Building The Perfect PC

Rating:
Summary: Great book!!
Review: This book is a very thorough guide that will encourage you to build your own PC. It is simple and comprehensive and leaves nothing to the imagination since it is packed full with color photos. You will be able to see and recognize even the tinniest components and you won't be confused by long text passages of instructions that try to guide you blindly trough complex assembly operations.

The authors tell you how and why they chose the component parts of the different systems they graphically build in front of your eyes. What's more, they give you the necessary background so you can make changes according to your needs/wants. Even for experienced technicians it can give you a different perspective on the hows and whys of choosing and assembling components.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A good choice for the first time builder
Review: If you are thinking of building a PC, but are unsure whether to procede, then you want this book. The author steps you through the building process with a handful of systems. There are lots of good pictures and he explains just what he is doing. The real value is all the nice pictures. That Aria case looks really nice and I am saving up for one.

I might quibble a bit with some of his hardware choices, but I think all the choices were at least pretty good. Any of these systems would be just fine for most people.

Rating:
Summary: A great resource
Review: Bob & Barbara have put together a wonderful resource for users who are tempted to build a PC of their own instead of buying a mass-market PC. They tell you why you might want to build a PC on your own, how to decide on components, give wonderful examples of several "sample" PCs to assemble, and then show you how to put the different PCs together.

The color photos add a great deal to the book, showing exactly how some of the components go together and giving you a great idea of what you will see when you assemble your PC. Bob & Barbara, in the text, point out where there might be problems and suggest and/or show how to work around them.

I've already assembled several PCs based on the information in this book, all went together with little trouble.

Rating:
Summary: Tinkerer's Tips and Tricks of the Trade
Review: Building the Perfect PC is a great companion to the Thompson's PC Hardware in a Nutshell. While the Nutshell book is a great reference, its single chapter on building obviously can't cover all the nuances of the actual process. Building the Perfect PC fills that void well. I really enjoyed the travel guide feel of the book. The conversational writing style along with the abundant color pictures made me feel like I was sitting in the room with the authors while we put the PCs together.

The first two chapters Fundamentals and Choosing and Buying Components are worth reading whether this is you're first PC or umpteenth. While some might find the advice "safe", the strategies and recomendations are extremely sound and should be ignored with extreme caution. The quality and reliability of components determine whether your build experience is satisfying and fun or a miserable nightmare.

It took me a while to read the book, but it was well worth it. There's a lot of information in each project PC. I recently had the opportunity to build a new PC from scratch that involved a little from each project. The PC combined the best of the lan party pc with the video features in the home theater PC. I don't think anyone is going to follow any chapter verbatim, but after reading the entire book you'll adjust the "recipes": a little of this and a little of that.

The only minor disagreement I have with the book is some of the benefits of building your own PC maintained by Mr. Thompson. I'm not so sure of the truth behind the lower cost and better PC. A lot depends on how you're measuring. If you need safe dependable transportation a Dell, IBM, or HP/Compaq will serve you reasonably well. The best benefit of Building the Perfect PC is the same reason you hotrod a car, it's a whole lot of fun.

Rating:
Summary: Hey! I could do this!
Review: I buy my computers already built because "I don't do hardware". I have never understood how all the cables and slots fit together. But I may change that habit after reading Building The Perfect PC by Robert Bruce Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson (O'Reilly).

Chapter List: Fundamentals; Choosing and Buying Components; Building a Mainstream PC; Building a SOHO Server; Building A Kick-Ass LAN Party PC; Building a Home Theater PC; Building a Small Form Factor PC; Index

As stated above, I have never done well with hardware. But my son has absolutely no qualms about swapping things in and out, sometimes for no real reason other than to open up the box and do it. Some of that must be rubbing off, as normally I wouldn't even be interested in a book like this. Now I'm glad I got it. The authors do an excellent job in explaining what each component is, how it works, and what considerations you need to keep in mind based on the type of system you want to build. After explaining all that, they take that information and apply it to building five specific types of systems, one of which probably comes close to your needs. And most important, there are pictures! Lots and lots of pictures of components being installed, screwed in, plugged in, and fired up. For those of us who haven't done a lot of hardware assembly, we appreciate that. :-) Armed with this book, you could easily walk into a store like Fryes and walk out with everything you need to build your own PC from scratch, *and* have it work when you get done.

A superb, well-done book that will end up being the basis of at least one father-son project in this household. If I had found this book about six months earlier, I might have ended up building my son's computer instead of buying it.

Rating:
Summary: Best of Breed!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The answer to PC commoditization
Review: I have a masters degree in electronics design but I am approaching this book from consumer point of view:

If you've been in BestBuy or CompUSA lately, you know that the desktop offered are with almost perfect configuration, almost perfect price, but never exactly perfect. Of course, it is impossible for the big PC makers, even for Dell, to create a PC which would fit your exact specifications. Cost consideration, economies of scale, and so on, drive business decisions at the big computer makers. Where does this leave you? Either wanting to put together a desktop on your own, or buying one of those middle-of-the-road machines.

I have done both -- I have a standard Compaq desktop at BestBuy, a superb Toshiba laptop at CompUSA, and have had my own dual-hard-drive desktop built for the purposes of home video making. Had I had this book at the time, I would not have ordered by video editing PC at the computer shop down the street -- I would have made it myself, using the best components I need, no doubt for much better price.

This book, "Building The Perfect PC", is just that -- a step by step guide on building the desktop configuration (even the authors do not recommend attempting to build your own laptop) which would exactly meet your requirements today (and not tomorrow) without breaking your budget.

The book starts with a thorough explanation of the Fundamentals of PC making and getting to know your motherboard. Then it follows with instructions on choosing and buying the PC components.

Once the basics of PC building are established, the book branches into chapters dedicated to different configurations:
- a mainstream PC
- a small office / home office server
- a local-area-network hub PC
- a home theatre PC
- a small form factor PC

For each configuration, the chapters start with definition of the functional requirements, discussion of the hardware design criteria, components considerations, and instructions on building the computer system.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who has interest in building a computer on his/her own. The book gives you the knowledge to make the right decision in component selection, hardware design and putting the whole system together. Another winner for O'Reilly!

Rating:
Summary: Very Good yet NOT PERFECT
Review: I like the book, thought it was very readable and gave good advice. But I was often disappointed in that none of the PC configurations in the book worked out to be "perfect," as the title suggests. In almost every instance -- from the mainstream PC to the gamer's PC to the media center -- the authors ran into a major glitch and had to revert to using other pieces of hardware or operating systems. Don't go out and buy any of the components they recommend in the beginning of any chapter, because by the time the machine is built at the end of the chapter, either there was a problem with the operating system or a piece of hardware that wasn't originally part of the plan. In its first edition, it really needs a good edit. Buy the book, hold onto your receipt, read it, then return it. It has some good advice but not enough to keep on the bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Step-by-step illustrated DIY for PCs
Review: This is a great book. I'm very impressed. The text imparts a solid understanding of not only how to build a PC, but also why you have to do certain things, and what choices you will have to make. There are full color illustrations that show you step-by-step how to physically construct the PC and connect all of the components together. These images are integrated into the text so that they fit directly with the explanatory text.

I also appreciate that the book takes an opinion. It gives you solid advice about what video cards to pick, how to choose a monitor, and other important decisions. Building a quality PC is as much about the components you choose as how you put it together and this book helps you with those decisions.

This is an excellent resource for those looking to put together their own machine. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: It Passed the "Ultimate Test"
Review: 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!