Latest Hobby: building my own computer

 

So two things came up to trigger this new hobby. 1) I had no idea how to go about doing this, which was sad because I was switching into Computer engineering. 2) my poor old laptop which I got 2 years and 2 or 3 months now has been struggling by for the past year or so.  While i’m at it 3) a lifestyle change in university where I’m now in a new one year lease for a place off campus makes a desktop much more bearable to deal with.  4) there's a 4th!. Starting with co-op again this term, means quite a bit of extra cash so I decided to use a portion of those earnings toward this new computer.  a budget of one weeks worth of pay.  Sounds reasonable?

I think my first step was Wikipedia.. some sort of search for the components of a computer.  Then about a few days after coincidentally at work, I wanted to get two monitors, so i told my boss and he said that my current computer couldn’t support it but if i fix up another one lying around, i could use that.  So opening it away i went.  It took me like 30 mins finding a philips screwdriver amongst the mess which is my work place and to dissemble the computer itself.

I was more than mildly disappointed…

As it turns out computers only really have 5 or 6 components to it, with 3 being more major ones.  Not too complicated as I once thought.  So let me throw up my planned computer and *looks around, Nim comment now! and/or anyone else.

1. There’s the processor or computer which can range from 100 ~ 400$?
    Want: AMD Phenom II X4 940? 220$

2. Theres the motherboard, which holds the graphics card and the processor, mother- board? 50-250$?
     Want: _______ something 100$~

3. A video card! depending on the brand, the number system is different and means different things, so higher is not always necessary better.
     Want: Radeon 4770? 110$

4. Ram, or more memory for the computer.  a cheap way to boost a computer’s processing ability.
     Want: 4gb DDR2 1066? 60$

5. And a Hard drive, compared to the space in a laptop, these are so much cheaper for a desktop
     Want: 500gb SATA? 70&?

And then you just need the casing and the power supply for it and there you go, a simple computer.

still mildly disappointed…