Back In The Saddle Again: My Next PC Build

Project Fortis

Often times we get so wrapped up in learning new things, adapting and changing to the needs of the moment with never really having a chance to practice the skills we already have.  For me that's repairing, troubleshooting, and building PC's.  With the popularity and movement towards mobile computing everyone switched to using tablets, iPads, smart phones, and laptops.  I know in our household we all switched to Chromebooks and never really had to worry about another virus or computer issue again.  

But I figured with me training on information security and dealing with computer networks it might be a good time for me to catch up on the latest PC building trends and find out if this old dog can learn new tricks. In this next series of blogs I will take you with me on my journey to build a PC that will prove to be a "Strong" competitor among other Mid Level Gaming PC's on the market.

Previous PC Builds

My last two official builds were more than 7 years ago and it's safe to say they were nowhere near an official PC build, more of a hodgepodge Frankenstein looking PC using spare parts I had lying around at the time and only purchasing a graphics card that was decent to say the least. Both built on ASUS motherboards, my motherboard of choice, and running dual core Intel Pentium CPU's. One being my HTPC custom build and the other a daily general use desktop PC hidden inside an old Antec nine hundred series gaming case.  I don't really count the Dell Inspiron laptop or the Amahi server as official builds even though the Dell laptop was upgraded with more RAM, and an SSD hard drive.  The Amahi server was just the same gear with an upgraded motherboard and CPU (AMD Athlon 5150).

When researching for my next build I started with a question on what I consider is the foundation of any PC build, what kind of case do I want?  I really didn't want a tall or large case. Before the Home Server was setup I needed a case to fit multiple hard drives and at least two CD/DVD drives for DVD burning. No longer the case today (pun intended).  And with the idea of switching from an air cooled CPU to a water cooled CPU the need for a large case to fit a dozen fans is a thing of the past. I landed on choosing a Micro ATX case for my build and skipped having to worry about going any smaller (Mini ITX).

Raspberry Pi NES

SUPERCHARGED SUPER MARIO

YOU WOULDN'T LIKE IT WHEN I'M ANGRY

The maker movement has really inspired me to think about purchasing one of the programmable boards with the popular ARM chip set. I picked up the Ardruino flagship board, the uno, and had some fun writing code to control LEDs and even play the old Super Mario music from the NES game.  Speaking of NES I always had an itch to build an awesome Mame machine and never really sat down to draft up the plans to build one. I also wanted to continue to dabble in the maker space and go beyond the simple breadboard applications using the adruino. That's where the Raspberry Pi comes in. I waited patiently for the new model b to come out before going to my local electronics maker shop to purchase one. I even received a sweet 3D printed case that fits perfectly for all the new ports available on the new version Pi.

Call it fate but I was lucky to find an old NES at an electronics resale store and got it for free since it was pretty much dead. Right now I disassembled the case and removed the unusable guts of the game system. I held onto the power and reset switches as well as the controller ports to use on the rebuild. Now I'm ready to place a fresh coat of primer before moving on to the final color which I'm still debating on going with either all white or chrome. Here are some before and after pics from the disassemble and primer coat.

GOOGLROLA!

First off sorry for the extremely long periods of time between post (almost a year) but I have found a new gagdet that has helped "inspire" me to post again. My HTC Inspire 4G! Its been rooted and switched to Cyanogenmod gingerbread rom of course. Its very speedy and responsive great Android phone to own. I haven't found an app or game yet that could slow it down.

So with the purchase of Motorola mobility by Google it seems fit to bring up the question about the Android OS future. The wifey owns the Nexus S which I heard is getting the next Android OS ice cream sandwich and it only makes sense to have all Motorola phones switch to ICS as well. I'm very interested in the 4home division of Motorola in relation to Google's entry into home automation and security with Android @home. And with the recent announcement of Verizon offering the 4home services included in their customers packages it is very interesting times to see what Google could bring to the table with the Android platform (Google TV anybody).