If you consider yourself a computer hobbyist, you've tinkered with your PC, upgrading components in an attempt to keep pace with ever-faster desktops. But there comes a time in every system's life when its motherboard just won't support current hardware choices.

When this happens, you could easily order a fully configured box from one of many reputable vendors. But why settle for a system that's almost perfect when you can have exactly what your heart desires?

If you've got even a little technical knowledge under your belt, building a PC from scratch using the specific parts you crave is no sweat. What's more, you'll get a lot of satisfaction from the knowledge that you built it yourself, and you'll know your PC like the back of your hand.

Before you tackle a project this big, it's a good idea to map out your plan of attack in advance. Make sure you get all the necessary components and cables ahead of time so you don't get caught short. Have a Phillips-head screwdriver and a pair of long-nose pliers on hand, too. A Windows 98 CD-ROM and a Windows 98 startup disk on a floppy are also essential.

Start with the Motherboard

This month we set out to construct our own PC using quality components, but nothing so high-end that it would price the system right out of our budget. The game plan we followed is straightforward and should serve as a basic guide for your project. We decided to use the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers from our original desktop, so that we could focus on the real meat and potatoes-building a solid system box. We ordered many of our parts through Arizona-based reseller TC Computers. Because TC's virtual store has such a wide selection, it can easily be a one-stop source.

For our system, we chose an Enlight EN-7237 midtower case. It's got plenty of expansion room, accommodates ATX motherboards, and has a 300-watt power supply. Our selected ATX motherboard was an Abit VT6X4 Slot 1 board, populated with a 733MHz Pentium III CPU and fan. TC sells the motherboard/CPU as a bundled package. We also ordered a 128MB 133MHz Corsair SDRAM module from TC, and inserted it into the board's SIMM socket after we grounded our fingers against the metal power supply to avoid static discharge.

We removed the case's front bezel and two side panels, lowered the motherboard into the case, and screwed it into place. We made sure that the processor-fan power cable was connected to the motherboard, the case fan was attached to the power supply, and the RAM and CPU were securely seated. Following the motherboard's instruction manual, we attached the power supply to the motherboard's main power socket and linked up the case's five LED and switch cables to the appropriate jumpers on the motherboard.

Add Fixed Drives

To minimise potential problems, we initially installed only those drives necessary to get Windows 98 up and running: the floppy drive, the hard drive, and the DVD-ROM drive. We placed our new 3.5-inch floppy drive into the floppy bay, connected the floppy interface cable to the motherboard's floppy connector and the drive, and attached the drive's power connector.

You can probably use your old PC's floppy drive to save a few bucks.

Our hard drive was a 40GB DiamondMax Plus from Maxtor. We made sure the jumpers were set to "master," then positioned the drive in the case's internal bay. After plugging the ATA/66 interface cable into the drive and the motherboard's primary IDE channel, we connected the power lead.

Our final acquisition from TC was a Creative Labs PC-DVD 8X DVD-ROM drive. We set the drive's jumper to the "master" position (a setting we would need to change later, in step eight), mounted sliding guide rails (which came with the Enlight case) onto either side of the drive, and slipped the drive into the case's topmost drive bay. The drive didn't come with an interface cable, but fortunately, the motherboard did. We attached one end of the interface cable to the motherboard's secondary IDE channel and the other to the drive, then plugged in the drive's power supply. (With the robust CPU and graphics card we chose, we didn't need a dedicated hardware DVD decoder.) We then screwed all of the drives into place.

You can probably migrate over your existing IDE CD-ROM drive to save a few dollars, then replace it with a DVD-ROM drive in the future.

Add a Graphics Card

Next up was the Hercules Guillemot 3D Prophet II GTS graphics card, which is based on the speedy nVidia GeForce2 GTS graphics processor. First, we had to remove a temporary metal flap from the back of the case, which covered the backplane section of the expansion slot. Here's where those pliers came in handy-for every expansion card we inserted, we had to remove these metal flaps. After locating the motherboard's AGP slot, we firmly seated the card into the slot and screwed the card's backplane to the chassis.

If you don't need screaming 3D graphics, you might be able to get by with your original graphics card.

Testing Your New PC

With the minimum components in place for installing Windows 98, we were ready to power up the system. Leaving the case open, we plugged in the monitor, connected the keyboard and mouse, and plugged the system's power cable into the wall outlet.

We pressed the power button-and nothing happened. We pushed it again-still nothing. We pressed the reset button and the power light lit, the fans started to spin, but nothing else happened. We were puzzled. We shut the system down (using the reset button) and investigated.

We realised that the floppy drive's cable was inserted incorrectly because a plastic knob on the cable's connector was in the way. We removed the extraneous piece of plastic and correctly inserted the cable. After snooping around further, we discovered that the case's reset and power-button cords were labeled incorrectly (thankfully, these cables are also colour-coded), and we switched them to their correct positions.

With all that sorted out, we tried again. Our system successfully booted up (using the power switch), and we were able to enter the BIOS. From there we had to enable the Auto setting for both IDE controllers and enable AGP-4X Mode. We also had to disable the OnChip Sound setting, so it wouldn't conflict with the sound card we were planning to install in step seven.

Finishing Touches

A PC without an operating system is just a pricey paperweight, so installing Windows 98 was our next task. We booted up the system with the Windows 98 startup disk in the floppy drive. Once we were greeted by the DOS prompt, we confirmed that the boot disk's universal CD-ROM drivers success fully recognised the DVD-ROM drive, then used FDISK to format the hard drive. We inserted the Windows 98 CD into the DVD-ROM drive, launched Setup, and followed the onscreen prompts for installing the operating system.

Once we confirmed that Windows 98 was installed and running properly, we were able to proceed with installing the remaining device drivers and components. Since Windows had loaded the default SVGA driver for the graphics card during setup, we deleted its entry in Device Manager and rebooted the system. When Windows started up the next time, it detected the graphics card and gave us the option to install a driver from the card's installation disk. We also made sure to install the graphics card's DVD movie player software and the motherboard's 4x AGP and ATA/66 drivers.

Our Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live MP3 sound card was next. We inserted it in one of the motherboard's five PCI slots and screwed the card's backplane to the chassis. We then connected the DVD-ROM drive's CD-audio cable to the sound card's AUX line. For the digital audio channel, the DVD-ROM drive was linked to the sound card by an S/PDIF digital cable. We then installed the sound card's drivers from its included CD-ROM.

Another way to save a few bucks is to use your existing sound card, but you'll likely give up some additional functionality, such as 3D sound support.

To equip our system with removable storage, we ordered an HP CD-Writer Plus 9310i CD-RW drive. First, we screwed rails to the sides of the drive, switched the DVD-ROM's jumpers to the "slave" position, made sure the CD-RW drive's jumpers were to set to "master," and placed the drive in the middle 5.25-inch bay. We connected the CD-RW drive to the motherboard's secondary IDE channel, using the same cable the DVD-ROM drive was already using, so that both drives were daisy-chained together. We linked the CD-RW drive to the sound card's CD-audio connector with a CD-audio cable, and attached a power-supply lead to the drive. Then we installed the CD-RW drive's bundled applications.

The last component added was a 3Com US Robotics 5610 56K PCI fax modem. We fit it into one of the system's PCI slots, screwed it in place, let Windows auto-detect the card, and then installed 3Com's drivers from the bundled floppy disk. As long as your old system has a 56Kbps modem, you can probably move the old modem to the new system.

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