The Process of Building a Computer (Prompt 8)

Laxmi Baral

As a person that is going into Computer Engineering, I thought I should take on the task of building a personalized desktop computer. I still remember the first time I build my computer, and from that experience I remember lots about how difficult and tedious engineering can be. Through this I learned about what is known as the Engineering Process.

It was my junior year, and I was enrolled into Intro to Engineering course. The goal of this course was to introduce me to the basic of engineering, what engineers do, and the importance of engineers to the society that we live in. As a project for the class, I decided to take on the task of building a computer.

I didn’t know much about computer building, so I decided to do some research. First place I went to was YouTube and searched “how to build a computer:, after watching about 2 or 3 hours of videos, I decided that I was ready to build my own computer.

It all started with selecting the components that I was going to put in my computer. This was the most frustrating and tedious process. Researching the problem is the first part of the engineering process. I thought to myself “what was the purpose of this computer”? After some thinking I came to the realization that this was going to be a cheap compute, and it will not be used for anything intense. Ergo, the parts I needed to purchase would not be anything fancy

Next process of the engineering design is coming up with solutions and picking the most promising solution. For me it meant, having to selecting the right component and purchasing them. My components composed of; a computer case, RAM stick, CPU, hard drive, and a motherboard. All of parts were relatively inexpensive, and all they did was got the job done, nothing more.

After waiting for my parts to come, the next part in the engineering process is to build a prototype. Now, of course, I couldn’t not build a prototype because I didn’t have the resources available. So, I went straight to build the computer itself.

Here is the finish version of the computer

What I learned from this is that, just to build a computer, it takes so much thinking, so much time and so much effort. It is not as easy as just going to Amazon, buying the parts and putting the computer together. Now, imagine this as being a big project, instead of being a just a computer, it would take so much effort and brain to being a project together, that is why I have so much respect for engineers.