Last weekend I went to Akihabara to purchase a computer. Most places you can go and pick up a computer that is prebuilt and preconfigured, but Akihabara lets you customize and outfit your computer in any way you want. For example, buy computer parts and get a free English lesson as one sign touted.
This was the first time that I’ve pieced a computer together from scratch. Something to be proud of? There was a lot of giga-this and that, bus speeds, slot sizes and a thousand other odds and ends to trip up along the way, but I had my trusty advisor and coworker along with me to navigate the murky, silicon waters. Thanks to his expert guidance picking out all of the parts basically came down to finding as many of last year’s pieces as we could and seeing if they worked together or not. Picking up the goods from last year easily saved me half on what I would have payed for either a prebuilt system or one that had the latest specs.
The only piece of advice that I would relay on to people building their own computer, because all the other steps are intuitive, is that when you go to install the processor and the processor’s fan on to the motherboard, to do it before you place it into the case. This saves you a lot of headaches, like if the fan doesn’t snap into place right away and you want to inspect the other side of the motherboard for issues. Aside from this tip, I would say throwing in the ram, hard drives, etc is all as you would imagine it.
Needless to say, but I am very happy with the purchase and the system is buzzing along and working like a charm.