My Experience Building a Gaming Computer with My Son

Looking to build a gaming computer, but not sure where to start? Continue reading to learn about the adventure my son and I took prior to building his gaming PC.

To give you some background, my son, Derek, is currently 11 years old, and is about to go into the 6th grade. As with most children born in the 2000s, technology has been a huge part of Derek’s life. From a young age, Derek became well versed in using tablets and smartphones to watch YouTube videos and play games. As with most kids in his generation, the videos of choice to watch are those of other people (mostly famous YouTubers) playing many different video games. One of the most famous YouTubers to have an influence on young Derek was Dan TDM. Dan TDM, aka Dan The Diamond Minecart, earned fame by narrating his gameplay of the Minecraft video game. Dan TDM’s hardware of choice for playing video games…the PC. As a matter of fact, the PC is the weapon of choice for most gamers and YouTubers, and rightfully so (I explain my reasons why in this article). Once this information became known to my son, the consoles he grew up with: the Wii, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch, all which had great games, were no longer as attractive as the PC. Then began the many months of Derek asking if we could build a PC…

After lots of research, talking with my PC gamer colleagues, and also consideration of Derek’s age and what would be expected of him in the upcoming years in terms of school technology requirements, I decided to pull the trigger on building a computer with Derek. However, we would only do this under a few conditions. In order for us to build the PC, I told Derek that he would first need to be able to identify all the parts of a PC, and be able to describe the characteristics of each component of the PC. To help him with this, and to get him more interested and exposed to the PC universe, I found an awesome, local company that offered a computer building camp for one week during the Summer of 2019. This company is called Crafting Education Academy, and is located in Melbourne, Florida. At this camp, Derek learned the ins and outs of computers, and also received lots of practice in building them and tearing them down. If you are looking to learn about the different parts of a PC, check out my article on Computer Building Basics. Even though Derek accomplished his tasks over the summer, it would not be until Christmas of that year that we would gather all of the computer components, and actually build the PC. 

Although it appeared to Derek that I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain, waiting until Christmas to build the PC was a great thing for a few reasons. The first reason is that opening up each component of the PC as a separate Christmas gift was an incredible experience for Derek. I never told him when we would build the computer; I only told him that we would build it after he could prove to me that he understood each part of the computer. The second reason is that it was a great way of funding the computer parts from multiple sources, aka my family! Although I purchased the more expensive pieces, it was nice to be able to distribute the cost around in order to buy really good parts for the gaming PC. It was also very easy to find deals on what would normally be expensive parts around the timeframe of Black Friday to a few days before Christmas. 

Now, when it actually came time to build the PC, I wish I could say that it’s like building legos (it’s a tad bit more complicated). Although my son had gone to the computer building camp earlier that year, he was a bit rusty on his knowledge of all the computer pieces and how they came together. Also, despite being an electrical engineer, I admit to never building a computer before this. Despite these challenges, building the computer was a fairly straightforward process, and we were able to get it done! All in all, my son and I had a great bonding experience building his computer together. In the process, we both learned a lot about computers, and as a result, we are both having lots of fun using his gaming PC!

If you are looking to build a computer with and for your kids, check out my list of recommendations!