This is very very long  TL:DR at the end of the book.

So a couple weeks ago I decided to do a budget computer build.  Not a big deal, I built my kids their gaming pc's, mine should be a cake walk.  There is a Micro Center in Houston, only problem is I live on the other side of town north of Houston near New Caney.  Hour and a half to get there, got to love traffic.  I buy the parts for a budget build using as many open box deals as I can find.

Parts:  AMD FX 6350 (New)
           ASRock 970 (New)
           EVGA 500w Power Supply (New)
           Corsair Carbide Case (New)
           Cooler Master Devastator KEyboard and Mouse (New)
           500gb Western Digital (Open Box)
           2x4gb EVGA Super Clocked DDR3 Ram  (Open Box)
           Rog Strix 4gb RX 460 Video Card  (Open Box)
           Samsung NC240 Monitor (Open Box)
           DVD Drive (Open Box)
           Windows 10 Education Edition
           Wireless USB Dongle

Very budget build (565 for everything  including monitor, keyboard, and mouse except windows), but should be pretty solid since I don't game or do anything other than watch youtube and surf Arfcom.

Well I get home to build the computer and that is where it all started to go wrong.  I start assembling the computer and it is going pretty good.  I get to the hard drive and notice it isn't the right type, does not have a sata connection, wtf, how old is this thing?  I hop on Amazon and order a hard drive.  A couple days later the hard drive gets to my house and I get started on the build again.  I get the tower finished and open up my keyboard box and it is missing keys, wtf, this thing is brand new.  I hop on Amazon and order another keyboard.  A couple days later it gets to my house and I get back to the pc build.  I go to hook up my monitor and notice the stupid Samsung NC240 only has a VGA input and my video card doesn't have a VGA out.  I am starting to get pretty irritated at this computer building thing.  I decide to not be lazy and I drive to best buy to get an adapter.  I get the adapter and head back home, with a bit of my confidence back that this thing is about to be done.  I hook up the adapter and get ready to power this almost bad boy up.

I hit the power and notice all the lights are on and the fans are spinning, I can hear the hard drive if I listen to it closely but I am getting nothing to my monitor.  The screen has a nice message saying no input, with or without the cable plugged in.  I snag a monitor from my son and try again, nothing.  I try the VGA adapter on his computer and it doesn't work.  I have great luck.  So I drive my happy ass to walmart and buy another adapter.  This time when I plug the cable in the message goes away but it is still just a blank screen.  I try the adapter on my sons PC and it works fine.  WTF?  I double check and make sure everything is all plugged in correctly, no standoffs are in the wrong places, triple check it all and still nothing.

Feeling defeated I search for a place to get it looked at and find a dude on craigslist that can do it on a Sunday (awesome).  13 years experience as an IT guy, should be perfect.  I drive into Houston and drop off the computer, turns out the guy is living in an aftercare facility at a drug rehab center.  Red lights flash but the guy has been clean for a year and a half and he did wait around for me so I leave it with him.  A few days later he calls me and says the power supply was wired incorrectly at the factory and it needs a new one.  I remind him all the lights and fans work and he says that is normal.  So I tell him go ahead and replace it.   Next day I get a text saying that he messed up and the leads were wrong on his multimeter and my power supply was good after all.  He says the mother board was bad.  I tell him I will pick it up, pay him his fee and I will swap the mother board at micro center myself.  So I go pay the dude and get the tower.  He tells me he has a dual core z97 intel chip I can have if I decide I want to go that route.  I declined and thanked him for the offer and headed to microcenter.



So I get to microcenter and I asked the manager if it would be possible for me to return my open box video card and my open box ram along with the non functional motherboard just in case and I will pay the difference to just get them new and I may upgrade them a little in the process.  He gave me the go ahead and said to go see some dude named **** and he will take care of me.  I go and grab the motherboard and stepped up to a MSI 970 Gaming, and went from EVGA DDR3 1600 to 2133 ram.  Same video card, just not an open box one.  I get to the dude I was supposed to see and he did the return and then credited me the cost difference for the parts I got (I was shocked and he said the manager said to take care of me since we were nice).  A decent upgrade and no additional cost, pretty awesome, Micro Center has earned all my future business.  I was feeling stoked and went home to put this stuff together.

I drive the hour and half home (again) and get started to build this thing for the last time.  I pull the CPU out and go to set it in the socket and notice it doesn't just sit it there.  I take a look at it and notice a bunch of bent pins and one missing completely.  WTF?  I am guessing that is why the rehab dude wanted me to take his 30 year old dual core intel chip and do a build with that.  He jacked up my chip and didn't want to say anything.  

So now I get to drive another 3 hour round trip tomorrow to buy another 110 dollar CPU.  I wonder what else is going to go wrong on this build.  



TL:DR   If you need a PC built in the Houston Area I am your man.    
           

that's the stuff you can't learn in school......

Time to drive and get a processor.  

