If you have been entertaining the ideal of building your own PC, help is but a book away. I had the opportunity to review the book Building the Perfect PC by Robert Bruce and Barbara Fritchman Thompson.

Building the Perfect PC teaches and illustrates how to build in detail five different PC systems. The first look at the cover of the book will either interest you to start reading and building your perfect PC or will put the thought in your mind, ”Do I really want to do this?”

After reading the preface you are more at ease and realize that the book will be very helpful by walking you through the selection of components, assembly and testing of your computer. The authors will explain the reason why components were selected as well as their recommendations for alternative components and the reason why certain others did not get selected. The price of many or all of these components is listed, showing you what your investment will be.

The book exposes the reader to different top component manufacturers and puts some questions in your mind of the reliability of no name brand components.

This book is intended for the personal and business user as well for the experienced computer builder. Information of the specific needs and budgets of different end users is well accepted because not all of us have an unlimited budget. You would think that the book would be very technical but in fact it was very easy reading and where it did get slightly technical there was a detailed explanation.

In building your own pc you definitely have total control of what the end result will be. We all want to be in control! The end result is A Perfect PC in your eyes based on quality, reliability and performance.

The book is broken down into 7 Chapters and the index. Fundamentals; Choosing and Buying Components; Building a Mainstream PC; Building a SOHO Server; Building A Kick-Ass LAN Party PC (excuse the language); Building a Home Theater PC; Building a Small Form Factor PC; Index

Additional valuable information that you will obtain in reading this book are notes on: TV signaling protocols, DVD optical drives and DVD media, RAID, CPU Temperature, and Backup Solutions.

The first two chapters explain the fundamentals of building a PC and why one would build a PC. The selection and purchasing of components is vital to build your prefect PC and is explained in Chapter 2. There is great information in these first two chapters.

The following chapters 3 through 7 discuss the design and the building of different PC’s for various applications. Included in these chapters is a graphic titled Design Priorities that represents the importance of different elements such as, Price, Reliability, Size, Noise level, Expandability, Processor performance, Video performance, and Disk capacity/performance for each system built.

There is an average of 50 to 60 color illustrations in each chapter, photographs of components selected for the PC you are building and of the steps taken when actually putting the components together. The photographs are very close shots not like some other books I have read. You can see what they are pointing out, from installing motherboards to connecting the various wires to different connectors.

These chapters have plenty of Warning Prompts throughout the different steps of assembly, which will warn you of real life issues you may encounter or cautions that need to be taken.

Figure 1 displays a few of the illustrated photos and Warning Prompts that are displayed throughout the book.

At the end of these chapters, there is a checklist that can be followed to verify all is done before the initial power up of the PC or what they call the smoke test.

Chapter 3: Building a Mainstream PC
In this chapter the authors will design and build a Mainstream PC, that uses top-quality (but midrange-performance) components at a reasonable price.

Chapter 4: Building a SOHO Server (Small Office / Home Office Server)
This chapter will go into detail in designing, selecting components and instructions on building the type of server that you have decided on after considering your office needs and application. You will first come across a few tables that recommend starting points in selecting the components needed for the server. Server components and configurations like Backup Tape drives and Raid are mentioned.

Chapter 5: Building a Kick-Ass LAN Party PC
In this chapter you come across important components that pertain to LAN PC’s for LAN PC parties, these recommendations are great as the author has tested and done their research. This chapter will show you how to build a very fast and easy to carry PC. This chapter is great reading for all those serious gamers that are interested in building or upgrading their current gaming PC.

Chapter 6: Building a Home Theater PC
The Home Theater PC chapter was great reading. After you have built this type of PC and saw the viewing and recording applications first hand along with many other features you will never use a VCR again. This chapter definitely came in handy as I was evaluating and testing a copy of Microsoft Media Center 2005 Software. I love all the features so far and it is a great experience in digital media. I was surprised to see all the things this type of software could do like record and rewind live TV, and what ever else you can imagine doing with digital music media. What an experience! Ok, that was my plug for Media Center 2005.

This chapter covers five pages on the software that was considered for the Home Theater PC, as it would be utilized extensively for certain applications, Microsoft Media Center 2005 had not been released so it was not mentioned in this chapter. The functional requirements would play an important part in the selection of the correct software.

Chapter 7: Building a Small Form Factor PC
In this chapter component selection was more critical due to heating or cooling issues that may occur due to the small form factor design. Warning prompts are more visible prior and when assembling the PC due to the limited space. After reading this chapter you will have your own thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages in building this type of PC and where it can be best utilized.

Final Words
I highly recommend this book, it is a valuable resource to all those that want to put together their own computer.

Building a Perfect PC has 350 pages and is published by O’Reilly. The book sells for $29.95 but can be purchase online for less than that. At the time of this review the book was on sale at Amazon for $19.77 with free shipping, well worth the price as an installation of a component in the wrong place or skipping an assembly step can cost you dearly, but this book will guide you the way and be very helpful.

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You can go to the O’Reilly web site and you can actually get a sample of Chapter 1, as well as a table of contents and index which will give you a feel for the book and its contents. You can get more information on the authors or an update of component recommendations and other new material at HardwareGuys.

As a system builder we all continue to learn from each other and I definitely made some notes on some of the things that were mentioned in this book. The research done on the components and software was very helpful and would be an added plus to the research that has been done or will be done by the reader in the search for Building the Perfect PC.