V. The Birth of a Monster - Frankenreaper pt. 1

Don't look at that creepy guy, he's not Frank...

The Birth of a Monster - 

Frankenreaper 

pt. 1

    Okay, 1st thing let apologize for the late post but I had life drop a roadblock in my way this week. That is my own business so I won't go into it because it belongs to me, & me alone. I said in the beginning that this blog is a living reflection on my dreams & vision, not my personal struggles & battles except to serve at foot notes that dictate my thought process or reasoning for particular turns I take/took on my own personal walk thru life. My life is not for others to comment on or criticize, it's mine; stay away from it. Anyway, enough late-post ranting... back to my story:

Now where were we... ah yes, my 1st creation, the very 1st build of the "beast" (inject my best mad scientist voice) that gave me the fire in my belly. Now at this point, I should probably mention my method of dreaming, or "visioning" as I call it, & this is something I have always done. I have always had the same dream that drives me, & that is I want to work for me period; plain & simple. I have always had that one concept in my head from the moment I could think for myself (which was very early on) & the how was so suspect at inception. I had no idea what I was gonna do to accomplish this but I was bound & determined to get it done; and to this day, that is still my ultimate goal but now I have it more dialed in than back then.

Clan Logo by
fellow Ghost, Axel Cross

    So with the creation of the Sun Tzu Ghosts COD clan, it immediately became a part of the overall vision after that fateful chat with my son way back when. And after all the years of working on building that and going thru my own personal hell, I had finally reached a point where I could focus on an office for me to run all of my visions from. And the 1st thing my office needed was a PC that could handle everything I was going to throw at it, such as game streaming, video editing and creation, & other things I enjoy. I had a bunch of old legacy PC's that was taken up space because I could never find the time to test them until that moment. So I pull out the 3 of them just to take another look at what I had and start researching what I could do with it.

CPU is under that big ass heatsink

    From my initial inspection, I noticed that they were old (but not too old) ha-ha, but the CPU were Intel chips that were still in good shape; albeit single core but functional. and then I found the discreet GPU

GPU shown at top

that had my inner voice screaming, " Do your homework, dumbass!!!" & when that happens;  you listen. So I picked up my laptop and started down the rabbit hole... we call it, the internet. In my looking glass I found a fount of information on how legacy PC's are getting new life with GPU backward compatibility, and I didn't know it at the time that I was still behind the tech. That's when I decided that I needed to keep digging, & then I leveled up from the rabbit hole to the magic carpet; all the while gaining XP.

My gamer reader's will appreciate the reference, & there will be more I promise. I also learned that my motherboard actually allowed me to upgrade my CPU from single or dual-core to a quad-core, giving me a massive performance boost over what I had started with (pictures will be added soon). And then, a unicorn deal fell out of the sky & right into my county; an estate sale and there were more PC towers, monitors, & a bunch of other things I needed or wanted; mainly it was the towers & monitors I went for. I figured my odds of getting a decent GPU lied in one of these towers since whoever owned these had all sorts of DVD burning software & some PC games. It was clear this guy was a bootleg video guy, and he had passed away so with no surviving family that wanted his belongings & that was my gain. In all that I got, I had acquired some decent monitors that has become a part of 2 workstations in my office (one is for the wife, obviously) & one I gave to my stepdaughter for her PC. I also managed to gain the actual PC that my wife uses, which is where my 1st Quad-core CPU (an Intel Core 2 Quad) ended up after I found an extreme version of it for a decent price (an Intel Core 2 Extreme) but that is build #2 (that's for part 2). You gotta love the old LGA-775 mobo's;

 it was the best of the old legacy hardware because it was quite versatile for upgrading.

    So with the motherboard, the CPU, & GPU all sorted out it was now time to figure out storage drives and a valid OS. I set to scouring the forums, video's, & even social media to see what other's were using. I learned that the HDD was not the chosen based just on the size of storage space but also how much of that space is left once the OS was installed on the HDD. So once I finally had the HDD solution worked out I decided to use a preexisting chassis just because I was not going to be keeping it in there until I could finish designing my custom wooden desk-case I had envisioned at the beginning. I know I haven't actually mentioned the custom case, or how I came to the particular design I was using as my muse for this particular project (which is still in the design phase since I keep seeing new elements I want to add; bad habit of mine). So until that time came, this case was good enough or so I thought... more on that later. I then set to figuring out the layout of where I wanted all of my hardware to fit and reside within the case. Soon, I was motoring right along installing all the pieces into the chassis, & then it was over. the actual building of the PC was done, & it was time to install an OS and finish the build completely.

    This proved to be a tedious and tiresome chore that would have me reinstalling the OS a few times before I could get any real use out of the PC. I couldn't understand why I was having such issues keeping it from crashing every time I tried to run the PC. I know I am being short and it seems I am not using enough descriptive, but I feel the big takeaway is not my mastery of the literary language but the end product of my vision. Anyway, I still had some work to do to get the software for the rig stable, but that was going to take some time and research. There would be time for that in the coming weeks, but for now it was time for me to power it up & see if my final tweaks would allow for the rig to come online fully. And when I pressed the power button, the fans whirred while the CPU beeped as the PC began to clear posts. Then just like a sudden lightning strike, the monitor screen lit up and there it was... the Microsoft logo appeared immediately after the Dell logo. I was successful at building my 1st custom rig, and it worked!!! 

    I did the only thing I could do at this point which was to sit back & enjoy my creation. That's when I noticed that I was going to be upgrading my new rig, which I named "The Frankenreaper" (or Frank for short), because while I was able to play; the system was just not powerful enough to properly run the games I was hoping to play. And with that... the search was on for the next stage of Frank's evolution. Next up, is the iteration that would lead to the concoction of my 1st custom PC desk design.

See you in next post, Frankenreaper pt 2... until then

Live Free & Play Hard, Hoorah 2 Ashes!!

Reaper, out.