Sometimes I wonder if I should be seeing some sort shrink about my obsession with building and tinkering with computers. I will admit that it has played Pac-Man on the pocketbook, but it was done without going into any debt, old or new. I will admit that it has been an obsession of mine ever since my dad dragged me to his computer lab class. Back then there weren’t a bunch of old IBM PCs, or Apple //es lined up on desk. There was one terminal in the middle of a huge room, with big real to real magnetic tape data storage, and programs were stored in big boxes of punch cards. Lots of noise and blinking lights. My dad was smart enough to let me bring a Lego kit to keep me busy building things in the corner, but I really couldn’t focus on that but just watched from where I was sitting. Then I got amused with punch cards and started flinging out all over the floor with my dad screaming at me as if it was my fault. Even though I got accused, I had nothing to do with it.

I know that I have been building these systems, but in reality, I just buy the parts, assemble them, and install windows. People like my dad would say, that’s not building a computer. I remember his first system was a RockWell Aim R6500 computer. https://oldcomputers.net/AIM-65.html It seemed like days watching him solder all the chips and all of the electronic stuff to the motherboard, and it only had that one line of digital readout. The power supply that he built was actually bigger than that computer. Then again I could be getting it mixed up with the second computer he bought which was an NEC PC 8000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-8000_series My father said that he was told that was the best thing to use as a personal computer. Maybe in Japan, but nothing was compatible with it which made it an oversized expensive paper weight. He was better off getting something like an Apple //e, but he said they were overpriced machines, yet I think he paid more for the thing that did nothing.

I remember telling him about the first computer that I built, which was an AMD K6-2/400 mated with a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee. I knew nothing about graphics cards but I just thought that the name sounded cool. Even though I ran into issues at times, I was very proud of the system, but my dad wrecked that high when he said that’s not building a computer. You didn’t solder anything, and that I just threw a bunch of different parts into a box and hoped it would work. I will admit that the AMD stuff at the time wasn’t as good as Intel Pentiums which were almost double in price. I also will admit there were many things I had no clue on what I was doing. Back during the Windows 98/2000/XP days getting the system was a bit more challenging. Unlike today where everything online drivers came on disk and everything had to be done in a certain order. If one didn’t get it just right it most likely meant a case of having to re-install everything, and if you think that it takes forever to install windows now, it’s nothing compared to back then. I stopped building them when everything started getting so expensive, but back then I wasn’t building gaming machines, but PCs that people just wanted to do this or that.

In today's time, I have been asked how come I don’t build systems to build? The answer is simple, big name brands that do pre built gaming PCs, they have a crew that takes care of warranty issues. Then you have those Joeys that will nonstop drive one crazy because they did something stupid, or just don’t know what they are doing. I did it in the past, and some of these people thought that I was on call 24/7. I had one person that was complaining because they didn’t know how porn ended up on their computer. Gee, you have a husband, and a son who was in high school.

I don’t mind consulting for those who need help in building a rig, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to do it for them, unless it’s for someone that I can really trust. My first questions would be, do you want a laptop, or desktop, what do you plan to do with it, and what’s the budget. If they are just going to watch youtube, BS on social media, and use it for writing, they might be better off with a prefab from something one might get at Walmart or Costco. Then if they are looking for something for gaming, I will recommend a pre-build if they don’t know anything about building their own, but I do ask on what type of gaming that they are going to do. Then for doing streaming or graphics, that could go into many different directions depending how much cash they are going to want to spend. I will admit that Ram, and M.2 drive prices are going through the roof thanks to data centers, and some of them prices are going up daily. What one might have paid around $194 for 64gb of ddr5 a couple of months ago, are now selling for $624, and rumor is that the prices are going to be getting a lot worse.