Need to upgrade my Video card and PSU on this PC. was thinking of going to the Houston Microcenter to get the parts(I'm in Magnolia) I think ill just order the stuff online now.

Should have just ordered from newegg.  Live and learn.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

And my 15yr old thinks some screen tearing on his build is the end of the world

Could be worse, that guy could have melted everything

This right here.

It wasn't Microcenters fault. The dead motherboard thing happens occasionally and I just had crappy luck on that.  The rest of the issues were just a snowball effect of my luck.  Micro center was awesome to deal with when it came to returning and swapping things out.  The processor is 30 dollars cheaper at Micro center than newegg, the motherboard is 30 cheaper, and if you buy both at the same time they take another 40 off.  That is 100 less than newegg for just those two parts.  Most items from them beat online prices that I have seen and they also price match to major retailers (amazon, newegg, best buy etc...)

I ordered everything from newegg when I built mine.  I didn't have to exchange anything, it all plugged right up and I got to overclocking within 30 minutes of turning it on.

I laughed. You had a crackhead work on your computer? Maybe you should just stop and go buy a pre-built.

This is like a tutorial on how to do a sketchy PC build.

Used computer parts.

"Some dude" off Craigslist.

And you probably ended up spending more than if you'd just done a good budget build with new parts from the start.

Yup that was your first mistake.

Where as I just bought a computer from ebay.

Dual 8 core XEON cpu's (16 cores total with 32 cores hyper-threaded.)
128GB RAM
4 hot-swap hard drive slots upgradeable to 4 more hot swap bays
SAS/SATA Raid controller
Nvidia Quadro graphics

$1000, and zero frustration.

They aren't hard to build. If you can detail strip your AR15, you can build a PC. Cut your losses and never contact this guy again.

Lol, like buying off ebay gave you some sort of assurance that it would work.

When my current one needs replacing, I'm just gonna buy a Dell, or some all in one. We have a home built right now that my son did back in 8th or 9th grade. Thing never has worked quite right since th beginning. Sleep modes, takes a couple tries to successfully boot up, USB stuff occasionally quirky, stuff like that.  Too much dicking around.

After reading that, I find it hard to believe you've built a gaming PC.

Everything that was possible to do wrong -- You did it.

FIFY

First mistake: not using pcpartpicker.com to make sure you're buying compatible parts.

Second mistake: finding some crackhead on craigslist to fuck up your cpu for you.


Buy compatible parts, use an anti-static bracelet (ESD damage can be latent and cause a board to fail months later), and there's a great chance everything will work right the first time. The most common thing is forgetting to plug something in.

Wow what a headache for a budget build.

But hey, the good news is that the guys has been clean for a year and half and so he's got that going form which is nice.

Intel NUC


Readily available on Amazon, where you can also buy a keyboard and monitor

I built my last two computers. The first one was a learning experience, but it turned out alright after getting three bum mobos.  No I didn't screw them up.

My last computer is what I use now and went together like butter. Pcpartspicker and Newegg ftw.

You want a bad ass PC for cheap?

Surf Newegg open box deals on prebuilt desktop towers, and patiently wait for a PC with good internal components to go on sale for 50% off sticker price.

Honestly I would order motherboards on amazon, especially if you have prime.

Is a pin bent, broken, or missing? They exchange it no questions asked.

Newegg will give you the 3rd degree, and the RMA/Exchange can take 2 weeks...

It has multiple bent pins and at least one is broken.  I am not going to exchange it, it was in perfect shape when I got it.  I should of had my replacement by now but I ended up staying home so my wife can take the kids to the movies.  I will head to microcenter tomorrow and buy a new processor.  Amazon has it for about 40 more but it will save me almost three hours driving plus diesel.  Only problem is it will take another couple days to get.  New egg wants even more for it. So I will just bite the bullet and make the drive again.

Going to go with FX8320.  Microcenter  89.00, Newegg 134.00  Amazon 128.99

Amazon charges taxes in PA so newegg is the better route for me.  

I have only bought 5 of them over the past 7 years.  Only one failure in 7 years - a power supply, and it was covered under factory warranty.  These are working lease returns and the vendors do a full system test.

Next?

Always newegg, NEVER amazon.  

Same prices, no tax.

Tax matters.  

No, his first mistake was buying "open box" parts, wrong parts and not looking at everything when he sat down to build it the first time.

I have gone to the SAME Micro Center in Houston a dozen times, bought all the shit I needed to build a PC and delivered the built box the same day, in under 4 hours on at least two occasions.

Drug addicts do good IT work. I should know.

It's a nice build for the price. Even if one of the procs is toast he can resell the rest for a profit.

Fuck that. I'm a die hard Amazon fan but, if it's a whole laptop, a whole desktop or a whole PC build, I'm getting it at the egg.

I can usually beat Amazon and I don't have to fuck with 5 different vendors in case of a bad part.

I buy a shit ton of Dell off lease servers from the bay, probably close to 200 or so at last count.

Never an issue. Not ONE bad part on delivery.

Comedy of errors right there