First build: success!

[Total Immortal]

Just wanted to say how excited I am about the first computer that I built. I built it for my father's secretary to use (their previous computer was a PII 266 mhz on Win95). He told me to keep it cheap but make it reliable. I ended up going with an ASUS mobo (can't remember which one, i think it was around 70 dollars, and has 6 PCI slots), an AMD XP 2200+ Athlon, single stick of 512 mb of ram, an Asus GeForce2 64 mb video card (awesome card for the money, im very impressed), 40 GB HD, all wrapped up inside of an Antec Soultion series case with a 350W power supply. It started up the first time I pushed the magic button. I had the H.D.D. LCD wire hooked up wrong, so the HD light didn't blink, but that was the only problem!
Now I've been bitten by the bug! I really wanna build an other one. I barely charged their office above the cost of parts for the thing, so financially it wouldn't be a good idea for me to blow a bunch of money on a new computer (i'm very happy with my current one). I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.. I guess I'm going to ask a question now though. How many of you guys build computers for a job? I'd love to do it on the side to earn some extra money. Also, how much do you guys charge? Do you do it hourly? Or do you just do just add on a percentage above what you paid for the parts? Man I had such a blast building this thing, I can't wait to build an other one!

 

[Monster00]

yea my 1st build wasen't that good ;p. I didn't put my jumpers in the right place so it woulden't work so i had to call someone to see how to put them in.

 

[OrionGazer52]

the first time i built my computer, about a month ago, I had a friend watch over what i did every step of the way. doing the jumpers was annoying sometimes, but i had them in right because of the constant advise. but yea, its fun

 

[csplinter]

Congradulations, I remember the first time I built a computer, felt so great, now build\repair them on daily basis as computer repair tech, not only is there great pay but also that satisfaction after building somthing so amazeing as a machine that calculates millions of calculations a second. The point being there are bright futures in building computers. So good luck, and happy building.

 

[steve max]

congrats man. I bought my first puter a year ago, at retail store. Paid big bucks for it. I was curious to see how much it really costs so I priced one and built it. Like you I have the bug. Built 5 more since then, friends, family.myself. Only had a problem with one, after 2 days the mb died, I built it for my boss, the thing is I felt responsible as with home built no tech support. RMA the board and everything is well. I built one for my mother and use it for swapping parts to trouble shoot. Learned a bunch about computers this way thats for sure. It would be a nice job to have, but theres much more for me to learn.

 

[mousepad]

I always run into bumps when i put a computer together, but it always turns out to be an extremely rare problem. It's really annoying. In the end though, when you hear it boot up, it's like falling in love again... how sad. lol

 

[angrysamoanes]

I am in the process of building my first computer right now, and i am going through some of those frustrations. But I love it anyway. Congrats on yours.

 

[Monster00]

whats the matter with it?