This weekend, I was productive. Maybe not with schoolwork, but productive. I took on a long overdue project of renovating my room. I tacked an additional project on top of that one, as an experiment in hands on engineering, I put together my own computer.
The whole new setup
When I put together my room, I went for an unconventional approach which meant I didn’t have a desk. However, after almost a year, I decided it was time to make an appropriate workspace. This seemed like a good time to do a project which I’ve been putting off for a while which was building the computer.
It was an awesome experience. I was pretty scared when I got all the parts because it wasn’t all quite what I expected. For example, the motherboard is freaking huge.
Look at this giant
On the other hand, the CPU was so little and pretty. I was really impressed by what the engineers at Intel have managed to accomplish to get that much technology into a tiny little piece.
The CPU and power supply in their homes
It was an intimidating process but once I got rolling I really got into the process. It was a powerful feeling knowing all the little connections I had made to put the computer together and I learned a ton about how they operate internally.
The whole internal setup
After I put the whole thing together, I had one of the most stressful moments I’ve had in a while. Booting it up for the first time.
IT’S ALIVE
I was so ecstatic when I saw the BIOS appear on the screen and I knew that I had mostly connected everything right. And nothing exploded. There were still some small connection issues to deal with (had to fix the sound and USB 2.0) but the cool part was when something didn’t work, I knew exactly where to go inside the computer to fix it. It really gave me some perspective on the amount of work that engineers have put in to create modern computing technology and how much it’s taken for granted that you can buy a computer so easily and how integrated they are into our lives.
