How fast can you build a PC?

Q

Quartz-1

Supreme [H]ardness
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May 20, 2011
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You have on a table in front of you, all unboxed:

Decent ATX case with stand-offs, screws etc
Modular PSU + cables (inc. power cable)
RAM
ATX Motherboard
CPU
CPU cooler
TIM
Full-length GPU, requiring two 6 or 8 pin power cables.
SSD + SATA cable
HDD + SATA cable
Monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
Cable ties & clamps
Screwdrivers
Scissors (to trim cable ties)
Anti-static strap
Bootable USB stick
Any other components you deem necessary (i.e. stuff I've forgotten to mention :) )

Your challenge: to build the PC to the boot stage as fast as possible BUT you must keep it looking reasonably neat. You don't need to worry about overclocking. Getting into the 'Rate My Cables' thread is not expected, but it mustn't be a mess. How long does it take you?

I reckon I could easily do it in under 15 minutes.
 
yeah i agree it has gotten easier to build. i was going to say if you just want it built and clean, 15-20 tops. fully managed cables 45ish. that's just assembly, windows, drivers and updates add at least 1.5-2 hours maybe more, depends on a few things.
 
Never thought about building a PC fast. I suppose if I was doing it for a living it might matter but when I build for myself???
I takes me some time. I go slowwww....

Yeah, how you like that motherboard, huh? Yeah, I thought so. Have some RAM....oh yeah, there's more where that came from. Another stick? And another stick? Can you take more? Getting hot in here...you need a fan?

Boom chick a wow.....
 
About tree fiddy.

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I'd say about 45 minutes cause I like to go slow and be extra careful.

But, I'm sure I could slap one together in say 20-25 mins.
 
You do realise that a PC journalist in a competition did it in under 5 minutes? That competition had the motherboard pre-installed, though. And in a previous thread, an [H]er did it in 5:35. That's why I specified reasonably neat.
 
It's not one of those things I ever have gotten in a race to do rapidly myself, though I could do one relatively fast I'm sure after all these years.

That one really looks pretty basic I guess, but still not the type of thing I would get in a rush doing ever.

I think the HTPC was that last one I built and took about a half hour, but was using over a few old things, P6T Deluxe V2, X5650, the 6 lb TRUE copper cooler, etc.

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The frigging QC inspector kept trying to stick his nose in it.

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Honestly? Probably about 2 hours. I get really anxious and handle all the cards delicately because I'm afraid of breaking something. I don't like building PCs, at least not dealing with the motherboard and CPU/Fan mounting. I don't mind swapping out anything else... PSUs, drives, RAM, video cards... but I absolutely hate the part where I have to attach the motherboard to the case, put the I/O shield on, install the CPU, and apply thermal compound before attaching the fan. It seems like if anything can go wrong for me, it goes wrong at that point. I can't even imagine doing a watercooling loop... I would freak out big time having water that close to my motherboard, and it would add steps to my least favorite part of the process.

Maybe I would feel differently if I had one of those really nice cases with a motherboard mounting plate that let me put things together outside the case first. Never tried that.
 
Used to do this at AMD events. About 10 minutes give or take, depending on the parts.
 
I use to do 5-6 minute builds on a pc model range we called the Thunderbolt which had an in house designed and imported atx case (it was crap), AMD Sempron 145 AM3+ cpu, 2x4gb EVM DDR3 ram, 500gb sata drive, some matx Asrock AM3+ mobo, low profile nvidia or ati card. Actually our whole department would try and compete with each other on building the fastest builds for the different model line-ups the company had it was quite fun.

Only the custom builds that involved full tower atx cases, water or custom air cooling, gaming cards, cpus, multiple hard drives and big psu's were the builds that took around 40 minutes to build before it ended up on the kvm bench for imaging.

All builds had to have had decent cable management and not a rats nest before it was to be imaged.
 
My current desktop took me about 2 hours because I was so careful and fastidious. If it's my machine and my money I want it assembled as exactly as possible. Your machine and your money? I could do it in less than 30 minutes and still have the results up to my standards.

I'm not sure speed is really a laudable thing for assembling computers unless you work at a whitebox assembler (do those even exist anymore?).
 
I held the record in the manufacturing dept at Compaq 18 years ago...built 64 desktops in 8 hours. Every screw had to be torqued down to spec. 16 build stations at a time, so there was a small pause between sending the completed systems out and setting up for the new builds. I was the only tech for our team that day. It was just me and my team lead. I did the building...he did the QA.

That was back in the Pentium III Slot 1 and UDMA-66/100 days.

No one ever beat my record, to my knowledge.
 
