He got a cpu and mobo from a friend. Turned out to be a pretty good Haswell CPU (4690K) and we got him other parts for his birthday and he got a monitor, keyboard and mouse on his own. As we put it together I told him about building computers when I started (1989) and he seemed interested in things like needing a floppy drive and hard drive controller on a card (you kids have it so easy with headers on the mobo), why we use standoffs, not needing either cpu heatsinks or case fans, etc. He’s now interested in learning more about the hardware end of computers. Great father/son time.
That’s really cool! I don’t have kids, but two nephews and one of them turned out to be a tinkerer in PC stuff from early on. I had loved to guide him a bit, but that wasn’t even necessary, he figured it all out by himself. I somehow noticed when he was about 13/14 that I somehow never got a call from his parents again about computer troubles, from then on the position of family admin changed from me to him. But at least I gave him some guide and lessons for the school he went to to become a IT professional. He passed the final test a few weeks ago, and I’m very proud of him.
Good going! I suggest going through the OS install with him if you haven’t already done so. Nothing like firing up a PC for the first time and getting a BSOD!
People always look surprised when I tell them I build my own PCs. I tell them that’s the easy part. Anyone can do it. Troubleshooting and tweaking Win 10? Now that’s a talent! 