Hardware along with the “ops” side of software development has always been a weakness. Building a computer is almost a rite of passage for a software developer. Embarrassingly I’ve never built a PC from scratch before, but that is about to change. This is my story.

Picking Parts

My budget was around $1500 CAD. I used a build suggested by Paul’s Hardware with a few modifications. Here is the link to the video.

Here are the parts I ended up ordering:

  • My Build
  • Tool kit for computer assembly that turned out to be completely unnecessary

All the parts are here!

All Parts

At this point I had watched several videos on assembling PC’s while I waited for the parts to arrive. This should take me an hour.

Three Hours Later

Motherboard, CPU, CPU Fan, and Memory installed

Motherboard

This was a struggle! It started with the CPU. I aligned it perfectly with the little triangle, but it wouldn’t go in. Several youtube videos later, I noticed that I actually didn’t align it perfect. Once I lined it up, it slid in easily.

The next adventure was with the CPU fan. There is a custom back plate? there are different configurations for AMD and Intel? I eventually found an amazing old fellow who explained everything. Praise him! Did I end up not putting enough thermal paste and then put way to much? Obviously yes.

Surprisingly the memory installation went smoothly. I will always look back fondly on this step.

Case, Hard-drive, Power Supply, Graphics Card

Completed Computer Internals

A couple google searches and some youtube videos later and I was able to figure out how to take the glass casing off. Installing the motherboard was tricky. The space was pretty tight so I ended up taking off the back fan. Next I hooked up all the fans to the motherboard. Once I figured out that you can plug a 3 pin fan to a 4 pin slot, it went well. Then I plugged in the rest of the random stuff coming from the case. It was difficult finding where to plug everything in.

This case has a spot on the back to install SSDs which was really simple. Completed Computer Internals

The power supply hookup was a little tricky. I had trouble hooking up the CPU power because I had to mash two four pin connectors into an eight pin.

The graphics card installation went really well. I’m amazed how huge it is.

The moment of truth

Computer output

It’s working! Thank the computer gods! If there were any issues I definitely would not have been able to diagnose it.

The final setup

I have a sit stand desk so I mounted it under my desk. Looks great!

Final product

Final thoughts

The assembly process took about 6 hours. If I were to do it again with a different build, I think it would take about two hours. There was such a large learning curve for each step that all the youtube videos in the world could not have prepared me for. I also think I should have purchased a bigger hard-drive. Overall this was a great learning experience. I will never buy a pre-built computer again.