Building the Perfect PC

by Barbara Fritchman Thompson, Robert Bruce Thompson, Barbara Fritchman-Thompson

Book Overview

Build a PC that will outperform any brand-name box on the market Yes, even if you're not a total geek you can build your own PC -- and we guarantee it's worth the effort. You'll discover that the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596006632
• ISBN13: 9780596006631
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Make Community, LLC
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.9" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Couldn't have built my machine without it

This book was my only guide to building my current PC, and I must say I'm pleased with the results. I made a few changes and additions to the authors' component recommendations for a "mainstream PC," but the book's step-by-step, profusely illustrated (in color) approach covered all the potential pitfalls encountered along the way. And their recommendation of Newegg as a merchant proved to save the price of the book, many times over. (After Newegg, I would recommend Tiger Direct as well). My only small complaint is that the book is rapidly becoming dated, and begs for a 2nd edition. The authors maintain a web site at hardwareguys.com In another review of a competing book, I had written that they're not updating this as promised, but I just went and had a look and was pleasantly surprised to see that it's now fairly up-to-date. The individual hardware comments at http://hardwareguys.com/picks/picks.html serve as valid updates to the book. If you're thinking of building your own PC, get this book, and also look at the updates at hardwareguys.com. You won't be disappointed.

It Passed the "Ultimate Test"

When I bought this book, I vowed I'd come back and give it a 5 star rating if I successfully built one of the recommended machines without either drawing blood or producing smoke in the process. I'm happy to report I'm writing this review from my newly built mainstream PC. Some experienced builders may complain there is too much detail in the instructions. Believe me, every little detail helped me get through the process, and it was much more fun than I thought it would be. It's very likely I will be building another box or two from the book in the future. Great book!

Best of Breed!

I came to this book fairly late in the design process of my own new custom PC, but it was uncanny how closely the book tracked my own needs. The book's approach is superb: After a few chapters on the basics of building PCs and buying parts, the authors describe five different PCs: A mainstream system, a SOHO server, a "kick-ass LAN party PC", a home theater PC, and a small form factor PC. The issues for parts choice are carefully explained, and there are step-by-step instructions on assembling each one, with some of the best photos I've ever seen in a book like this, all of them in color. As I said, I had most of my custom PC design completed before I found the book. I had already chosen the very quiet Antec Sonata case (recommended in the book) and the authors pointed me at the Zalman Flower HSF, a CPU cooler that runs almost silently. I learned a number of things about high-performance disk drives from the book that I didn't already know, ditto RAIDs. My unfinished design turned out to be very much like their description of a mainstream PC, and my final PC will be quite a bit better for having read the insights in the text. I may someday want to build a media server, and I learned a lot reading the section on the home theater PC, though I had to tuck it all in long term memory for future reference. The book is probably most valuable for people who don't want to spend the time studying every PC component technology to the extent that they could confidently spec their own custom system. It would be quite easy to just make a "blind copy" of one of the designs presented here, and the mainstream PC and small form factor PC look very effective for general PC neeeds. The book is beautifully written, clearly laid out, and probably the most useful of the small pile of PC hardware books I've been accumulating and poring over this past year. Clearly the best of breed.

All Meat, No Empty Calories...

I just put down my copy of O'Reilly's "Building the Perfect PC" by Robert and Barbara Thompson, following a cover-to-cover read. There are a number of reasons for going through this book like a banshee. First off, I'm a System Administrator by trade, and keeping up with the latest best practices in PC hardware is a must. Next, once started, the book is a good read. It flows as well as any highly technical documentation possibly can, with a mix of hard data, diagrams and photos, sidebars and anecdotes. Finally, I've counted on Bob and Barbara to answer my PC hardware questions for years, both personally and via their excellent "PC Hardware in a Nutshell" editions (also from O'Reilly). The book starts with a Fundamentals chapter that takes a non-partisan look at the whole process of selecting components, tools, and utilities in preparation for a self-built PC. It's got the same feel as a Consumer Reports article: Vendor independent, but the authors are not afraid to recommend their choices for manufacturers in each category of component. One thing I liked very much was the Troubleshooting section in this chapter. In many other works, by the time you've found the Troubleshooting pages back in the Appendices somewhere, it's far too late to be of great help. By bringing that section up front, it helps every reader, from novice to expert, keep an eye out for possible problems before they become troubles that need shooting. Through the component selection and project chapters that populate the rest of this 300+ page book, there is a wealth of great information. From the painfully obvious "Benchmarks lie." to specifying the correct quiet cooler for an AMD Athlon XP processor, the Thompson's have covered nearly every base. Another standout feature of this book (and a first from O'Reilly) is the superb 4-color printing throughout the book. Most computer works are in grayscale, possibly with one accent color. But there are a few hundred pictures in this book, illustrating each step of building each project PC. Color matters when aligning ribbon cables, getting audio connections right, and in a myriad other little ways. O'Reilly's done every reader a great service in going to the expense of printing this book in full color. Bravo! The project chapters are Mainstream PC, SOHO Server, Kickass LAN Party PC, Home Theater PC, and Small Form Factor PC. Each project chapter is written and copiously illustrated with images to provide all the guidance needed to get the box built right the first time and running without a hassle. That makes for some repetition when read straight through, but all of the repeats are worth hearing: Ground yourself before handling static-sensitive components, check the motherboard mounts against the hole pattern carefully, and many more lessons well worth deeply embedding. Additionally, while addressing the specific needs of each project, the Thompson's are giving the reader the tools and opportunity to take the vicarious e

Build your own System, you'll feel better about it

There are very few folks who know their subject as well as Robert Bruce Thompson. He has been keeping a web-log for several years now where he discusses many subjects, especially about is daily adventures with building computers, managing a home-network and diagnosing problems with them. Probably the single biggest reason that many people don't put together their own systems is the simple lack of knowledge on how to do it. This book provides a great introduction on how to do it. The best reason to do it for yourself is then you will have the piece of mind that you have quality parts in your system. Picking good hard drives, video cards, motherboards, means you are less likely to have a computer failure. Cheap parts are the major reason large corp. retailers put out a lot bad systems... they got some parts that were cheap, but that fail a lot. Thus, causing their customers a lot of headaches. Sure, you might get a dirt-cheap computer system, but you get what you pay for. The other best reason to build a system on your own is that you will learn something in the process. If you can build your own system you will start to be able to do your own tech support. You won't have to wait to get your system fixed: you'll have the knowledge to do it yourself. Better than the simple list of hardware (which since this is a physical book will be out of date very soon after publication) is the discussion on how to do it. The questions you need to ask yourself before picking hardware, etc. What do you want to do with the system? Do you want to play high-power games? Maybe you just want to surf the web and do some light word processing. The system can then be customized for you and you don't get one-size fits all system from some corp. retail giant. And don't forget about his web site. He keeps updated lists of recommended hardware on it, as well as details as to his adventures of computer-problem land. A lot of tips can be picked up there. A good way to keep abreast of the authors thoughts and opinions as to the state of the industry. Anything by Thompson is worthwhile.