My initial interest in PCs (in depth)

In recent years, the coronavirus pandemic has swept across the United States and forced many to quarantine themselves at home. During these troubling times, many people like me quarantined in their rooms for most of the day. As expected, I eventually grew bored and when I saw my father's old PC in the corner of a room, I decided to look inside to see how a machine that I used for hours a day ran. Although I did have some interest to the specs and design of computers prior to quarantine, looking inside that computer took me down a rabbit hole of what building a computer really took and, later, inspired me to take computer science seriously.

I don't exactly remember why I was so obsessed with learning more about the old computer - it could've been out of pure boredom, a push to challenge myself, or wanting to seem like a cool PC nerd. Nevertheless, I do remember binging hours of YouTube videos learning how every piece of a computer contributes to the whole machine running smoothly and how to put/take parts of the computer. Eventually, I was able to face my father's old computer again - and understood everything, mostly. I then proceeded to tinker around the PC, removing the RAM and storage and then putting them back. The top left image shows the picture of when I first took out the CPU of the computer. Eventually, getting tired of tinkering, I wanted to do something more - building my own PC.

Building my PC

Now that I had this innate desire to build a PC, the only problem was to convince my dad to invest hundreds of dollars into my project. Obviously, my dad was surprised and wanted me to prove myself that I could handle such an expensive project. After spending hours searching up the collection of necessary parts for my PC and showing him my tinkering with his old PC, he agreed, but on one term - I had to build one good enough to sell to a stranger online - I accepted. After all the individual PC parts shipped and arrived at my house, I was able to start the build (the top-right image shows the collection of parts prior to build). The process of finding the correct places to put the parts and how to integrate them into the build wasn't as hard as I expected, probably because of my practicing with the old computer. However, the real struggle was being able to fit the motherboard inside the case. I had cheaped out on the case and got one that was slightly too small for my motherboard. This was one of my most tedious tasks because it was hard to fit the holes of the motherboard onto the props of the case that holds the motherboard up. Eventually, I had to unscrew some of the case props and position them higher so they would fit. The rest of the build went smoothly - I installed the power supply, GPU, and storage relatively easily. However, the last complication - and hardest one - was the cable management. Because I had a case that was slightly too small, all the cables of the PC parts couldn't fit in the back, therefore, I had to improvise and shove them into the hard drive casket on the bottom right. This also created another complication though - I now had to move my hard drive. Although the case had a slot on the back to put another hard drive, it took me hours to position the hard drive so it would fit while not overlapping with cables and finding the right screws to hook it in place. Eventually, I finished the build and it ran completely fine internally and on benchmark tests. The bottom left image shows my build right when I finished it. Now came the real test though - I had to sell it to someone on eBay. This took a decent amount of marketing and adjusting the prices according to the market at the time (the bottom right picture was one that I used on eBay). Eventually, after a couple weeks of waiting, someone offered to buy it. Although I didn't make much of a profit because I forgot to account for eBay's 10% cut, I still find my project a success for me learning everything there is to PC building in just a few months of quarantine.

My reflection and future advice for myself

Although I didn't materially gain anything from building the PC, I feel like I learned a lot about computer building, what mistakes not to make in the future, and wanted to learn more about computers. For my reflection on the actual process of building the computer, I would say that I shouldn't cheap out on any part - even if it's just a couple dollars cheaper, it can go a long way to mess up a build. Every part of a computer is crucial - just because a PC has a good CPU or GPU doesn't mean it will run well because a bad case can cause overheating, resulting in termal throttling, and cheaping out on a part such as the power supply is definitely really bad because it can cause the PC to crash or in some cases, even catch on fire.

Now, more than a year after I build the computer, I still believe I feel some of the impacts the project had on me. For instance, prior to this project, I wasn't as confident to trust myself with several hundred dollars and believe I could sell it. However, with this project, I regained a lot of confidence in my abilities to get anything done if I have the right mindset. Although I wouldn't tie the actual PC building to my interest in coding, researching computer parts made me interested on what allowed the CPU to show the user web pages, render videos, etc. With an increased confidence and motivation to learn about programming, I really started to dip my toes in the vast field of computer science the next school year - junior year.