Interestingly, the parts that go into a computer system haven’t changed too much over the last 15 years since I first tried assembling my first computer in 1995. The parts back then were…
Computer casing
CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Power supply
Storage (e.g. hard disk drive, floppy drive, optical drive)
Sound card
Video card
Input / output peripherals (e.g. keyboard, mouse, display)
… which is fundamentally the same as it is today. The couple of things that have changed over the years include the different connector standards, and that there’s stronger integration or input / output ports between the motherboard and the casing today (e.g. several connections built-into the motherboard are now also duplicated on the computer casing).
In any case, I usually assemble a new PC every 2 years or so. The current one I assembled and had been using since August 2007 is still pretty good for normal application work like emailing, word processing and the like – but slow for other things, including video encoding all the HD videos I take these days, or image processing – especially stitching panoramic shots and HDR processing.
So, on 2010 New Year’s eve, we made a trip to Sim Lim Square to pick out all the components for a new rig and got about assembling it all back together. I was determined too to do a better job than I did 2.5 years ago too – cables and wires were crazily criss-crossing each other in the last work.
Here’s what the new assembled rig looks like on New Year’s day – after spending most of the night and early morning working on it:
It probably looks hugely complex to persons who’re unfamiliar with computer assembly. It’s also not nearly as neat or well-organized as what skilled enthusiasts can do of course, but it’s reasonably alright for someone of my limited skill – especially considering that I only do this every 2 years or so. There’s still a huge mess of cables and wires though. The casing holds six hard drives and optical drives, and there’re two cables for each (one for power, the other for data) – but all of them are sandwiched on the other side of the casing and hidden away from view LOL.
Ling looks at this hobby with indulgence, and also has offered a couple of anecdotes whenever she sees I’m intensely at work assembling a new computer system. When we were driving from Sim Lim Square back home the other day, she mused aloud: “OK; he’s likely going to stay up all night again trying to put it all together. If it works, it’ll all be good. If it doesn’t, he’ll be tearing his hair out again.”
Fortunately, it all worked this time. Cleaning up the old and other computer to replace Ling’s uber slow Acer PC however was a different story, but that’s for another blog post.:)
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