Evan Berger

Ms. Crowell

English 11-4

6 May 2019

Building My First Computer

I have always been fascinated with computers and technology, from just playing around

with computers to trying to understand how they work. They are an essential part of my life and

are used in everything from school, to playing video games in my free time, to researching new

and exciting topics. To further my understanding of computers, I started off by building my own.

My laptop at that point was a school-issued MacBook Air, and being accustomed to Windows it

was frustrating to deal with macOS as it was more locked down in most aspects due to the school

controlling it. My dad suggested that a pre-built computer was better because it had a warranty

and was guaranteed to work, however, I resisted, wanting to experience and learn something new

and have something of which I could be proud and be more personal to me.

Once we agreed to take the risk of building my computer, I informed myself about the

needs, costs, and instructions for building a computer. My budget was restricted to $500, so I

needed to find more budget oriented parts along with value in the parts I was buying along with

being very resourceful. To save money, I even reused some parts from older computers that were

no longer being used. The process was a huge risk because if I screwed up, I could be out a

massive amount of money, but I valued the learning the experience even if it ended up in a

failure. I enjoyed doing the research for this project which was critical if I wanted this project to

be successful as I needed to understand what I was actually doing. Because I did not know

anyone familiar with the process of building a computer, I had be creative with finding a way to
learn about how build one. One my main sources for this was searching the Internet as I have

learned it is helpful source for learning just about anything After I had order all the parts and

they arrived, I took all of them out of their boxes and began preparing for the building process.

After we had assembled everything together, we were instantly hit with disaster: the computer

refused to boot and kept power cycling. I was worried that I had screwed up something pretty

majorly and damaged my brand new computer. My dad and I were both baffled by what was

happening as at that point, I had no idea what to do because it was all brand new to me.

We probably spent about an hour trying to figure out what the problem was.. None of our

attempts to solve our mystery problem worked, even though we had some creative ones, leading

us to get frustrated as we had put all this time into a project with nothing to show for it.

Eventually, I suggested we look up our problem online and find a way to fix it since the internet

had proven useful for learning how to build a computer and ending up finding a post on a forum

about someone who had a similar problem. Using what I had learned from the post and using

what I had I was able to put together that one of the RAM sticks was faulty and we had

overlooked a simple solution from the beginning. After replacing the faulty stick and solving our

problem, we finished the build and I got to enjoy my new computer, which has provided me

enjoyment over the years and sparked a deep passion for a subject.

Overall, this experience taught me that if I have a problem, especially with technology,

being resourceful is a great idea. Most problems I run into I still find it easier to be resourceful

and come up with creative method to solve problems and this is partially because problem-

solving is something that I really enjoy.