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Geek Culture / Tearing apart my computer.

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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 03:28
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Today is the first time i've ever even ventured the insides of a computer, I had an HP Desktop Computer with a fried motherboard and today i tore it apart to see it's insides, all the parts of the computer are out and disconnected from it's wires, i've learned much from the process. lol, my parents were freaking out at me when i walked out of my room with a motherboard in my hand and told them "This is what a computer looks like on the inside!", they just looked at me... i thought about getting a new motherboard and a new GPU and creating a new computer from it, i've always wanted a new computer anyway! i would have to learn more about it though, i don't know nearly enough about it to build another one.
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The Whole setup


The motherboard


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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 04:00 Edited at: 20th Mar 2011 04:02
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is that a modem? and, no graphics card? i haven't built one in awhile but i think i'm (you're) missing something?

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heyufool1
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 04:06 Edited at: 20th Mar 2011 04:07
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Quote: "no graphics card?"

Onboard maybe?

By the way, I don't think it's a great idea putting computer parts on a rug/carpet because of the static electricity.

What CPU do you have in there?

"So hold your head up high and know, it's not the end of the road"
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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 04:43
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Quote: "What CPU do you have in there?"

No idea, i used to know, but it's been a year since that computer broke.
Quote: "(you're) missing something? "

Nah, there is no way anything could be missing, nothing has been taken out of it till now and i dont think i would miss something that big.

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crispex
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 04:46
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The graphics card is probably an on-board one with a fin heatsink mounted to it that can't be removed (at least not easily). That's probably what you're "missing."

I just now realized I've had a typo in my signature for the past 3 years.
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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 04:49
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Ok, like the post says, this is my first computer i've took apart, i really dont know that much about it lol.

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crispex
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 04:57
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I'd honestly suggest you look into how to dissemble and assemble computers before attempting / doing so.

I just now realized I've had a typo in my signature for the past 3 years.
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puppyofkosh
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 05:19 Edited at: 20th Mar 2011 16:57
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Just so you know, the PSU can apparently hold charge a while, so I wouldn't go messing around in there unless you know what you're doing.
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wind27382
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 05:37
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give the man some credit we ll had to start somewhere. i did the same thing when i first took apart my first computer. and that was just to add memory. we all have to learn, but yes putting electronic on carpet bad idea static electricity can fry them.

wind
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crispex
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 05:57
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Quote: "give the man some credit we ll had to start somewhere. i did the same thing when i first took apart my first computer. and that was just to add memory. we all have to learn, but yes putting electronic on carpet bad idea static electricity can fry them."


Yes, you have to start somewhere, start by at least reading it or watching a tutorial. I've been electrocuted a number of times, and I knew what I was doing, but to someone who doesn't, they could end up getting serious burns or shocks from it.

I just now realized I've had a typo in my signature for the past 3 years.
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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 06:45
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Quote: "PSU can apparently hold charge for years"

it's been unplugged for years now, any charge that might have been in it has been discharged now

Quote: "electronic on carpet bad idea static electricity can fry them."

this was already fried anyway, it wouldn't have mattered if it did.

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Grog Grueslayer
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 10:36 Edited at: 20th Mar 2011 10:43
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That power supply probably still works unless it was fried along with the motherboard. To me that looks more like a network card than a modem... I don't see the round black speaker.

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The Wilderbeast
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 11:47 Edited at: 20th Mar 2011 11:48
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Quote: "Just so you know, the PSU can apparently hold charge for years, so I wouldn't go messing around in there unless you know what you're doing."

I don't know where you got that from. The only component inside the PSU that holds charge are the caps, and only for a couple of minutes max (depending on the quality of the PSU). As it's an exponential relationship (current / time) then yes, technically they would hold charge for years after because it will touch zero at infinity - but we're talking nano amps here, nothing that will cause any damage whatsoever.



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bitJericho
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 12:05 Edited at: 20th Mar 2011 12:26
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Eh? The caps can hold a charge for weeks, and it can be a lethal amount.

You should never open a PSU (unless your trained), there's really no need to anyway.

