Build Your Own Pentium III PC (Paperback)

by Aubrey Pilgrim (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Build your own Pentium III PC and save a bundle! Why pay big bucks for a Pentium III system when legendary build-it-yourself guru Aubrey Pilgrim can help you construct one at home for a fraction of dealer prices? In Build Your Own Pentium III PC he gives you top-to-bottom, fully-illustrated instructions for assembling your own customized Pentium III powerhouse ¿ from selecting components to installing software. You get detailed, step-by-step assembly and installation instructions for mother boards, floppy drives, hard disks, memory modules, scanners, modems, CD-ROM and DVD drives, sound boards and more. Plus you¿ll find handy comparisons of the latest generation of chips ¿ including those from Intel plus the latest low-cost rockets from AMD and others ¿ along with all the tips and techniques you need to create, test and troubleshoot a sizzling state-of-the-art system. You don¿t need a technical degree or special tools. Just follow these simple guidelines and procedures and save hundreds in the process!

From the Back Cover

With falling prices for computer components, now is a great time to build your own PC. And, by using the brand-new Pentium III chip from Intel, you'll see how easy it is to build a leading-edge, high performance Pentium III machine while saving money on unneeded parts.

Clearly written by preeminent author Aubrey Pilgrim, this hands-on guide strips away the mystery of the internal workings of the PC, giving you the technical confidence and expertise to build the dream computer you've always wanted. This book includes many successful do-it-yourself strategies and expert tips. In addition, you'll find featured new, quick-and-easy, step-by-step instructions for building your PC, showing you how to:

* Gain valuable knowledge of how computers work
* Make informed decisions about computer hardware
* Assemble your own computer
* Prepare for the inevitable upgrades you'll want
* Troubleshoot and repair your own PC
* Upgrade an older computer

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2nd edition (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071352015
• ISBN-13: 978-0071352017
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,265,137 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A history of computers more than a hands-on guide, February 25, 2000

By	Steve Davy (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This book contains some useful technical information about selecting components and hardware for your computer. Unfortunately, the author's woolly and fuddy-duddy writing style means that you've got your work cut out to learn everything you need to know to build your own.

Pilgrim, like many technical writers, seems incapable of writing in a coherent and logical manner, and his judgment of what is salient information often way off the mark. He can't or won't stick to the point -- which the book's title suggests is building your own computer. The book contains endless comparative anecdotes about his early computer purchases, and also spends far too much time measuring up obsolete XT, 286 and 386 systems with today's fastest machines. We all know computers are faster and cheaper now than they were five or ten years ago, so why keep going on about it? The book's title implies it is a hands-on manual, but in reality it often leans heavily toward being an overall history of computers, with far too much space wasted on discussing obsolete technology. This leads to a suspicion that the writer might have lifted large sections of text from his previous books and didn't bother to update them properly or remove outdated material.

Large sections are also devoted to discussing general computer usage (such as the ridiculous paragraph on "Designing a Good Presentation") in a tone that suggests they were written for a junior high class. "Facsimile machines have been around for quite a while," starts the section on the fax machine. Well thanks for pointing that one out for those of us who have been in prison or space. Hardly the kind of stuff someone who is seriously considering building a computer needs to be told. Some questionable grammar (particularly a consistent, irksome misuse of a definitive "the") and punctuation also slow down the reading process.

The book also contains endless repetition, with some passages appearing partially or in their entirety several times under different section headings throughout, sometimes even on the same page. Endless padding also pushes the book's page count well beyond what it needed to be. These last two points are the fault of the publisher -- this book sorely needs a good, critical edit (much like this review) and could easily have been condensed by 200 pages (ditto). Presumably the idea of repeated passages was for each section to function discretely, but in reality the information is so poorly organized it's necessary to read the book cover to cover to avoid missing vital pieces of technical information.

But the biggest criticism has to be reserved for the fact that, for a build-your-own guide that runs over 600 pages, this book is woefully lacking in specific help on actually putting your machine together. Instructions comprise little more than "plug the memory into the motherboard" etc., and the reviewer at the bottom of this page is accurate in saying there are only about 10 pages on putting a computer together. Considering a Pentium III is a Slot 1 machine, there is also far too much time spent talking about Socket 7's. Likewise, the author derides other books for their lack of information on formatting and partitioning hard drives, then proceeds to write an inadequate and confusing section on these two important procedures that first-time builders will definitely need help with.

Although Pilgrim seems to know his stuff technically, overall there is a feeling that this book was created without much attention to detail. Small inconsistencies and inaccuracies -- such as a reference to modern video cards having "32Kb" of VRAM (he surely means 32Mb) and in one instance USB supporting up to 128 devices (elsewhere he says, correctly, the number is 127), throw everything into doubt. There is also a feeling that the book was already outdated when it went to press -- always a problem of course with books on a fast-moving industry, but it seems they didn't even try to see that it was current when it hit the shelves.

I would give this book three stars as a general reference guide to hardware, but only one star as a step-by-step guide to building your own computer. Unfortunately yet another in the great tradition of hastily created and rather sloppy computer guides.

73 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Not just for builders?" Try "Not for builders", December 6, 1999

By	Danny (Brooklyn, New York USA) - See all my reviews

While this book was a thorough and up-to-date authority on many many hardware subjects, the actual building tutorial was quite lacking. If I remember correctly there were like 10 pages on a Socket 7 processor installation and very little else. I hardly think this book could walk you step-by-step through the process of building a computer and this is no idiot speaking. I am coming from a strong computer and programming background (VB, C++, Java, Perl, HTML) and I even knew how to make some minor upgrades like installing PCI cards and new hard drives. By the way, for the absolute best guide on the internet please please please visit PC Mechanic Their free tutorial is superb and discusses absolutely every element of building a new system.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Build Your Own Pentium III PC, June 21, 2000

By	David Owens (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews

As with most of the "build your own" books on the market, this one is pretty out of date. Also, the book supplies you with very little information which would help you select which components will best meet your needs and which components work best together (ie- which motherboards, video graphics boards ...). Basically this book just explains in very breif detail how the system all works together.

The most difficult thing in building your own system IMHO is deciding which components will best meet your needs and will work well together. I did not get any helpful info from this book along these lines. In fact the author does not even seem particularly knowledgeable about the subject matter in the book. I think I could have wrote a better book and I do not even consider myself a computer geek.

Bottom line, I waisted my money...