Most of my childhood I have built computers. But it was always from parts laying around. A motherboard/CPU from here, case from another one etc.
I finally saved up and planned out my own build from scratch. I’m posting to my blog because its a geeky milestone that every little geek must go through. A rite of passage if you will.
I ran into a couple of problems along the way. A case/power supply combo I ordered online was a dud! I sent it back and got a refund. Future advice for self and anyone building a computer… Buy your power supply locally! It’s a lot easier to run back to the store and exchange it than to buy it online and wait on shipping. Especially when you are this eager to get it finished.
For most of my parts I went to MicroCenter, one of my favorite computer stores.
I picked up:
- Extra case fans
- Tool set (Update 09/30/2019: I still have and use this set)
- Motherboard
- Processor
- 4GB RAM (Update 09/30/2019: Oh the good ‘ol days.. I upgraded RAM several times after this)
- 500GB Hard Drive
- USB Headset (Update 09/30/2019: I don’t recall this headset lasting any time at all)
- Green wig - Yup spent the rest of the day wearing that
- Code Red - You know gotta keep up the energy
Couple of pictures of the case.
The slots are for hot swappable hard drives. I can pop a new drive in at any time with out having to power down.
I installed XenServer on it at first… But as awesome as it was… I like having an operating system I can easily get around. So I installed Ubuntu 64bit 9.10. Btw… XFCE is a beautiful desktop environment.
Any questions or comments hit me up.
Updates
- 09/30/2019 - Fixed links to https, formatted and cleaned up some wording.