Building my own PC

 Hey!  It's been a long time since I posted here.  But quarantine has been wild so in my free time I've just been doing some new things while I'm not working.  One of those has been finally getting my own dev machine in my home.  This was a new experience since I built the PC myself.  It can be really intimidating to do, but luckily there are plenty of resources out there.  

Selecting parts

So I had no idea what I needed to buy.  All I knew is I wanted to not break the bank but make a PC that was powerful enough to run a valve index.  So I made sure to take a look at the recommended specs here:https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4061-QUZB-4602

From there, I needed a guide to sort through the internet to find the correct parts for the best price.  Luckily there is a great resource called PC part picker (https://pcpartpicker.com/).  This made it very easy top get exactly what I needed.  The main focus was the CPU for multithreading and a graphics card that met the specs I mentioned.  Once I ordered the parts, they arrived like this.

The main problem after this was I had no idea how this all went together.  There really isn't a manual on how you build a PC!  So I looked around and followed a guide from a tech channel I watch often: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7MYOpFONCU

This was really easy to follow along and before you knew it, I had my very own rig that I designed and built.

This was a cool project and did include some lessons I learned.  On top of the inner workings of a PC, I realized certain things later that just aren't communicated well.  When I started running VR, my CPU was getting really hot!  Around 80 on all cores which is way too hot.  So I made sure later to invest in another fan and cooler.  Now things run great!  Very excited to just make some personal projects with an index!.......if it ever gets here.  For now I settle for a regular Vive!