My son Bodhi and I recently became the most admired grandfather/uncle combo on earth by building my grandson his own, custom-made gaming computer.
Charlie had saved $1000 and was ready to buy his first gaming computer, which would open the way for a whole level of games not playable on a Playstation or Xbox. Sadly, Charlie wasn’t even half-way there. A new one (and there are good reasons not to buy second-hand) would cost more than $2000.
I knew that I could put one together out of new components for considerably less than that. Well, good for me, electronics whizz that I am. Except I’m not. It’s true: it is perfectly feasible to put together a high-performing gaming computer in a hand-made case without knowing the first thing about computers. All done, ours came in at a whisker under $1500 but that was not the point – or not the only point – it was also beautiful, and unique.
Computers are basically Lego sets. Inside the box are seven working parts. Like Lego, there is no wrong way to put them together. All the skill and creativity involved lay in making the case – my son is an excellent builder and fair mechanic with a creative streak, so he took care of that. Essentially the case is just a box with two switches mounted on it, and one of those is optional. The fun is in the design.
The internals
Let’s start with those seven pieces of kit inside: a motherboard (AKA a mobo), a Central Processing Unit (CPU), a CPU cooler fan, a hard drive, one or more sticks of Random Access Memory (RAM), a Graphics Processing Unit (called graphics card or GPU), and a power supply (a black box that the power cord plugs into).
You can’t plug them together incorrectly, they won’t fit, but you can inadvertently kill some of them with the static electricity field that often envelops your body. I can’t emphasise strongly enough that you must never touch or handle the sensitive components without being grounded by way of an anti-static wrist strap, a cheap device that you will get from the same supplier as the other components.
A new one (and there are good reasons not to buy second-hand) would cost more than $2000
Jargon minefield
The working parts come in a variety of brands and in ever-more-powerful configurations. If you’re not familiar with computer tech you will soon find your head spinning trying to make the right choice at the right cost. This is especially true when you dive into the world of the graphics card. A computer inside a computer with its own processing unit, memory, cooling system and more jargon than you would ever want to sink your brain into the graphics
