The main machine is 9 years old this year. Still, a good machine, but has done some strange things once in a while. I think I paid $280 for this refurbished HP. Nothing fancy, just an HP P7-1414. An amazing machine for nearly 8 years ago. 3.2mhz.
I’m not into speed, as long as it has enough horsepower for video editing, and experiments/projects.
- I upgraded the power supply, from 300 watt to 450
- Added more memory, From 6GB to 10GB.
- Added a low end video card. Nvidia Gforce Gt-710, but better than the onboard video.
- Replaced all the hard drives,
- Removed the CD-Roms,
- Added new ports to it.
- Replaced mice and keyboards as they wore out.
- About the only thing original is the motherboard, and CPU.
It’s been 16 years since I actually built one from parts. I have spent the last week catching up on the finer points of the hardware world. So I am going to save up, like I did last time, and build another. It won’t be a race horse, but a cross between work and gaming to give me the editing ability I need, without the current occasional hiccups I encounter due to older hardware. I certainly don’t have a lot of money, so will have to pick my parts carefully.
Just for fun, I will share the build images from 16 years ago. I can’t remember what the specs were, since the machine has long been gone, but you get to see the end result.
16 years ago. Parts and case scattered about. Click for larger images.
The picture below, shows ugly white cdrom (from another machine). I ran short of money. Can you believe we still had 3.5 inch floppies back then?
I always get nervous when I spend money, and Michelle says I research things to death. Drives her nuts. I’m going to try to keep it down to around $600 for the build. I’ll save $149 or so, just by not buying Windows 10 and using Linux instead, which I prefer.
I’ll update later on once I get around to building it (after saving up).
Comments, suggestions welcome.