Build a computer

I graduate this May and start gradschool immediately after graduating. My gradschool program is entirely online, so to have a good working computer is important. Also, my current computer is nearly dead. Only the internet works on it any more and its entirely hardware related. One other editional motivating factor is that I am giong to grad school for Information Technology, and it would help increase my understanding of computers if I built one myself.

Messing with laptops is fun.

I want to do this for a couple reasons:

-To say that I’ve done it (and to learn more.)

-After seeing other people’s home built machines, they far out do any Dell or Gateway that you buy and can be made by you for cheaper, so why not?

Too busy and/or lazy i guess

Specs:

AMD Athlon X2 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H Socket AM2 Motherboard
750 GB Hard Drive running Windows XP
4 GB RAM

I’m marking this as done because she’s up and running, but I will continue tweaking, so this will really be ongoing.

I bought the parts from newegg.com There were better deals on Cyber Monday. Specs: 3.0 GHZ Athlon 64 X2. 2GB RAM. 500 GB HD ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro. 20” LCD. Cost: about $900

i built a file server over the summer.
it is running ubuntu 7.04 and streams my content where ever i go.

amd64 1.8ghz processor
2GB ram
2TB raid

it is a small god under my desk

I have really been getting into computers lately, and I want to build my own computer I have watched a million tutorials have the tools and researched the parts I am about ready.

I’d done some upgrading before so I knew the basic structure before I started. I’d been doing a lot of researching before starting, because I’ve wanted to do this for a long time and couldn’t justify the expense as the computer we have works just fine. I finally decided to do it anyway.

I saved a little money, but this was mostly because I installed Linux instead of Windows (my first step toward my ‘learn linux’ goal). Computer dealers subsidize some cost because they are paid to install a bunch of trial software on new computers, so you don’t save quite as much as you’d think. But then, you don’t have to deal with all the 6-month trials installed on your computer.

I didn’t do it to save money though; If I wanted to save money I would just make do with the computer we already have, which works fine. I did it for the learning experience and for that it was great.

My biggest setback was a wireless network card that didn’t play well with Linux. If you are going to use Linux or another less-well supported operating system, find some online resources for graphics cards, network cards, etc. Ubuntu (what I installed) has an online list of network cards that work straight from the box, and I could have saved a lot of heartache if I’d looked over that when making purchases.