Build A Custom Windows 7 Computer

Follow along as I describe my trials and tribulations in building a custom Windows 7 computer with off the shelf parts.

I Need More Memory!

Before I headed into this, I had a decent AMD Phenom X4 965 system. But the problem was that I had 4GB of memory installed and Windows XP only used 3GB of that. Because I use this computer to trade stocks and it was sluggish in performance with the trading desktop software I was using, I needed to upgrade.

Now at this point I could choose between Windows Vista or Windows 7. Because I didn't like the look or feel of Windows Vista, I opted for Windows 7.

64-Bit Windows 7

Ok here's the rant part. Windows 7 is not easy to get running if you want to use 64 bit. I spent about 2 days trying to get hardware components working. My big problem was trying to get my 3 LCD monitors and one LCD television working. Under Windows XP, this just worked. My old reliable GeForce FX 5200 video cards did the job.

But unfortunately, Nvidia stopped supporting the FX 5200 and didn't create any 64 bit drivers for them. This left me hosed and I had to to go out and buy two new video cards. I didn't want to spend a lot and I'm not much of a gamer so I decided to buy GeForce 9500 GT cards. The video cards are PCI-E and required two PCI-E slots on the motherboard. The existing MSI 770-C45 mobo that I had only had one PCI-E slot. So out came the wallet again and I settled on a MSI 870A-G45.

Along the way something stupid happened. As I was transferring my AMD X4 Phenom 965 CPU to the new motherboard, I bent the pins when I tried to seat it into the socket. Pissed, I had to toss it and replaced it with an AMD X6 Phenom II 2.8Ghz CPU.

The Total Cost

So this little exercise of trying to increase my system by 1GB ended up costing me about $500. The computer rig now contains the following:

New Hardware Components

• MSI 870A-G45 motherboard ($99)
• Windows 7 Home Upgrade ($99)
• Two EVGA Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT 1GB video cards ($140)
• AMD Phenom X6 2.8Ghz CPU ($180)

Reused Hardware Components

• Two 22" LG Electronics Flatron Wide LCD screens
• Samsung 23" SyncMaster 2343 LCD screen
• Panasonic VIERA X1 TC-L32X1 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV
• Two 2 GB Corsair CMS3x2048 1333C9DMX DIMM
• Maxtor OneTouch Drive
• WDC WD6400 ATA Drive
• Microsoft LifeCam VX-5000
• Wacom Bamboo MTE-450 Tablet
• HL DVD ATA
• Linksys Wireless N Adapter WMP300N
• Antec Sonata Designer Case with 450W Power Supply

Bios Flash Update!

One of the things I ran into was that after installing my two EVGA GeForce 9500 video cards, that Windows 7 would stop at the startup screen. After switching to safe mode and watching the drivers being loaded, the CLASSPNP.SYS plug and play driver would hang the system. After several calls to MSI, they suggested to update the BIOS on the motherboard.

Now if you have ever tried doing this, you'd know that without a floppy drive you have to take a different route. Fortunately, I had an HP USB Flash stick available and decided to use that as my boot drive. I downloaded and installed the hpflash1.zip utility along with Win98Boot.zip. Then, copied the AMI Bios patch and rebooted the system on the USB drive.

Surprisingly, all four of my monitors came up. The patch even allowed my MSI 870A-G45 motherboard to exploit the 6 cores in the AMD x6 Phenom too.

In Summary

If you are novice to setting up computers from scratch, I'd recommend not going through this hair pulling exercise I just did. For those who are tech savvy, I can recommend the setup I have.

The AMD Phenom X6 2.8Ghz CPU is more than enough speed for me. PassMark rates the chip at 5,157 putting it in the top 20% of high end CPUs. For $179, it's worth it in comparison to the Intel Core i7 and Intel Xeon CPUs that go for over $1000.

The GeForce 9500 cards aren't the fastest in the world but for the price they are pretty good. If you are a gamer and want to use the ATI Crossfire technology built into MSI 870A-G45 motherboard, go with ATI video cards. The ATI Radeon HD 4770 is more than capable.

Products Mentioned Available At Amazon.com

Looking to put together a fast computer? Here are the products that were mentioned in this article. If you already have an existing computer parts, simply reuse them. For example, your hard disk, monitor, power supply and case, mouse, and keyboard can be reused. If you want a 64-bit system running multi-core 64-bit processors, you will need the products below:

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.