You guys should read the following thread, a lot of neat stories:

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/capacitors-psu-dangerous-t2015372p7.html

Seems like the guys who have actual work experiences with these types of things are the ones telling people to be cautious. That's a good sign that there might be some truth to the warnings

I liked this quote:
Quote: "The other golden rule is DO NOT WORK ON POWER CIRCUITS ALONE. If
someone else is about there are two advantages:
1) You might be able to get them to do it.
2) They may be able to resuscitate you in the event you top yourself"


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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 12:56
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Some useful warnings there. Another good reason for me to leave hardware well alone and leave it to those who know what they are doing.
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TheComet
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 14:34
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Capacitors can hold a lethal amount of charge for up to 1 week, though the modern PSUs or any modern devices with capacitors have a bleeder resistor in parallel with the capacitor. This makes the capacitor discharge in a matter of a minute. Still, I would be cautious, you never know if the device has a bleeder resistor or not, always expect the worst

TheComet

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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 15:27
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Quote: "Still, I would be cautious, you never know if the device has a bleeder resistor or not, always expect the worst "


Good advice - and the bleeder resistor could be broken.
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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 16:35
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Yeah, it had lost all charges that it may have gained because this computer has been sitting in my room, in the corner for years now, it was a 2007 computer, tore up in 09. ever since then it has been in my room, just sitting there.

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MrValentine
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Posted: 21st Mar 2011 17:33
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................ still no need to open up the psu... unless your hotwiring two together... (for more juice-just google pairing psu's)

if your building a new pc, might I suggest you go through details like budget, where your getting it from so others can collaborate on it, and also... the environment around you... do you have wooden flooring or a nice at least 1mx1m table surface to work on...

you only need 1 screw driver to put a pc stogether... preferably that small philips screwdriver not the wide one... dont know the exact name...

I did this first back in 1998 when I was installing a voodoo2 card ^^ miss those days, best graphics cards ever, best one I ever had was a voodoo4 4500 PCI not AGP (it either fried or I was not competent to play with drivers or something...at the time, though I am pretty much GURU status on PC hardware...

As you probably already know theres only a few parts to a BASIC computer... and for gods sake guys, onboard video chips are not that complicated, also its unlikely that his foxconn board would have a GPU on it, otherwise there would be a Nvidia or ATI or... perhaps even S3 logo or intel (whatever you get the idea) somewhere on it, my guess is it was an 8mb video display chip, so probably embedded in north-bridge... anyway

if your going to build a gaming rig... expect more complexity, and better components...

but if your just building to create and test games that your making... something more suttle could be done, and cheap... like a micro-ATX board with onboard graphics and also a PCI-Express slot so you can add more power to it when budget or needs arise, some can come with nvidia (personally recommended) GPU chipsets which are actually pretty good...

heres a simple list

CASE - put parts together in it
PSU - must choose wisely, if you dont need power now, still get a more powerful one at least 550 so that you have enough juice for your CPU and any future graphics card you buy in future, otherwise you will bleed your CPU of power and your GPU will not function...
MOTHERBOARD/PCB/MAINBOARD + CPU - this is easy, a threeway picklist, either intel.... actually kinda funny... ok intel,amd,or if you go for an ITX system... either VIA or intel, I personally love using intel chips and I dont want to go into that topic... its a clearcut borderline... intel is best... fullstop. Get a CPU to match your board... power depends on your budget.
MEMORY/RAM - crucial descision here, must select best memory that goes with your cpu speeds and clocks, make it match that and your a winner in the area of peak performance, unless you go into high end new corei chips where there is no fsb... lol
HARD DRIVE - now, my guess your hdd was either SATA I or IDE (ATA/PATA, there is a difference) if it was SATA II, is it still working? could buy a USB case for it and use it as a USB drive ^^ great fun and useful for transferring huge amounts of data... and other things lol, but yeah your unlikely to spend a fortune on SATA III, or let alone SSD, however the 64GB ones are kinda affordable now... considering getting a 128/256 one myself... kinda a great setup by keeping solely core system installs on the SSD including drivers and directx stuff, install applications onto a standard SATA II drive and your gonna be a happy man "yes!" (russian expression accent lol)
SOUND - either stick with the onboard stuff and save a bunch or go pro and get a professional chip, if you buy a cheap one... dont bother... although you will need a bigger board or have the needed slots for it, theyre no longer just on PCI, theyre also on PCI-e x1 and x8 and ive seen some that need x16... if someone knows more about those please let me know...
DVD/BLU-RAY/DVD/RW(optical drive ffs) - up to you, however bare in mind depending on how many SATA ports your board has, you might want to use them for HDD's and use IDE (most boards keep one now on their new boards for pretty much legacy or this purpose) for optical drive use, then you can have 2 if you need, however if you need more SATA ports you can get a raid card... but thats complicated...
GRAPHICS CARD/GPU - if your going to get a dedicated graphics card, unless your building a legacy system and fishing around for old graphic cards (then your list of brands increase) your left with pretty much 2 (unless your gonna get a MATROX card which I doubt... lol) brands to pick from... NVidia or AMD/ATI, you can probably guess which I personally think you should get (hence why I put it first - - -hint hint NVidia hint hint - - -)
INPUT DEVICES - here you just need a keyboard and a mouse,
SOFTWARE - windows or other operating system, simples "." (oh and drivers for hardware components for your specific OS)

