I'm Building a PC

I’ve mentioned before that I like to play computer games, and we know from my list of the 10 best games ever that I posted earlier in the week that I’m not the most serious gamer in the world. Well I’m going to introduce you now to my great project for the year: a new computer.

I’m still happy with Cailie, be under no illusions, Cailie is shiny and fast and light and does 90% of things that I need. I most certainly do not need a new computer, but I’ve always wanted to build my own computer at some point and now is the time I feel like I can fulfill that dream. Also I’m gaming more often and most of my games don’t run on a Mac, so I need a Windows PC: more specifically a Windows PC not built by Dell- I’ve got one of them and it is beyond useless.

My Dad used to build all the family computers himself and so there are many parts still lying around, though most of these parts are too old to use so I need to buy new ones. The old parts do mean I’ve got the most important part to start with: the case. It is blue and transparent on one side.

The computer won’t have enough parts to actually run until the end of June, so what I can say about it now is really limited other than that I am building it. I’ll talk plenty more about it from June, it will be a wonderful tech experience. This is the first computer I’ve tried to build myself so it should be fun. It should also be fun because I’ve already got an ideal computer and so the gaming machine will be “fun”. I’m focusing all on hardware (i.e. the lights inside it, mirrors, lego, etc.) and just going wild on software. Because it won’t do anything crucial it will be designed to just reformat the hard drive whenever anything goes wrong- so I’ve got a bit of leniency I guess in what I can do with it. Of course I’m going to try and keep it running functionally, but this really is all a learning experience.

By June it should have, if the finance and purchase aspects go right, a motherboard and chipset, a processor, 2Gb of memory and a wireless network card. Hopefully one of the many hard drives I’ve got lying around the place will be compatible, which, hopefully, will give me 6Gb HDD storage on which I intend to install Windows XP. Then I’ve got an 8Gb USB drive that I’ll use as the actual hard drive as the internal one won’t be able to do much once it has the OS loaded.
I won’t need more than 8Gb because with the wireless card I’ll be able to get on the network and put anything I need onto another machine or the backup drive.

That is all I can say until June. But it does give me an opportunity to sahre a wonderful anecdote of my day.
I had a music presentation at school and I needed to take Cailie in for it. To be sure I was completely covered for plugging into the overhead projector I wanted to take a spare VGA cable. It took me 25 minutes to find a VGA cable, but in that time I found 3 more hard drives. Something is very right with the household I live in.

I’ve already got the finalized components list for the gaming computer, but if you have any other advice then you are welcome to add it by way of a comment, though Blogger for some reason hates people commenting and will possibly randomly delete your post when you click “post”. Worth a try though.