Building a new Gaming PC!

[The Predaking]

So Saturday morning pops up and Predaqueen is anxious to get this PC built. (I should mention that she will probably be playing SW:TOR or WOW on this machine while I am at work). So we start back to work on it. Put in the RAM, and start running some cables. When we go to put in the SSD, guess what? There is no mount for it! The case only accepts the big old fat hard drives in the bay at the bottom!

Discourgaed, we look around and find that the Best Buy in Montgomery has it, and that is only like a 30 minute drive each way. So she places a pick up order, and I get ready to go get it. However, they cancel her order and say that they are out of stock. The next nearest Best Buys I can drive to are Dothan(a good 2.5 hours each way), Auburn( 2 hours each way), or Hoover(about 90 minutes each way). Rahter than delay the build until Monday, I go to Hoover! (I wanted to go up there to check out some retro game stores anyway so why not? )

I get the part, check out two stores, grab a bite to eat, and head home!

 

[The Predaking]

 

[The Predaking]

So we get that installed in the bay and run some sata cables to it from the motherboard. Then we started plugging in all the other wires into the mother board. Power for the motherboard. USB plugs for the case, power for the CPU, HD Audio on the case. And then there was the case buttons and indicator lights. Why these things aren't simply labeled on the motherboard in the year of our Lord 2023, I don't know. Instead it's labeled JFP1. NOw to me that made no sense, but I eventually found a diagram that helped me wire it up.

 

[The Predaking]

 

[The Predaking]

After that I wired up the gpu and installed that. I had to have Predaqueen use her superior hand eye coordination to get that thing screwed in. Then I ran one power cable to it as I am told that it won’t make a noticeable difference.

 

[The Predaking]

After that I was hooked everything up to the power supply and tried to get it into the case.

That didn't happen as the Hard drive bay is way too close to the power supply and it would not go in.

 

[The Predaking]

Also, I added a light to my pc.

 

[The Predaking]

So Sunday rolls on and we spend the day celebrating Mother's Day for Predaqueen as the entire next weekend will be spent celebrating my mom, MIL, and GIL. So we don't work on this until after dinner. We tried removing the cables, mounting the power supply, and then plugging the cables back in, but that didn't work either. So at this point, we took out the graphics card, so I could reroute the HD cable a different way so it wouldn't be taking up any space in that bottom bay. then I put the GPU back in, with Predaqueen installing the screws for it again. After thatwe got that power supply in sideways, plugged everything in, and wedged the wires around the bay, and got that frakker in like Flynn! Woot!

At this point we sealed up the case, and sat it inside the office for the night. Tonight we will clean up the office and get it setup on the double desk that we have in there. Maybe i can convince Predaqueen to let me use her monitor since its so much better than my 2010 1080p 60hz monitor. She has her Monitor hooked up to her Mac Mini, which kind of wastes the power of that monitor that she got for Christmas a couple years ago.

 

[wonko the sane?]

It's looking awesome man! I am so jealous right now.

 

[The Predaking]

Thanks! I am looking forward to testing it tonight and getting windows 11 installed on it.

I decided to not use my old Bluray drive form my old pc. I am going to look into getting a new one for this PC since my old one is from 2010 and I want that can read UHDs.

 

[wonko the sane?]

SUGGESTION!

Get an external. The PC will keep cleaner lines, have better internal airflow, and you can shove it in a drawer and move it between the computers when it's not being used.

 

[Pocket]

Ooh, Blu-Ray drives. I seem to recall that, in order to actually watch Blu-Rays on a computer, you need some app that charges an annual subscription fee to use. Is that still a thing?

 

[wonko the sane?]

Ooohhh... I remember that...

Okay, so I just took a minute and checked: windows media player STILL does not support blu-ray. BUT VLC does, so.... yeah, no fees anymore. Unless you want to splurge on another player for whatever reason.

Don't know why you would, cause VLC is hands down the very best, but, you know; you do you.

 

[The Predaking]

They used to play on VLC for me.

 

[The Predaking]

SUGGESTION!

Get an external. The PC will keep cleaner lines, have better internal airflow, and you can shove it in a drawer and move it between the computers when it's not being used.

Do they make external drives that can read UHD Blu-rays?

 

[wonko the sane?]

I dunno, probably. I've never looked for one that did.

 

[The Predaking]

This popped up in my Facebook memories today. It’s the stats for the first pic we got after the commodore 64

 

[wonko the sane?]

Ooohhhh, modern archeology!

 

[The Predaking]

Here is a better picture so you can see the stats. I should mention that at the time we got this, it was top of the line.

 

[Pocket]

Interesting how ZIF sockets for the CPU have been a thing for so long.

Though in practice, I've never found it to be that useful because the socket types are constantly changing, so by the time my CPU is old enough to need upgrading, there's nothing significantly newer that fits; the only upgrade options are to more powerful chips from the same time period, which are also more power-hungry.