It's A Binary World 2.0

Insights on fatherhood, technology, culture, photography, and politics

Building the computer

Here is the abbreviated commentary on my building of my new computer.
Above are the new computer parts I used. In addition to these, I scavanged my DVD-ROM, DVD+-R, and hard drive from my old computer. I actually didn’t use the firewire ports as my motherboard has one in back and a connection for one in the front. I only use firewire for my video camera, so that was enough for my needs. I’m hanging on the to the firewire card for future potential projects.

The Motherboard
The Motherboard

Here’s the Asus motherboard with the Pentium chip and heatsink/fan already installed. I didn’t think of taking one without the heatsink until it was already on and I didn’t want to take it off for no reason. As you can see, there is an AGP 4/8x slot and 5 expansion slots.

The case, ready to go
The case, ready to go

Here’s the case all nice and neat before I got into it to mess around. You can see here there are 3 cages for harddrives. Each holds 2 for a total of six hard drives. Of course, that would mean 2 SATA and 4 PATA, leaving me without the ability to have a DVD-ROM.

Motherboard seated
Motherboard seated

Here I have finally set the motherboard. This was a pain in the butt as the holes didn’t line up with the spots to connect it to the case.

Front buttons connected
Front buttons connected

Here I have connected the front controls and lights to their locations on the motherboard.

hard drive cage
hard drive cage

Here’s a shot of the hard drive cage out of the case so that I could attach the screws that hold the hard drive in place. This makes it a LOT easier than having to screw it in while it’s in the case.

hard drive cage installed
hard drive cage installed

I put the hard drive back in, but haven’t connected it up yet.

hard drive connected
hard drive connected

The hard drive is all connected up.

System powered up
System powered up

Here it is from the front all LEDs glowing, but you can’t tell with the flash from the camera going off. I tried to take a shot without the flash and it came out too blurry. However, as you’ll see below, I got a side shot without the flash and it came out just fine.

Interior lighting on my case
Interior lighting on my case

And here is the aftermath on the operating table:

The table after the build
The table after the build

And that’s how the computer was build. Except, of course, with a lot more time in between shots getting the cables FIRMLY connected and trying to find screws that had fallen in. It was a lot of fun and I’d love to do it again.

 

Eric Mesa

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3 responses to “Building the computer”

  1. Dude! Congrats on the tricked-out box!
    As for the motherboard mismatched-screwholes-to-case problem: once when I had that, I cut a few pieces of cardboard to the shape of the mobo. Two layers of cardboard I screwed into the case. The motherboard and a few more layers were then screwed into the cardboard. It worked – but I was careful not to jolt it!

  3. Yo man nice rig just made one myself asus-a8v-vm se 2.2ghz AMD 2gb ram 400gb harddrive