Advice for home computer builders

We’ve seen a resurgence of calls from people buying computers parts over the Internet and building their own computers. While we applaud those users for their ingenuity, we have seen plenty of mistakes being made during the home assembly. While the speed and quality of parts have gone up, the opportunity to make mistakes when building a system hasn’t gone away.

The last time we saw a big surge in home built computers back in the 1990’s, nearly a whole generation of computers was rendered unreliable by one common mistake: fiber washers. We have removed these thin red paper washers from hundred of computers, installed by users that didn’t know that the were not meant to be used.

On the new high performance gaming systems, there are countless opportunities to make mistakes, including wrong connectors, missing brackets, missing screws and most importantly, reversed fans.

We recommend that anyone that buys their own parts and assembles their own computer, or buys a computer assembled from parts, should bring it in to us for review. We’ll check, configure and test the computer to ensure its built properly and runs perfectly.

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