Advanced System Building Guide

Alan writes "FiringSquad has up an Advanced System Building Guide, detailing how to construct your own rig. The first half deals with hardware selection and even esoteric concepts such as PCI slot placement. The second half is focused on Windows XP, and makes recommendations such as moving the swap file and scratch disk to a separate partition." From the article: "You laugh at the so-called expertise of Best Buy's GeekSquad, and are the one doing the teaching when calling technical support. If this sounds like you, you've come to the right place if you're looking to take your system building skills to the next level."

You builder, you.

[Anonymous Coward]

If this sounds like you, you've come to the right place if you're looking to take your system building skills to the next level."

If this sounds like you then you have almost reached nirvana. Soon, you will learn the advanced knowledge of how to call Dell.

GeekSquad?

[yetdog]

They actually call themselves that? Come on - like any retail store paying their clerks $7 an hour is going to have top notch techies there.

People are stupid. That's how these businesses stay afloat.

My 1337 system building tip!

[Otter]

Just because your case comes with 60 brass standoffs doesn't mean it's a good idea to use them all!

so sad

[notsoanonymouscoward]

He lost me at "I like Maxtor". Anyone who recommends maxtor hdds is either on the take, or hasn't been building systems for very long. Either case... I'd pass a bestbuy job application his way.

Boring

[bigbadbob0]

Next week on slashdot: "How to get a cooler screensaver."

Pci slots?

[iwearnosox]

Professional tip: I try to line my PCI slots up with the case, the cards work better that way.

Err... how is this news again?

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

I have to say, an advanced tweaking guide isn't really news at this point - if you want it, you go google it. (Or microsoft it, on msdn, liek l33t winhax0rze should) This seems more like a plug for someone's website to me.

Re:here's a tip

[notsoanonymouscoward]

yeah seriously, there was no mention of static damage. i thought it was going to start w/ l33t people build systems n4k3d.

Bestbuy called...

[Dacmot]

they want their employees back.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Advanced system building

[bonch]

I'm an experience system builder, so this article is intriguing. However, I feel he does things the long way or is unaware of better ways to do things when building custom advanced systems. For instance, when I'm building a new freelance gig for use at home, I typically click the drop-down list make sure to select exactly what is going into my custom rig. Or if there are multiple color options available (like when I'm rigging up a new custom-built MP3 player), I will click the drop-down list and select which one I want. Sometimes I might even want to put my mark on the thing and type in a custom message to be engraved on the back, just to remind people of the customization work I put into it.

I'm also curious about the PCI slot positioning part of the article, as my custom-built rigs skip that step entirely. Why bother? Often, I store my parts directly in the monitor itself or even without a monitor so I can hook the box up to anything. Then I might carefully select those drop-down lists to hot-rod the box to my liking and really custom-build an advanced freelance system by upping RAM or processor speed via careful direction of the mouse cursor when selecting drop-down lists. My system-building buddy down the street doesn't even bother with upping the RAM via the drop-down lists and just uses a putty knife to up the RAM with a custom-bought chip of his own liking, but that's getting into levels of extraneous advanced system-building that I don't have time for.

I hope my experience in advanced system building is helpful for you all. If you want to read more about my advanced system building skills, I suggest you check this out [apple.com] and take notes.

Awesome find

[nighthawk127127]

Sweet, my friend and I are currently in the process of starting a custom-built PC business, and this is a great resource. Thanks!

Re:Um... swap file?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a stupid idea.

Next you'll tell us that some ships are unsinkable and don't need lifeboats...

You critics are missing the point

[-Harlequin-]

Sure, criticise that he calls the article "advanced" when you're all light-years ahead, but I read the article expected to be a noobie way over my head, and discovered that I was actually an advanced system builder who simply hadn't realised how 1337 I was.

It left me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Re:My 1337 system building tip!

[stupidcomputers]

Actually it is best to use as many as you can when securing your motherboard to the case to improve electric grounding.

Re:here's a tip

[temojen]

1337 people build systems while wearing polarfleece and standing in sockfeet on carpet, petting a cat, and still don't have static damage.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been my personal experience that the armature fails on drives much more often than the rotational assembly.

I feel like I'm reading a veiled argument between an armature engineer and a rotational assembly engineer.

Re:Here's what I think

[That's Unpossible!]

Also, anyone who puts their "specs" in their sig line on any forum is a complete knob.

Yeah, and what is with these morons in forums that respond with a single line of content, and then its followed by an 800x400 animated gif of their favorite lead singer rocking out?

More importantly, wtf is wrong with the moderators of these forums that they would allow this kind of nonsense?

Re:What kind of idiot wants faster swapfile???

[pg110404]

Hey, here's an idea!

Create a ram drive and put the swap file on that. That'll speed things up.

1993 called...

[caudron]

it wants its joke back. ;-)

Swap space crack

[tweek]

n general I think 1GB is good for 512MB systems, 1.5GB is good for 1GB systems, and 2GB is good for 2GB systems.

There is no frelling way I'm going to set a swap space to 2GB. I'm sorry. I made this mistake with a production server and I've been paying for it ever since.

Sure the general rule used to be double your physical memory but that rule just doesn't fly anymore.

We've got a few RHEL servers that were installed with 2GB of memory. I couldn't bring myself to create a 4GB swap space so I set it to 2GB. It was the single worst choice I've ever made.

There is no way in hell I want to swap out a full 2GB of memory. If my system needs to swap out a full 2GB of something, I've got other issues. There is no way you're going to be able to fit that back in when it wants to go from swap to RAM so something else is going to get paged out and the cycle continues.

I've contented myself to set a max of 768MB no matter how much memory I have. One of my DB2 servers has 16GB of RAM. There is no way I'm creating a 32GB swap vol much less a 16GB one.

Re:Yes, mechanical parts WILL wear out

[TheDarkener]

I work in I.T. Don't make me rm -r / you.

Ugh!

1) You really wanna hold down the Y button while it asks you to delete every file??

2) Are you calling ME root? I thought YOU were the one working in IT, you IT worker you!

Nirvana??

[TennesseeJeff]

Make that "Nerdvana."

Re:Reader's digest version

[incom]

"-use a separate partition for swap and temp" ;linux, check

"-use a fixed-size swap file" ;linux, check

"-don't get online with an unpatched system" ;I recompile regularly.

"-use TweakUI" ;No

"-disable stupid windows crap" ;linux, check

Re:Hmmm

[RidiculousPie]

Only question uis, can you go without beer for two days to get yourself a dedicated swap/temp files drive.

I think I speak for the students of the world when I say NO!

Re:And while we're at it, lets add some more peopl

[stratjakt]

I agree. I was screwing with it in university back when it was still "some finnish kid's" toy project. Back when you had to bootstrap by hand.

Noone was impressed with me then, why should I be impressed when some kid sticks a knoppix CD in his xtreme blinking blue led box?