h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For the newcomer to upgrading, I advise just buying a complete new computer; unless, of course, you're just buying some ram or a new card...etc

If you're new to the job, it can often take an extremely long time. And time is money. So unless you have a lot of time to spare, and don't mind spending that time on learning how to make new PCs, scrap the idea and buy a ready made one.
Upgrading requires first a lot of research to make sure everythings compatible, figuring out how to put everything together, and then wading through all the likely problems that'll occur upon starting up your PC.


First time i upgraded my PC involved buying a new mobo, ram, and cpu. Took me over a week to complete this upgrade (i reckon i was lucky, some first timers take months to get their upgrades working)

My first problem was discovering the fallbacks of buying a dell computer. I guess I hadn't planned well. For those that don't know, Dell appears to not like people to upgrade. Their cases have non-standard power supplies, and if you plug it into your new mobos it could fry them.

So after getting my bundle, i then had to wait for a new case to arrive.

Then took me a few hours to build up the new pc. *man i hated al those fiddly screws*
switched on pc...no picture.

after a bit of fiddling, solved the problem, switch on pc....

"checksum error - defaults loaded"

this is okay...usually. Went into bios, saved and exit...and still didnt' work.

tried so many things to solve this problem, and this is a common problem.

I changed every single component in my pc (except for motherboard).
took out cmos battery for a bit.
fiddle with bios settings.

did loads of research on the net. so many people had this problem, and only a few solutions.
None of them worked because checkum error is a common problem and could mean almost anything.

I was about to give up and send my motherboard back, thinking it must be broken, when i finally manged to solve it and get my pc working.

The time it took to make the pc could've earnt me quite a bit of money. In fact, if instead of making a new pc, used that time to work and earn money, i could've easily earnt enough to make it worthwhile to buy a pc instead of upgrading parts.

BUT

it was a nice experience, and it's always a nice feeling solving a problem, getting something working.
I HAD TIME and i learnt.


So i recommend doing it, but only if you have plenty of time to plan it out, research, and build.