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Quartz-1 said:
You have on a table in front of you, all unboxed:

Decent ATX case with stand-offs, screws etc
Modular PSU + cables (inc. power cable)
RAM
ATX Motherboard
CPU
CPU cooler
TIM
Full-length GPU, requiring two 6 or 8 pin power cables.
SSD + SATA cable
HDD + SATA cable
Monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
Cable ties & clamps
Screwdrivers
Scissors (to trim cable ties)
Anti-static strap
Bootable USB stick
Any other components you deem necessary (i.e. stuff I've forgotten to mention :) )

Your challenge: to build the PC to the boot stage as fast as possible BUT you must keep it looking reasonably neat. You don't need to worry about overclocking. Getting into the 'Rate My Cables' thread is not expected, but it mustn't be a mess. How long does it take you?

I reckon I could easily do it in under 15 minutes.
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In general, 30 minutes. But depending on which specific case, CPU cooler, and PSU and other sundries, I've built PCs in as little as 10 minutes to as long as 2 hours.
 
DejaWiz said:
I held the record in the manufacturing dept at Compaq 18 years ago...built 64 desktops in 8 hours. Every screw had to be torqued down to spec. Every screw had to be torqued down to spec. 16 build stations at a time, so there was a small pause between sending the completed systems out and setting up for the new builds. I was the only tech for our team that day. It was just me and my team lead. I did the building...he did the QA.

That was back in the Pentium III Slot 1 and UDMA-66/100 days.

No one ever beat my record, to my knowledge.
Click to expand...

I didn't know people actually had to assemble OEM computers by hand. I thought that if you bought from a large OEM, they had robots putting the machines together.

But anyway, do you remember the old Presario 5204 systems that didn't use ATX power supplies? I remember it was really weird, because it would take the plug from an ATX PSU, but it wouldn't power on. I always wondered if those were AT power supplies or something else Compaq designed in-house. By the time it went out in the mid-2000s, the replacement parts were so overpriced that I was able to build a new computer around the old RAM and CPU cheaper than I was able to replace that part.

It was kind of a shame, because I liked using the system for Red Hat 6.x and Windows 98 applications that I couldn't run in a VM.
 
athenian200 said:
I didn't know people actually had to assemble OEM computers by hand. I thought that if you bought from a large OEM, they had robots putting the machines together.

But anyway, do you remember the old Presario 5204 systems that didn't use ATX power supplies? I remember it was really weird, because it would take the plug from an ATX PSU, but it wouldn't power on. I always wondered if those were AT power supplies or something else Compaq designed in-house. By the time it went out in the mid-2000s, the replacement parts were so overpriced that I was able to build a new computer around the old RAM and CPU cheaper than I was able to replace that part.

It was kind of a shame, because I liked using the system for Red Hat 6.x and Windows 98 applications that I couldn't run in a VM.
Click to expand...

A lot of companies used to use a lot of proprietary items, I think the actual last time I bought a Dell prebuilt computer was around 1992, just because you had to buy the RAM specifically from them att.

HP used to make PSU's along the same lines, but never owned one myself.

Have been building my own ever since that last Dell, I'd even upgraded a Packard Bell CPU prior to that :)
 
MongGrel said:
A lot of companies used to use a lot of proprietary items, I think the actual last time I bought a Dell prebuilt computer was around 1992, just because you had to buy the RAM specifically from them att.

HP used to make PSU's along the same lines, but never owned one myself.

Have been building my own ever since that last Dell, I'd even upgraded a Packard Bell CPU prior to that :)
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Yeah, that's one of the main reasons why I started building my own. I don't even like building stuff necessarily, but I sometimes keep them on hand for years to run a specific piece of software, and not being able to repair or replace basic parts is kind of a deal breaker for me.

Incidentally, it wasn't easy to upgrade the RAM in that Compaq unit, either. I think I took RAM back and forth to Fry's Electronics several times... their in-store database for my model was wrong and it wouldn't take 128MB modules. So I was able to upgrade from 64MB to 192MB by just adding two more 64MB modules. For some reason, the only modules that worked were from Kingston, had a very specific number of chips on each side, etc.
 
athenian200 said:
I didn't know people actually had to assemble OEM computers by hand. I thought that if you bought from a large OEM, they had robots putting the machines together.
Click to expand...
Nope, a lot of custom OEM PCs are built by hand. Robots can't handle the sheer number of possible configurations for custom PCs. Not to mention that there's always going to be a shortage of a certain part which means that a substitute will be used when necessary. You can't exactly reprogram a robot to handle a different style of RAM stick or PSU in a short time. It's also the little stuff too like how the motherboard heatsinks can interfere with the installation of a case fan depending on how short the case is. Or when to cut or bundle up a bunch of wires.
 
6 hours?

I've only built one computer (this one), and it took me >6 hours b/c I spent the entire time in various states of OMGWTF. Given that it's been five years, and I've likely forgotten most of the things I only got right out of luck in the first place, I'd estimate about the same amount of time. For the n00b in this area guides and tips online only go so far, since the parts in question are likely to be slightly different.

Perhaps next time I build I won't be so slow though... I'll remember to time it in August!
 
