybe. Which is why most beginners don't bother with it since they don't need to.
But if they did want to I still disagree with this statement. Modern UEFI are some of the most user friendly apps I've ever seen. Even if they're trying to OC and are too lazy to read about that modern UEFI tend to have auto OC settings that are bullet proof (although they yield suboptimal results). They have tool tips, help manuals, warnings, and easy resets if you somehow screw something up. The only thing a beginner might be in danger of here is a bad firmware update corrupting the CMOS. But even that is not a problem on todays high end boards which have multiple backup CMOS chips, removable CMOS chips, and the ability to perform firmware updates via usb even when all the CMOS chips are corrupt.
Your criticism has been noted but I stand by my statement that "Building a modern desktop is so painfully easy that if you can assemble a lego kit you can assemble a desktop". I am not going to change that part of my post.
mimimi Wrote:Hmm, you might want to go into a little more detail with the graphics cards. I'd recommend looking at OpenGL support when buying a nvidia graphics card, and looking at DirectX support when buying an amd graphics card. Or generally looking at both. On nvida cards opengl is a bit faster, and on amd cards directx is a bit faster.
Since it doesn't really matter very much which backend you use and beginners don't ask about it much here I refrained from bringing that up.
mimimi Wrote:Getting a new graphics card that supports less than OpenGL 4.4 or DirectX 11.0 might be a bad idea, if it's for Dolphin. Dolphin has cut down support for older graphics cards in the past, and it will continue to do so. Saving a bit of money on an old model will turn out as a bad investment, when Dolphin removes support for that card. I'm not complaining about this, everytime this happens, it's explained in the progress report. So far every cut has made sense, at least to me.
All Nvidia/AMD cards since 2010 have supported up to openGL 4.4 and d3d11. That's 5 years of support from hardware so far. And dolphins openGL/d3d11 backends will run with openGL 3.3 and d3d10 cards which have been supported by graphics cards since 2007/2008. Anyone looking to build a new rig or upgrade an existing rig for dolphin is not going to be looking at cards older than that so it's mostly a non-issue.
I should also point out that we've entered an age of incredible backwards compatibility for both openGL and d3d since 3.x and d3d10. When new API versions are released the new functions can mostly be implemented without breaking backwards compatibility with old functions via the use of extensions and codepaths. This was not the case with openGL 2.x or d3d9. We've seen this happen many times already in dolphin already. As a result I don't believe dolphin will be increasing its API requirements anytime soon.
Even so I have updated the wording a bit to make it clear that they should choose cards from the latest lineup.
Scootaloo Wrote:It's worth noting that some cases are noticably better at cooling than others. If you're considering OC'ing than you may want to keep this in mind when purchasing your case, and other cooling components.
Updated.
Keep 'em comin
