Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

I have always enjoyed playing video games with my brothers. We fought each other over who gets to use the computer next. Eventually, we had new computers replace old, and we each had a machine to ourselves. Even though I was the oldest, the computers were the boys' endeavors, and I was stuck with the hand-me-down of the hand-me-downs. And when they both left for college, I had the same tattered and torn computer, only even more out-of-date.

I guess I didn't really mind, but my family took notice, and one Christmas I got upgrades. A new case, a new hard drive--and by the time it was all unwrapped, I had a completely new computer!--all in separate parts. This was orchestrated by my best friend, who then walked me through assembling and setting up my amazing, tiny (it's the size of a shoe box) computer. He didn't do any of the work, since he knew I liked to do things at least once by myself. It was terrific, and once again, I had to fight my brothers over who got to use it first. This time, I had the upper hand. This computer was all mine.

This taught me how easy it is to do, and proved to me that I could handle the upgrades from then on out. I mean, I built the thing myself. Everything else is just a walk in the park.

Truthfully, it's not too hard to build a computer by yourself. It saves a lot of money over buying one off the shelf, and it's a lot of fun to do. Once you're done, you'll know exactly how your computer is configured and what hardware you've got, because you picked out the parts yourself.