Day 0
"So you're going to build a PC from scratch? " I queries meself.
"Sure, I say. I've replaced most every part in one PC or another. I'm a little scared of marrying that cpu cooler to the cpu. But the rest is a piece of cake"
So I prod myself a little more. "So what's the ideal motherboard? What cpu is appropriate and will work with that motherboard? What about the different types of memory? What about those storage things that look like a stick of gum? There are a few different types of those to figure out"
Of course I have no idea how to put together a PC build. My niece Rachel recommended a build list at Logical Increments, That is a pretty good site, but it is very gamer oriented. I don't need a fancy graphics card and I don't intend to put a light show in the thing either. I also found a more sedate article on Custom PC Review. That seems a little more my style. But there are a couple things there I don't like. I'm led to understand that I'm better off with those chewing gum sticks than a 2 1/2 inch SSD. CPCR is using a spinner for main storage. I've gotten to the point where I'm thinking that all your basic storage should be solid state. Currently I'm using spinning hard drives for bulk storage, media storage, backups, etc.
So in the end, I sort of combined both sites and rolled my own configuration. Of course now I have no way of knowing whether this stuff will actually work. So I put together my list and sent it to my son for his opinion. After all he is sort in this business as a professional.
He tells me my design is OK. What I find out is there is a site to evaluate your build design and warn about problems. So that's all he did. I did some more tweaking and used that site, PCPartPicker, to check my changes.
So what did I come up with?
[to be continued]
