Although my life revolves around apple products, I sometimes have need for a windows based PC – some software is still limited to windows, including Microsoft Access and other utilities. My laptop is also limited with regards to speed and memory, resulting in difficulties processing some intensive code. I therefore decided to finally take the plunge and build a PC from individual components – a challenge I have wanted to try since I was a teenager and a core milestone in being a computer geek.
I set my budget at under $1000 – considerably less than any of my apple computers. This was higher than I initially planned; however, my initial budgeting was based on US prices, which are considerably lower than in Canada.
I purchased the following components on Amazon:
- Case – Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 Mid Tower Gaming Case
- Processor – Intel 3.70 GHz Core i3-6100
- Motherboard (MOBO) – ASUS PRIME B250M-A
- Graphics Card – EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti GAMING, 4GB
- Memory – Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR4
- Hard drive – Western Digital 1 TB 3.5-Inch 7200 RPM SATA III
- Power supply – EVGA 500 W1
- Operating System – Windows 10
Given that I hadn’t built a computer from components before, I followed a step-by-step guide published by Tech Buyer’s Guru (in addition to the manuals that came with the case, motherboard and power supply).
The build process was fairly straightforward, starting with the MOBO/processor installation, RAM, power supply, hard drive and graphics card, although some of the pins on the MOBO were not labelled very clearly.
While the build seemed easy, I hit panic mode when I tried to turn it on…. the computer started but nothing displayed on the monitor. I reviewed all connections but still nothing. After troubleshooting online, I found a suggestion to remove the lithium battery from the MOBO for a couple minutes to reset. This worked and got me to the MOBO BIOS screen!
The next step involved booting from the Windows 10 USB drive. This led to my next panic moment….a windows error screen. This screen said my computer needed to be repaired and listed a 0xc0000225 error. After looking up this error online, I was horrified to see that it could result from damage to the MOBO or processor….what had I done???? It could also result from corruption of the boot files though, so I decided to create my own windows 10 USB.
In order to do this, I downloaded the Windows 10 ISO from the web and installed it to a USB key using UNETBOOTIN for mac. No luck the first time….different error (0xc000000e). I was fairly certain I broke something now; however, I wasn’t giving up. If windows didn’t work, then I would try linux. So I created an UBUNTU boot USB also using UNETBOOTIN and……it worked! I was overjoyed to see the UBUNTU boot screen (albeit I booted from the USB without installation).
Now that I knew the components were connected properly and working, I decided to try creating a bootable Windows USB again. This time I used a different USB key and ensured that the key was formatted as FAT32 prior to installing windows 10. Then came the moment of truth…..it worked!!!!!
Milestone achieved 🙂