Confessions of a former DIY computer junkie..
I must be getting old these days…
When my home desktop computer decided to finally die on me this weekend, the first thing I thought about was - "what computer I would buy next?" That’s a far cry from what I used to be even a few years ago when I would have thought to myself "What computer would I build next?" Ever since roughly 1999, I was your typical computer DIY enthusiast. Sure you didn’t necessarily get the cheapest system by designing and putting together your own box.. but still.. it was your own box!
I first got into building my own PC back when I worked for Intel in 1997. In fact, on the first day of my job there, my manager told me to go to the lab and get components to put together my first system. Was it a test as to whether I could? or was it simply because my manager was too lazy and/or busy that day to deal with me? We’ll never know.. but from that point on folks - I was hooked! Ironically enough, during my two years at Intel, I never had a desire to actually build a PC for my own home usage. I was still chugging along with an old Micron Pentium system from way back in 1995!!! I had that system till around 1998.. when I left Intel Corporation and moved back home to NYC.
My next PC was actually a system purchased from Dell. Why did I buy a computer? Well - I simply didn’t have the time to put together a system while living in NYC - or so I thought! (Plus it helps that Dell systems tend to be rather inexpensive compared to other vendors out there). Unfortunately that Dell desktop system proved to be a piece of junk as I had troubles up the wazzoo when I tried to upgrade the system. I still remember trying to install Windows NT 4.0 and then Windows 2000 on that system - what a nightmare!!
Right around 1999/2000, I started getting into websites such as Anandtech and 2CPU.com and yes.. I finally got sucked into building my own system from scratch. My very first DIY system was actually a dual processor Celeron system.. which used a motherboard that I can’t recall at the moment. In any case, my first exposure to home grown dual processor machines had me totally hooked folks. From that point on, I was not only building my own machines - I was building dual processor machines. As 2CPU.com liked to say - "Because 2 is better than 1!".
Yet the real draw in building your own PC was totally controlling all the parts that went into a PC. I would spend hours and days on end, performing research on brands and model numbers etc etc. Which board would work best with which processor and graphics card? Which processor was best for overclocking? Which memory sticks were best for what scenario? So much to choose and so much to control.. it was just awesome! Perhaps the best thing was having people over at my place and be in amazement over the PC’s that I had built from scratch. Come on DIYers - you know you liked the feeling of awe from others who saw your handy-work.
Looking back on those years.. I must admit that I had a pretty crazy PC upgrade cycle. Of course I was living during the dot com boom which definitely helped my DoubleClick shares.. but my goodness.. I was upgrading my system like mad. I think my desktop PC had a new motherboard and processor every 6 months or so? In fact, I had not 1 nor 2 nor 3 PC’s at home.. but at one point SEVEN systems! Nuts.. can you say LAN parties? And yes - every single one of those systems were hand built.
While I was certainly hooked on multiprocessor systems, I was also hooked on small form factor PCs made popular by Shuttle. I think I put together something like 10 Shuttle XPC systems from 2000 to 2003. Yet.. my main PC was always a tower system of some sort mostly because dual processor systems usually used Extended ATX motherboards which of course required extra large cases. Bummer.
Something weird started happening in late 2003. I started losing my desire to build computers. Yes - it was starting to get cost prohibitive to do this activity.. and yes.. it was just a bit insane constantly changing systems. Truth is - processors were more than fast enough for nearly any activity out there now. Dual core processors came out.. and cooler running systems were quickly being introduced in both desktop and mobile platforms. I started focusing in on home theater PCs at this point in time - mostly because I was really into the DVR craze. Yes.. I had a TiVo but it just wasn’t doing it for me - I needed a Windows Media Center system. So the last PC that I actually built was a 1.8GHz Pentium M based home theater system from 2005. My last home built desktop/office PC was a dual processor XEON system from around the end of 2004.. and it served as my main work PC until this weekend.
Which leads me to this point in time. With my desktop system fried.. and all my data sitting across three hard drives, I decided it was time to get a PC upgrade. Would I build another PC? What brands would I use? When would I get all the components? Honestly.. I just wasn’t interested anymore. What I was interested was in the cheap inexpensive PC’s from either HP or Dell which had more than enough horsepower for my needs. They were fast.. small.. and cheaper than anything I could put together. The truth is - I didn’t need a high powered gaming machine. I just needed a machine where I could email, surf the web, blog, play an occasional video game.. and make some multimedia content here and there.
I finally settled on the HP Pavilion Slimline s3200n last night.. mostly because it was fairly inexpensive. I was getting a dual core Athlon 64 X2 processor rated at 4800+ (2.5 GHz) with a super small form factor, a decent sized hard drive, a DVD burner.. and much more - all for 514 dollars before taxes. That’s just hard to beat if you ask me. Soo.. the era of putting together PC’s is probably nearly over for me. I still might put together an occasional server or home theater PC system.. but realistically, I just don’t have the time to do these jobs anymore.. I wish I did though.. and I wish I had the funds to put together systems left and right but the truth is - once I have the systems - what the heck am I going to do with them? ha.
So.. yes.. a little older.. a little wiser perhaps.. and yes.. I’m now a proud owner of an HP Slimline PC.
