So, my sister lived without a computer until 1998, when she decided there might just be something to this computer stuff she'd heard about.  I helped her select a configuration and happily spent her money on a smokin' fast Compaq 450MHz Pentium II system (wow! it even had a 100MHz front-side bus!).

Fast forward to late 2002; that smokin' fast 450MHz system wasn't looking so fast anymore.  In fact, sister had become quite a sophisticated computer user; despite a number of incremental upgrades, it just wasn't keeping up with her expectations.  So, after a weekend visit in which we attempted and gave up on an incremental upgrade (huge 200GB disk drive), I declared "Sister, you need a new computer!".  She agreed; the truth be told, she was pretty excited.  I said "Trust me and I'll send you the bill" and off I went.

After doing a bit of research, I decided to build sister's new computer from components, and went with a core system of:

• 3.066GHz Pentium 4 CPU with Hyper-Threading (this ought to last another 5 years)
  
• 1.0GB of PC2700 DDR RAM
• Intel D845GEBV2 motherboard

As I was assembling the system, I made a series of photographs detailing the installation of the Pentium 4 CPU to email to my sister; she liked them so much, I decided to publish them.  Click on the thumbnails below for a description of each step.