My Computer Building Experience
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My Computer Building Experience
I'm not going to touch on everything but perhaps this will inspire future computer builders. The first computer I build was in response to an aging AMD K6 computer my Dad had bought years earlier. I told my dad I wanted to build a computer and being an engineer and having owned many of the earliest computers he was excited to encourage me.
Unfortunatley he didn't know much about building a computer himself and basically gave me his credit card and left me to pick out what I wanted. I of course spent a little over $2000 to buy some of the best computer parts I could and was able to fashion together a great PC based off of one of the first P4's that was many times faster than the K6.
If you've read the site you'll know that this was probably not the most efficent way to spend my money and since then I've learned to make a lot less money go a bit further.
In fact about 4 years later, and armed with a larger understanding I created an almost identical computer to that $2000 P4, for less than $500. Both of those computers my dad still uses to this day.
My current computer I build a bit later in 2003 as an overclocking/watercooling experiement. I found once you have water in your computer you don't sleep as well and eventually removed all of that for a normal air solution. I build this computer for less than $700 initally. It started with an AMD 3000+ which was a budget CPU for an AMD line of chips. However, a few years later I upgraded the CPU to an AMD Fx-55 which when I built the computer was a $400 part, but when I bought it I got it for less than $200.
I also upgraded the graphics card twice, the first time with an Radeon X850 XT PE 256mb of Ram which when it first came out cost around $600. I found one from a guy I purchased something else from on Ebay who had upgraded the the Nvidia equivalent because he was unhappy with the Radeon. He sold it to me for $250, which normally is more than I'd pay for a graphics card but I couldn't turn down such a great deal.
However, I've since upgraded again from the Radeon X850 to a Geforce 8600Gt, which is now about a generation old mid range Nvidia graphics card that retials for a little less than $200. This is a great example of how a top of the line $600 component, just a few years later can't compare to the current models. A small part of me died when I took out the X850, but it just wasn't as good.
The bottom line is I'm using a computer that I made 6 years ago and have upgrade 3 times for a total cost of less than $1500. The only reason I upgraded the components was for playing the fastest video games, so the average user would have been fine with that inital computer. There's no reason you can't do the same.
Since making this website i've been emailed questions and requests about what computers to build and different components. I'm still working on the site with these questions (I'll have an FAQ up soon) to hopefully make it unecessary to even ask me. However, I think some people are reassured when they know an expert has verified for them.
I don't have the time or the resources to answer everyones questions, but if you do want me to help you pick out a computer or build a computer I will give you a complete reccomendation based on the amount of money you want to spend if you donate more than $50 to me for my time.
I'll tell you now though, if you follow the information on my site this shouldn't be necessary, but if you want a great computer and don't have the time to read and do the research I will make my services available.
There are still a lot of things I want to talk about. The guides I am currently working on are
The computer maintenance will be about what to do after you build your computer, how to make it last for many years. Lots of people have old computers that have become slow. They think it's because it's old hardware, but most of the time it is because they have acquired so many programs and sometimes viruses and spyware that it's not the hardware but the software that is to blame. Most of these computers can be fixed up as good as a new computer.
- Building At Home
- Computer Maintenance
- When To Upgrade A Computer
I also want to continue making guides for components, I think I've hit the major ones but there is still room for optical drives, wireless cards, PSU's and most importantly monitors.
If there is anything you want me to write about, leave it in the comments section or if you really want to encourage me, make a note of it when you make a donation.
I normally build my websites from scratch but thought it'd be fun to try using DevHub as an alternative. I was quite surprised at how easy and flexible using DevHub was when building this site. It isn't without it's limitations and the scope of this site has tried my patience, but despite that for a static site with a reasonable number of pages DevHub provides an excellent way to work fast and efficiently.
To provide perspective, I built the majority of this website in less than a week, and most of that time was content creation. Using Dev Hub has allowed me to not spend as much time making a website but creating quality content for it. If you have an idea or information that you want to get online I would suggest using Dev Hub. If you have any questions about Dev Hub or need any help feel free to email me at bestcomputersetup@gmail.com.
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