I built a new computer today! Thanks to scrimping and saving and wonderful donations from my wonderful fans and Ohayocon sales and now birthday money, I was finally able to actually buy the damn thing. I spent Saturday picking out parts on PCPartPicker.com, which is an amazing tool I found via r/buildapc on Reddit. I had my friend Wyatt (who is my go-to tech expert friend) look at my parts list to get the Wyatt Seal of Approval, and I decided to go to Microcenter yesterday, since it was my birthday!
All in all, I think the actual building part was pretty painless. Apart from the nerve-wracking feeling of “OH MY GOD I’VE TOTALLY FRIED MY POOR PROCESSOR/MOTHERBOARD/EVERYTHING IMPORTANT WITH STATIC DISCHARGE, I JUST KNOW IT” in the back of my brain at all times. (I had a grounding bracelet, no worries, but it’s still scary!)
When I finally got all the parts in place, the moment of truth was upon me– it was time to press the power button.
Aaaand the motherboard would beep and light up briefly before everything turned off again. Luckily, my roommate was able to help me troubleshoot, and the only thing that was wrong was a connector from the power supply to the motherboard that I had missed. Yay!
After that, it was pretty much just hours and hours of installing programs and getting my old files ready to transfer over. I do need to get a different exhaust fan for the chassis, but other than that, my new computer is pretty much ready to use.
In theory, I’d like to paint something on the chassis and make it look totally awesome, but I’d have to disassemble the whole computer to do so, so I’m not sure. ^_^;; The two side panels are removable, though, so I could still decorate those pretty easily.
All in all, I think it’s really cool to build a custom computer, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s curious about doing so, even if they don’t know what the heck they’re doing! I certainly didn’t, and my experience was pretty good. :D
