I’ve Been Building Computers Since IRQ Conflicts Were a Personality Trait
I was installing DOS from floppy disks while most of the kids playing modern shooters today weren’t even a concept yet.
I’ve hand-edited config.sys.
I’ve fought IRQ conflicts like they owed me money.
I’ve moved physical jumpers on sound cards.
I’ve rebooted seventeen times just to get a single beep out of a Creative Labs card in 1994.
Back then, a $1,000 budget built a monster.
Now?
That buys you “solid mid-tier if the GPU market isn’t being held hostage by crypto bros or AI server farms training robots to write poetry.”
Bitcoin mining torched video card pricing.
AI is chewing through silicon like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
RAM prices fluctuate like gas during a hurricane evacuation.
Everything costs more.
Everything is smaller.
Everything is somehow more powerful and more irritating at the same time.
And this machine?
It’s not some ultra ray-traced nuclear reactor build.
Because that wasn’t the point.
Why I Stopped Building My Own Machines
I didn’t stop building computers because I forgot how.
I stopped because modern hardware got tiny as fuck.
When I started, connectors were big.
Ports were big.
Power cables looked like industrial equipment.
Now motherboards look like Swiss watch internals designed by engineers on cocaine.
Fan headers the size of sesame seeds.
Front panel pins that require a microscope and a steady prayer life.
RGB leads buried like booby traps.
And when you’re a gimp?
That matters.
Fine motor control isn’t exactly my superpower.
Trying to plug in a front panel connector feels like playing Operation while someone shakes the table and charges you extra for the privilege.
At some point the joy of building turned into stress.
So I stopped.
Why I Went Mac — And Why I’m Back on Windows
Microsoft has dropped the fucking ball on accessibility more times than I can count.
So for writing, audio, and production, I went Mac.
It worked better for me.
But gaming on Mac?
It’s a ghost town.
Developers didn’t build for it for years because the market share wasn’t worth it. And building for Apple isn’t cheap.
So if you want to play PC games — especially retro ones — you end up back on Windows whether you like it or not.
Same story with legacy music production software.
So yes.
Windows is installed.
Necessary fucking evil.
And yes — even though Bill Gates hasn’t run Microsoft for years — there’s still a reflex in my brain that wants to yell “fuck you Bill Gates” when Windows does something stupid.
Some instincts never die.
Enter Hobbes — And The Question That Changed Everything
If I was coming back to Windows, I wasn’t going to half-ass it.
I found Hobbs at H-Mods.
The first thing he asked me wasn’t about RGB or budget.
He asked:
“So what are you planning to play?”
And I said:
“Microsoft Flight Simulator.”
Because DOS games will run on a toaster.
Flight Simulator was the only thing I play that actually demands horsepower.
There was a pause.
You could hear him recalculating expectations.
Here he is ready to build a custom gaming system…
…and I’m planning to fly digital airplanes slowly and run games from 1993.
The Hardware Obsession I No Longer Have
Here’s something weird.
I don’t obsess over hardware anymore.
There was a time I knew every chipset, every socket revision, every GPU tier. I read benchmarks like novels.
That used to be part of the thrill.
Now?
It just gives me anxiety.
Maybe it’s the market chaos.
Maybe it’s naming schemes that sound like Wi-Fi passwords.
Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t physically enjoy assembling it anymore.
So instead of spiraling into spec charts, I told him:
“Build it around Flight Simulator.”
That was the entire brief.
He sourced everything.
Balanced CPU and GPU.
Handled thermals.
Handled power delivery.
Made sure nothing bottlenecked.
He did the part that used to be fun for me — and did it better.
That’s trust.
And he nailed it.
The Art Argument I Mocked
From the beginning he kept saying:
“This thing is going to be a piece of art.”
I laughed.
In my brain a computer is a box.
It runs software.
It lets you shoot demons.
It is not sculpture.
I told him:
No RGB.
No spaceship lighting.
Plain box.
He basically said no.
And Thank Fuck He Didn’t Listen
Because this thing is a fucking piece of art.
I have paused games just to stare at it.
Controller in hand.
Game frozen.
The lighting is layered.
The airflow looks engineered.
The fabrication makes it look like studio equipment instead of mall hardware.
I walk past it and stop.
“…Jesus Christ that’s pretty.”
He told me I’d sit there staring at the box when it showed up.
He was absolutely fucking right.
Watch The Build
Hobbs documented the fabrication process — airflow planning, chassis work, lighting passes, detailing — all of it.
Seeing the build come together makes the final machine even more ridiculous.
Jetsetter Gallery
Words stopped doing the machine justice.
You need to see the fabrication, lighting layout, and detailing work.
Inside the Build — The Process
The finished machine looks like something that just arrived fully formed.
But seeing what went into putting it together changed how I looked at it.
There’s something different about watching a system come to life piece by piece — parts laid out, the case taking shape, components finding their place, the whole thing slowly turning from “hardware” into an actual machine.
It gives you a better appreciation for the time, patience, and obsessive attention that goes into a custom build like this.
It wasn’t just assembled.
It was put together with intent.
And seeing that process made the final result hit even harder.
Hardware Breakdown (For The Nerds)
Ryzen 5 5600X
ASRock Steel Legend motherboard
32GB RAM
Radeon RX 7600 XT
Dual NVMe storage
850W PSU
Thermalright Peerless Assassin Digital cooler
Thermalright digital M.2 heatsink
Full ARGB fan layout
Balanced. Functional. No spec-sheet dick-measuring nonsense.
What I’m Actually Doing With It
Mostly?
Running retro shooters.
Wolfenstein 3-D
DOOM
DOOM II
Quake
Duke Nukem 3D
SimCity
Myst
Police Quest
King’s Quest
On a 40-inch wall-mounted screen.
Tiny pixels. Massive display. Zero restraint.
There is something deeply funny about using modern silicon to simulate 1993.
The Only Modern Exception
The one modern title this machine was built around?
Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Slow. Methodical. Planning-based.
Not twitch gaming.
Which matters when your body already twitches enough thanks to cerebral palsy.
So yeah — I’ll fly planes.
I’ll map routes.
I’ll watch digital sunsets from 30,000 feet.
Post-Tech-Support Therapy
I do tech support.
Sometimes after the fifth call where someone insists their computer is “dead”…
…and the monitor just isn’t turned on…
I don’t want mindfulness.
I want DOOM.
I want to shoot something in the face.
Not in real life.
In a video game.
Retro shooters are decompression.
Simple. Direct. Cathartic.
The Music Production Resurrection
This machine also resurrects my music workflow.
Sony Sound Forge.
Sony Acid.
Sony Vegas.
Unsupported. Abandoned. Still brilliant.
None of it runs properly on Mac.
Now they do.
Which means new music is probably coming.
Maybe even a full album.
But that’s another post.
Want a Build That’s Actually a Piece of Art?
If Jetsetter sounds insane in text, go watch Hobbs work.
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@HMods
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/hmodsgaming
If you want a custom build that doesn’t look like it rolled off an assembly line, this is your guy.
The Absurd Truth
I’ve been building computers longer than most modern gamers have been alive.
This is the first one I’ve owned that I just sit and stare at like it’s sculpture.
He said it would be a piece of art.
He wasn’t fucking wrong.
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G-Mods here, seeing all the effort he put into it every day, practically working a full time job, with overtime, to get this thing exactly to how he imagined it in his head was amazing. I’m so happy to hear that all of his hard work really paid off, and sometimes happy to hear that you love it just as much as he does!