Does this make me a Jedi now?

Once, in Slashdot, I saw a quote that has stuck with me ever since: "A Slashdotter who didn't built his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber."

Well, I have now built my own computer. It started when my old PC, the one I bought in 2005, started to have problems. I had to buy a new graphics card, and as long as I was spending money on that, I decided to splurge and buy a much better one suitable for gaming. Then it turned out that my power supply was too feeble for it, and so I had to buy a new and more powerful power supply.

Then I began to have problems with the CPU overheating. Upon taking it to PC Club, it was discovered that a fan on the motherboard no longer functioned and that the fan on the CPU itself needed replacement. Although it ended up completely wiping out my savings, I decided to buy more parts to build my own computer. (Normally, I don't recommend this as a money-saver, but I had already sunk so much into new parts that building my own was the better solution.)

I cannibalized the old computer for as many parts as I could: the DVD/CD combo drive, the floppy drive, and the old hard drives all went into it, but that was about all that I kept. Oh, yes, and the week-old graphics card and power supply went into it as well. The motherboard, the CPU, the case, the RAM memory are all brand-new.

It was an exhausting four-day struggle to dismantle the old computer and assemble the new one, because I've never done this before and there proved to be many gaps in my knowledge. However, before my hardware class at Long Beach City College, I wouldn't have been able to do it at all. Probably the most emotionally exhausting, nerve-wracking task I've ever undertaken, but in the end I was successful.

The new computer is more powerful, has better air flow for cooling (very important), is in a bigger case (not so good, but again better air flow), and in general is a better machine. It also has lots of spectacular blue lights on fans and LEDs which look cool but don't do much else. Better yet, I can play Oblivion on it!