I Built a Computer (And You Can Too!)

“The Smallest, most Expensive LEGO set”

As I mentioned last week, I recently construct a new computer for myself with the specific intention of being able to play Sekiro and, eventually, Elden Ring. And I was quite successful! I’ve been playing Sekiro for a while now, and while the only thing I learned about in class that showed up in the game was Tomoe, it’s still easily one of my favorite games ever. So I’m quite glad that I was able to build my very own desktop. With some help, of course.

You see, building a computer sounds intimidating. Where do you plug in the parts? How do you attach them? How do you know what to buy or how much of something you need? Where do you even get the pieces? What if it doesn’t work? Those are all very legitimate questions, but that apprehension of risk is easily outweighed by the benefits of building a computer yourself: customizability, cheaper parts, the pride of doing it yourself, and the fact that you can just update individual pieces instead of needing to buy a whole new computer every few years. It’s kind of like tricking out your car, but with electronics.

The risks, of course, are things like technical errors, wasting your money on the wrong parts, faulty hardware, compatibility issues, and the like. But for the most part, these are all solvable. Except, apparently, the, CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION Error. It’s an issue I’ve been having with my brand-new computer where, sometimes, it just randomly crashes and tells me that it has some sort of corruption error. I’ve been troubleshooting it for like a week now and no one seems to have a solution. It is infuriating.

I feel like a detective or something because I’ve been tracking this error down by finding clues that it leaves behind. I’ve looked at crash dump files, I’ve looked at driver warnings and updates, I’ve dove into the trash heap that is the Microsoft Event Viewer, and a ton more nonsense. I even tried unplugging my RAM and plugging it back in, because apparently sometimes that actually works. It did not work for me.

After using some outside programs to take a look at the crash reports, I’ve found that the crash has something to do with the NT Kernel system. I don’t know what that means and apparently neither does the internet because there is no easy solution to fixing an issue with the Kernel system because it could be caused by almost anything. So even when I thought I had tracked down a solution, it just took me right back to the start. Yup, this could be a memory issue. Or a GPU issue. Or a processor issue. Or, hell, it might even be your fucking keyboard having a stroke. Please.

I feel a bit like I’m banging my head against a brick wall because nothing I try works, even going through things like the command prompt or the disk check tool that Windows comes with. I need help, I think, because I’m not gonna be able to figure it out on my own. So if anyone knows anything about the CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION or how to fix it, please let me know. I can’t pay you but I’ll give you a shout-out in a future blog, which is surely worth more than money.

Maybe this was a poor way to get someone interesting in building a PC, telling them about how I’ve had a terrible time getting the thing to run properly and how I’m raging against the machine as I try to dive into its guts and glean some sort of useful information. But don’t let me scare you off; I’m sure once I get this figured out, I’ll be so proud of myself for becoming a computer wizard.

Before I built my computer, my PC skills were pretty average. I had some python coding skills, but the proudest I had been was when I got Silent Hill 2 to work on my old laptop, along with a bunch of other emulators and games that I totally acquired legally. Believe me, getting some of that shit to run, even on modern hardware, is an absolute pain the ass. And it was totally worth it for the four hours I spent playing Silent Hill 2 before Pyramid Head beat my ass and I quit. Rest in peace, EmuParadise.

But now that I’ve built my own computer, thanks to a lot of help from my friend Adam, I feel way more qualified as a computer human. I am the Geek Squad now. Why have a bunch of nerds drive over to my house in an ugly van when I am the nerd in the ugly van? But, then again, I apparently don’t know shit about the actual computer I built because I can’t fix. And maybe that’s because building the actual computer, compared to running it, is super easy.

The hardest part of building my PC was the actually acquiring of pieces. It was difficult for two reasons; there’s about a billion different versions of every computer part and every version can be expensive as hell. I don’t want to admit online how much I spent on my computer because I can barely admit it to myself, but I’ll say that parting with my savings was the most trying part of everything. But now that I can play Star Wars: Jumpy Jedi, it’s all worth it.

Of course, you can build a computer for around $500, if you go for older parts or lower-end models. There’s really only a couple necessary things you need, anyway. You need a motherboard, which is the nervous system of the computer, connecting everything together. You need the CPU, which is kind of like the brain of the computer, doing calculations. You need RAM, which determines how much your computer can store at once, and if you play video games, you need a fancy graphics card, which tells you how many rays of light need to land on the Doomguy for the ultimate experience.

You’re also going to need either a Solid State Drive or a Hard Disk Drive to save data to your computer. There’s a lot of differences between these two, from heat and energy usage to moving parts and wear and tear, but the key difference is this: SSD’s are faster but smaller, while HDD’s are slower but can store more. I went with both for the best of two worlds because I plan to fly too close to the sun. Oh, and don’t forget a power supply, either.

Picking out parts can be easy, though. For example, I didn’t know this tool existed, but there is the PC Part Picker website, which even has builds already picked out for you. Perhaps I should have just used one of the suggested builds, and then I wouldn’t be in such a pickle. Especially because the cause of my problem may be mixing and AMD processor with a Nvidia GPU. Thanks, free market competition, for encouraging compatibility but not following through.

Once you get all the parts you need, though, the setup is pretty straightforward, actually. You don’t need gloves or canned air or anything like that. You just need a couple screwdrivers and the know-how to do it. And, frankly, it’s kind of like building LEGOs, especially since most computer cases and motherboards come with universal adapters to fit everything together. You kind of just need to know where to screw stuff down and where to plug them in, and once you’ve got things plugged in, it’s a matter of connecting all the power wires to the right places and turning the thing on. And voila, you’ve got your computer. Just make you get a copy of Windows beforehand.

Building a computer is really kind of niche, though, and a bit of a hobby more than anything else. If you’re just going to be typing on Microsoft Word, just get a cheap laptop or something. If all you want to play is Minecraft and Civilization, any home computer would work fine. But if you want to produce and edit videos, create complex 3D models, or play the newest games at the highest resolution, you’re going to need something more advanced than what they generally sell at Walmart. And that’s where building a computer is practical.

Having done it once, I feel confident that I could do it again, and feel confident that I will do it again one of these days. It was pretty fun, actually, and made me fell proud of my abilities, and I recommend anyone try it if they’re interested in the inside of technology. Until it starts to crash, of course, but that’s another story. I don’t think I can go back to buying prefabricated computers anymore. Thankfully, I don’t have to, because of course there’s a video game about building computers. I can build more computers on the computer I built. The future truly is now.