Phase One

After having made the decision tobuild a computer, I had worked out most of a parts list. I’ve lost my notes for the era, so I can’t remember the decision making process for this, but I had decided to get:

Motherboard: AsRock 960GM/U3S3 FX
CPU: AMD Sempron 145
Case: Aerocool Strike-X One
RAM: Corsair DDR3 1x8GB

First parts that I could pay for were the motherboard and the case which were put together. While saving up for the next part, my next door friend visits me and offers his familiy’s old computer - this came out of nowhere and I was hugely grateful for their offering. They were getting a new iMac to replace their old Windows XP tower computer. This was shortly after Microsoft discontinued extended support for XP in April 2014. However the computer was from the early/mid 2000s and didn’t have very many parts that were compatible with hardware that’s ten years newer. All I could get from the pre-built computer was just the non-modular Gigabyte power supply and the DVD drive.

By June 2014(???) I had the motherboard, case, optical drive, and power supply together. A small note about the PSU was that the CPU power cable was not long enough for the PSU being at the bottom of the case. I still managed to make it fit but the cable was stretched to the limit. Still missing were the CPU, memory, and storage.

A holiday to Mayo

Over mid-July 2014, we went to a holiday rental in Achill Island, Co. Mayo, Ireland mostly to explore the area and the like. During our downtime, I was considering trying Ubuntu again as I didn’t get very far last time. WUBI was no longer supported by 2014, so dual-booting was necessary (in other words, properly installing Ubuntu alongside Windows instead of installing Ubuntu to a few files in Windows(???)).

I tried this newer version of Ubuntu for a while, but decided to get rid of it after the holiday and reclaim the space for Windows 7. However I had a feeling that the new GRUB loader would cause problems if I just deleted the Ubuntu partition, so I Googled about and found out that should I get rid of Ubuntu, GRUB wouldn’t have the necessary files to function. This meant that Windows’s MBR record needed to be restored while Windows was offline. While neither having a disc copy of Windows 7 nor knowing how to obtain an ISO of one, I burned a copy of Heirin’s Boot CD to a disc and used it’s MBR repair tool to restore the laptop’s original bootloader. Ubuntu could now be safely deleted without impacting the laptop’s ability to boot to Windows.

The memory crisis

Second-last to getting the CPU was getting the memory. At this time, I did not have my own useable debit card that could work online, so my parents were dealing with ordering the parts that I was asking for. With the RAM, dad had ordered this through eBay.

Completing the build

On the 3rd of October 2014, the Sempron CPU was delivered and I put set it into the motherboard. The computer POSTed successfully and I was so ecstatic that it was working! Except the problem I had now was that there was no operating system on the computer. Now, I didn’t have the money available to pay for a copy of Windows 8 and I wanted something working as quickly as possible. So I decided to give Ubuntu a third go. Slight problem I had here was that the laptop I was using previously couldn’t be used for burning a blank DVD at this time (probably someone else was using it), so I had to get somewhat creative.

The Toshiba Satellite C660D wasn’t available at the time, so I pulled out an older Toshiba Satelite Pro that ran Windows XP. The computer wasn’t bootable, but if you remember from after the holiday to Mayo was finished, I had prepared a bootable Heiren’s Boot DVD that I still had to the side. I used this on that laptop to load up a version of miniXP and using the web browser in it, downloaded a copy fo Ubuntu 14.04 to the computer’s storage. Now this is where things get dicy. The laptop is running off of a RAM-disk live-CD version of Windows XP and I need to burn this Ubuntu image to a blank DVD-R. I opened up the disc burning program to make sure that it was loaded into memory, replaced the Heirins disc with the blank disc, and started to burn the ISO. This went off surprisingly without any issue and I was pleased with myself!

Then the OS was installed to the computer without much of a problem. Just had one more teeny-tiny but ever-so-crucial problem to fix. The computer had no network connection. No WiFi, no Ethernet. Dead simple to fix, just bought a PCIe WiFi card, threw it inside and then we had moderately working WiFi. It wasn’t great, and it probably wasn’t helped that the computer and the WiFi router were on exact opposite corners of the house, but it worked.

Further upgrades

A young man does not decide to build a computer simply for clerical work. At least hopefully not. But after using it for browsing the web, emulating some old games, and doing homework on it, I had opened an account with and started to take a look at games on Steam. They provided a surprising amount of support for Linux at the time (this is long before the likes of Proton came about). Now you may have noticed that I didn’t list a GPU earlier in this page. The AsRock motherboard has integrated graphics which were enough to get by in some Source based games at minimum quality. I particularly recommend this original configuration if you love playing Garry’s Mod at 15-20 FPS.

I had a look at GPUs, and in the pre-cryptocurrency-mining era, I went “woah some of these are expensive”, so in mid-May 2015, I bought and installed a passively-cooled GT 730. Despite it being a poor GPU, even for its time, the graphic performance of games was basically doubled!

Also got a better CPU as well. It still wasn’t the best but I had happened to go AMD when I started so I carried on with the best one that I could get at this time. I ended up with an AMD FX 4300 which also doubled as a fantastic space heater. I also decided to upgrade the GPU to a GTX 760 in this phase and get an ASUS read/write Blu-ray drive.

CPU: AMD FX 4300
GPU: ~~GT 730~~ GTX 760
ODD: ASUS BW-16D1HT

Fire hazards

Now earlier in this page I said that I got a free Gigabyte power supply from my friend’s family. The cable was very stretched and could not accommodate a new GPU. So I got a very cheap CPU PSU cable extender. I would not recommend doing this. While I was doing something moderately intensive, such as trying to start up a Minecraft game, the screen just suddenly went black. Tried it a few times and could not find a clear cause for it. The extender cable had melted against itself and started to cause smoke. This is long before the exploding Gigabyte power supply debacle, so that shouldn’t be related. After this, I replaced it with a higher quality extender cable with a view for replacing the PSU altogether later on.

There are other things here that I’ve skipped over, mostly relating to storage and cooling, but this phase should cover everything up to November 2016

Phase one