Day 321: Meet Leeloo!

Thanks so much for waiting so patiently for this post! The past 2 weeks have flown by, but I do have something to show for it. Meet Leeloo!

She’s my new super-fast (to me) computer that I plan to use for creating/editing images and such. And I assembled her with my very own hands!

And of course, here are a few “in progress” shots of the build (as usual, click on the image to see a MUCH larger view – sorry for the image sizes: I haven’t loaded any image editing software yet):

I had just installed the power supply in an otherwise empty case. Getting the sides off was its own adventure.

I was surprised at how easy it was to install the memory into the motherboard.

Between bad lighting and being excited at having gotten this far, this photo didn’t turn out very well. But you get the point, yes?

Plugging stuff in. That little “white” rectangle (it’s really silver metal) in front is the SSD drive, which makes Leeloo so zoomy. You can just make out the 2TB HHD in the bottom of the case on the right inside the slot.

And now the Blu-Ray drive is installed in the upper rack. Just about ready to plug her in and put the cover on.

The moment of truth…. SUCCESS!!! At least, she was running. After some quick testing, I discovered that not all was working properly, so I had to open the case back up and do some more work to get her working properly. A couple of times.

It also took me a while to figure out why Windows didn’t recognize my HHD. It was plugged in properly, and the BIOS saw it. Then I got some (more) advice from my own personal geek army, and thanks to them, I got the drive properly installed and functioning.

I must admit, while it was my hands doing the work, it was in large part to my personal geek army that Leeloo is actually working. A shout-out and huge thanks to go Jimmy, Brad, James and David for all their helpful advice.

I’m sure I’ll be tweaking and adding to her for a while yet, what with all sorts of software yet to load, and trying to get my files from the old iMac copied over, but for now, I’m very satisfied with this accomplishment. Now I have to get used to working in Windows 8. Don’t even have this version at work yet!