so as long my memory serves me well, thats all you need to get a pc going ^^

hope this was helpful, ask me for anything else ^^

Ciao.

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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 02:25
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Thanks!, i will refer back to that post, much useful info here!
i think my HDD will do for now 500 GB
my graphics are by NVIDIA, so i think you will be happy there
i will need a new CD Drive though, i think when i took it out i yanked a wire out of place and i don't have the coordination or knowlege to fix it
i'll be glad when i get my data back though, when that computer wouldn't come back on i was devastated, does the data keep or does it just erase over time?

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MrValentine
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 03:20
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like i said, best way to check it is to buy one of the dual SATA/IDE usb cases that way if the HDD is dead, which I dont think it should be, you will have a reusable usb hard drive case that you can fit a new hard drive into at the least, but yeah hard drives keep data, theyre magnetic disks, and I dont believe they will lose data within 10 years, if there was a life time for the data I would say 50+ years before degredation may occur im just saying that without any scientific lookup just my quick response with my moderate scientifical IT knowledge... so you should be fine, I had a computer where the cpu fried and also an time when the board friend, hard drives were fine

YES I AM HAPPY ^^

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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 03:45 Edited at: 22nd Mar 2011 04:02
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Neat, ill look into one of those USB hard drive cases you talked about, that sounds really cool, it would be really useful for gathering my old data, though my skills were quite inferior then to my skills now, so none of that data might not be much use for me, but it would be quite useful having an extra 500 GB handy!

EDIT:
How is this motherboard, im gonna look up a guide online and look more into building computers but, it's a FOXCONN
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186203&cm_re=motherboards_intel-_-13-186-203-_-Product

This is the GPU im looking at, it's a NVIDIA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187114&cm_re=nvidia-_-14-187-114-_-Product

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PrimalBeans
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 06:30 Edited at: 22nd Mar 2011 06:31
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Here you go... yeah nothing really you can service in you psu unless your familiar with circut troubleshooting... even then your better off jest getting a new one. I wouldnt have removed the fans from the case though either. Seeing how dated the mother board looks really there isnt your going to be able to reuse. Your memory will more then likely be ddr2 or ddr3 on your new motherboard and i dont see your reusing your old stuff. I would even concerned about an having an IDE controller one the new motherboard if your determined to reuse your hard drive. Im not sure if its common these days but i know my new pc doesnt have an ide controller at all... Not to mention your old PSU wont work with alot of whats comming out these days as well. Another thing is mother board size cooling with your new motherboard and just generally available space in your old case... maybe something on ebay would be your best bet... find a direct replacement for what you have.
One other thing also: What os are you running? is it a bundled hp windows or compaq or any of those? Some of those are sensetive to the machine they are installed on. It may not be possible to reuse your os on your hd and youll be looking to replace that as well. Anyway heres a general layout of what you have now:


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bitJericho
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 19:26 Edited at: 22nd Mar 2011 19:27
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Uh, no that's a pci-e slot, not agp. And the "slots" are pci-e x1 slots. Also, this isn't really early 2000. I think PCI-E x16 slots didn't start showing up until 2005 or better.

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MrValentine
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 19:28
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I believe theyre what they called pci riser slots, they were 1x I think made specifically for networking I believe, modems, and ethernet etc

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That Guy John
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 22:16
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I like MaximumPC for their build guides, reading that is how I started building.
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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 23:05
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I'll take a look at that, i certainly need the help, especially as a beginner. thanks!

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