Building your own PC is a fulfilling activity yet must not be undertaken without the proper knowledge and tools.

I built my own PC 3 years ago. I can officially say that that PC is dead and buried. So I built another one, buying new parts and recycling old parts from the dead PC (like how a person donates some of his organs upon death). I can say that the operation was a partial success. After assembling the parts, I tested it and it worked. My brother even played Ragnarok. Afterwards, I cleaned up, close the casing lid, plugged in the USB devices, and tried it again. Nothing.

So I checked out what’s wrong. Only to see the power supply unit produce smoke. Yikes. Two scenarios: either there is something inside it that caused it to produce smoke (highly probable because when I took out the casing from its box, 2 cockroaches sped out of the box); or it was overloaded (almost all the power pins were used).

Since I would be at work the next day, I would have to return the power supply (bringing the entire unit in the process) at Monday. Tsk tsk.

Update:

Older brother had brought the new PC to the shop, and had the power supply replaced. The old hard disk showed signs of dying; good thing I bought a new hard disk. But I do have to salvage data from that old hard disk. Gee.

Update: (8/30/05)

There was nothing wrong with the old hard disk. I just don’t know if that technician is really a technician or what. Formatted the new hard disk, and I’m ready to roll.