Got my new computer built and running! [View all]

It was a bit of a journey. Originally I ordered a computer through NewEgg.com through their PC Build Service since they offered graphics cards at a lower price that way than I could find any where else. Plus, they only charged $99.99 to actually build the thing. It's been over a decade since I built my own computer so that seemed safer.

Well I screwed up and the order got cancelled. It was completely my fault but it took NewEgg two weeks to actually process the cancellation, then another week to refund my money.

So I took my list of parts and sourced most of them from Amazon. I got the case from NewEgg since they had it cheaper. The parts trickled in between last Thursday and Sunday. Sunday afternoon I got a good start on building and got the motherboard (with RAM, NVMe M.2 SSD, and CPU installed) into the case - with the CPU cooler ready to install. My husband helped my finish it up Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday I installed Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, drivers, and some of the software. Yesterday I finished installing the rest of the software.

Today we took the two big hard drives out of the old computer and installed them into the new one. Now the new computer has a 2TB NVMe SSD for the OS and programs, the old 4TB and 6TB hard drives from the old computer with all my data, and the shiny new 12 TB drive for more data! I'm actually planning to move the data off the 4TB - it's probably 10 years old or more and I'm not sure I trust it anymore.

Plus we found out why my old computer had been shutting down randomly - the top fan was not working at all and the front fan had a desiccated frog stuck in it - I suspect the front fan is not working either after that abuse.