Day One:  This project developed out of student interest in building an awesome working computer.  During the fall,  the students learned about programming and computer technology.  While all of the students had experience running computer devices and software --few had knowledge of the inner workings of a computer device.  What was "inside the box" was a mystery.

In October and November we looked at some basic parts that make up a PC-- motherboard, chip, drives, etc.   During this investigation the class got excited about actually building a computer.  We then priced parts and looked on-line at what possible computers we could build (the IT department at St.Marks also gave us great guidance and help).... Now, we are ready to start the project!   We will build 8 computers over the next few classes.   Here is the CS31 class building team!

Today, we started an external (outside of the case) build to get the core parts-- motherboard, chip, memory and graphics card-- together and tested to make sure they work.  Our motherboard is the Asus P8 H67-M Pro/CSM which is configured for Intel chips.  Our chosen chip is the Intel Core i5-2300.  The Intel i5-2300 has four processing cores (for multitask processing) A fast chip, good for graphics--which is what we want!

Here is the Motherboard (Asus P8 H67) with the chip (pin-connecting side up).  Also pictured is a cooling fan to install on top of the chip, because the chip gets very hot and needs cooling as it runs:

Here are students installing the chip and fan

    

   

Here's the result after our first building class (chip and heat sink installed on all 8 motherboards!):