The obligatory post-PC construction post
Did I mention that I was building a PC? I finished it last Sunday but never got a chance to write about it. I bought all the parts from Newegg, which came out to a total of $1169.99 with shipping. Have a look at what that kind of money bought me:
This was my desk before my new PC:
I decided to move from a laptop to a desktop since I am no longer taking my computer anywhere and I need a unit that cools well and is easy to expand. Plus, I can get much bigger monitors with a desktop.
The build process was okay… I installed all the parts Friday night with the help of some very poor instruction manuals and hooked up all the power, but when I tried it out I got no display. What a huge disappointment. At that point I posted the entry "No Signal." I tried a couple things the following morning, like moving the video card around, but after some Interweb searches I found the problem was actually very simple: I didn't connect the 4-pin ATX power plug. I was certain that this plug was optional, but I was wrong. As soon as I connected that, everything powered up and the computer worked just fine. What a relief.
Afterward was the long software process. Windows Vista 64 Home Premium installed very nicely without any problems, and Ubuntu 64 Feisty Fawn installed fine too, though that install became useless when I tried installing some drivers from NVIDIA. On Sunday I had to delete my Ubuntu install, reinstall it, and use Envy to get working NVIDIA drivers. After that my problems were all taken care of. I built my first computer, and it works! Plus, it's very quite and cool, which is a huge relief. Here are some more pictures:
And here is my desk with the new PC. The laptop will be gone in a couple weeks. Consider this the new home of The Montoya Herald, and everything else I do, really.
This Flickr set has the rest of my pictures, and there's a lot of them: Custom PC build September 2007.
Great to see you build it yourself! it looks neat too!
My brother could have done it for you.
Lol. But that's pretty cool. The best I've done is taken my home desktop apart and put it back together (without a manual thanks), but I've not messed w/ my dumbo laptop at all. I'm a gov major, not a pc tech.
It does look pretty nice, so, you're using your laptop as the "monitor" right?
No! I'm not using the laptop at all anymore. I have a 20" monitor sitting on the back of the desk… you can see it behind the laptop. I just had it there in the picture because at the time I was installing OS's and I needed a way to access the Interweb.
I had a couple experiences taking computers apart and installing parts, but this was my first time starting with the bare parts and working with a fancy case. One of the things that made it really easy was that the case has a lot of "screw-less" sections, like the drive bays, where you just slide the drive in and lock it with clips. No need to be fighting with a screwdriver there. The panels on the back can be secured without screws too. It's a very smart design.
Nice trackball. How good is it? I've been thinking about replacing my mouse with one of those.
And what what brand is the case? It looks sweet.
Very nice Christian. Sad to hear that you had to go so far as to trash your Ubuntu install, but glad to hear that you got everything working in the end.
Alan: The model in the last picture isn't so great. Even though it's nice having a scroll wheel, controlling a trackball with the thumb just isn't very comfortable. The one in the previous picture, the standard "marble mouse" trackball, is much better for gaming. It's really good for gaming. Currently I have both hooked up, actually.
The case brand is NZXT, the model is Apollo. It's very, very nice, but the case fans don't have the small mobo plugs, so my mobo can't regulate them. Kind of dumb, but not a big deal.