@tcmartin10

For some of you new guys, you may have seen some of the systems that some of the haxme members have set up. Infact, I think there was a post about people showing off thier rigs. And you may ask why some of us choose to build our own rather then buy one. There are a lot of different reasons. If budget is an issue, when buying a PC you may have to sacrafice a part you want to get a better part. Like maybe a cheaper computer with a processor that is dual instead of quad to get a basic video card. Also, building your own PC can be cheaper. I am in the process of building my first PC and it is gonna kick my eMachine's ass and it will cost me maybe 20 to 50 bucks more. Lastly, it truly is your own design. You can choose your case, powersupply, processor and ect. And it also tends to be easier to upgrade than a store bought computer.

Building your own PC gives you a sense of pride that you made. You worked for the money to buy it, you choose the parts yourself, and you put it together. And on top of that, when choosing and installing parts, you gives you the chance to learn WAY more about hardware. I worked at a computer repair shop and learned a lot about PC hardware. And building this PC, I got to learn way more. That may be because at a repair shop you work more with removing viruses from pornographic sites.

How are you supposed to get started? I would suggest the first thing you do is look at your budget. Yes it is nice to have a 4k rig like an alienware that is probably better, but depending on how much you make, this may be impossible or take a very long time. For my first PC I went kind of soft on it. I went with a 600-watt powersupply (PSU) and a triple core processor instead of a really nice quad-core processor. And if you do not understand what I mean about triple and quad core, you should definatly look into building a PC or just enriching your knowledge about PC hardware before you jump full into wanting to learn to hack websites.

Next thing you wanna do is define your needs. Some of you guys here are probabl here just to learn more about computer security to keep your information secure and do not do more than the occasional game (like off of miniclip), skype, email and facebook. If that is all your doing, I highly suggest you just stick to a dual-core processor or a triple core. However, if you are a big gammer and like to play World of Warcraft, minecraft and ect, I would suggest you look into a quad or hexa core. the on top of that, if your not into high quality video cards, liquid cooling and do not have a ton of fans, you may wanna go with a lower PSU. basically if your building a basic PC to do email and such, you do not need a 1,000-watt PSU.

Choosing your parts to fit each other and preparing them for the future. When building a PC, the most important thing besides a case to house it all in my opinion is your motherboard. Your processor needs to fit your motherboard, so does your RAM, and your hard drive and ect. I would suggest going with rather newer parts like a motherboard that allows sata and has a AM3 socket for your processor and DDR3 memory. This way it is easier to upgrade to better parts. Today you may may only use this rigg for email and basic operations. But tomorrow you may wanna start being a gammer and watching a lot of movies.

Taking a look at memory. This depend on the OS, hardware, and your needs. Certain opertaing systems require a certain amount of RAM. I think Vista and 7 require 1 GB RAM where XP only require 500 - something MB. And you need to be sure that you are putting DDR3 in a DDR3 RAM socket. As far as needs go. If you are going to be doing a lot of multitasking you may wanna get more than 4GB of RAM.

Constructing a PC is not hard. When you get the motherboard you may be like "Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into." Luckily, every motherboard you buy new has an instruction booklet that tells you what everything means and where everything should plug into. All you need the the ability to read and follow instructions. If you do not have an instruction booklet, every motherboard has a basically a serial number that you can google. Serial number, version, type, whatever you wanna call it. And if you do not wanna start from the ground up, try upgrading your PC. Replace RAM, maybe a better processor that fits the socket and maybe a video card. Building a PC is the best way to learn about hardware. And in my opinion, before anyone goes hardcore into learning exploitation and what not, they should start with learning about hardware. Learning about hardware helps a little bit with explaining how a kernel and operating system work.