I can't remember the exact time it took me undertake a behemoth build which was a complete custom water-loop setup in a Stacker case and it was my first custom water looped build, it took me 2 days to completely build from draining and cleaning the radiators, pumps, tubes to installing custom Danger Den water blocks on 4 8800 Ultra's and on the motherboard (might've been a Asus Commando or Striker Extreme can't exactly remember) but it was a daunting build as there was so much stuff to put on and put in the case.
 
As a professional builder, a standard PC with no custom cooler or fancy graphics setup would take 10 minutes or so. More hardcore systems are a crapshoot.
 
athenian200 said:
I didn't know people actually had to assemble OEM computers by hand. I thought that if you bought from a large OEM, they had robots putting the machines together.

But anyway, do you remember the old Presario 5204 systems that didn't use ATX power supplies? I remember it was really weird, because it would take the plug from an ATX PSU, but it wouldn't power on. I always wondered if those were AT power supplies or something else Compaq designed in-house. By the time it went out in the mid-2000s, the replacement parts were so overpriced that I was able to build a new computer around the old RAM and CPU cheaper than I was able to replace that part.

It was kind of a shame, because I liked using the system for Red Hat 6.x and Windows 98 applications that I couldn't run in a VM.
Click to expand...

Back then, all the components were shipped from Foxconn and other vendors, so they all needed to be assembled by hand.

I do remember the non-ISA power supplies, as almost all OEMs used a proprietary design that wasn't ATX compliant. Purely to make large sums of money in the post-sale field repair stage.
 
Speaking of builds I remember the old BTX motherboards from Dell and how there was some debate about how Dell was trying to push all motherboard manufacturers (as well as including Intel and AMD) to adopt the BTX form factor due to better air flow and position of upgradeable parts (graphics cards) those models that were using the BTX form factor wasn't so bad.
 
No idea, as I like to treat the components lovingly, talking to each one of them as they get installed. Well, it's been a long time since I built a modern system. But in 2003 I could assemble a POS low-end AMD box in about 20 minutes, including testing. These were single-use, production computers. Out of the four of us I was the only one who gave a ship about cable management. Good times.
 
OrangeWolf said:
6 hours?

I've only built one computer (this one), and it took me >6 hours b/c I spent the entire time in various states of OMGWTF. Given that it's been five years, and I've likely forgotten most of the things I only got right out of luck in the first place, I'd estimate about the same amount of time. For the n00b in this area guides and tips online only go so far, since the parts in question are likely to be slightly different.

Perhaps next time I build I won't be so slow though... I'll remember to time it in August!
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6 hours? The very first computer I built took about an hour and a half with a piece of shit for a case. Granted I had experience replacing parts already, but this was the first time I had assembled one from the ground up. These days I can do a full tower build in around 30-45 minutes with cable management.

I recently built my first mATX PC. That son of a bitch took me about 3 hours to get everything in and cable management to be satisfactory. I want to do an ITX or HTPC next.
 
I could probably get everything functional and working in around a half hour. Maybe less depending on how roomy the case is and how easy the cooling stuff is to attach. Sometimes that can be a total bitch.
To make everything look great, hide the cabling, and get nice airflow...a couple hours is probably good enough. I could do it in less time if I were under pressure, but there's no real reason why I would. Might as well be a perfectionist if it only tacks on 45 minutes to an hour.
 
Back in the day I swapped out motherboards in 10 Dell Optiplex sx360 SFF PCs in under 1 hour. So that was pretty much disassemble/reassemble to whole thing in under 6 minutes.

As for building one from scratch, I usually take my time and make sure I have everything exactly where I want it.

If speed building from scratch I could probably do it in 15-20 minutes. Been doing this stuff for around 23 years now.

Oh, and your use of scissors to trim cable ties (I'm guessing you mean zip ties)? Wire snips works way better and faster.
 
I could build a PC in 15 minutes, but I won't. I like to set everything up outside of the case first to make sure it's all working, that includes installing the OS and running some basic tests. Once I know that there aren't any issues, I'll put it in the case.

Matthew Kane said:
I personally know one of the HP factories was doing assembly by hand for there older m9070a series computers years back not sure if they have changed today.
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The one in Houston still does. I get to go down there once a year for face-to-face meetings and some of will walk around the complex during lunch breaks.



Matthew Kane said:
Speaking of builds I remember the old BTX motherboards from Dell and how there was some debate about how Dell was trying to push all motherboard manufacturers (as well as including Intel and AMD) to adopt the BTX form factor due to better air flow and position of upgradeable parts (graphics cards) those models that were using the BTX form factor wasn't so bad.
Click to expand...


BTX was an Intel thing to try and alleviate the heat issues that Netburst brought to the ATX form factor. Gateway was actually the first company to use them. Once Netburst died, there was no real reason to keep pushing BTX as it hadn't come close to overtaking ATX yet.
 
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