What Got You Into Computers?

[centurion_08]

My uncle, when he was playing Earth 2140 on his 486. I was fucking blown away by this.

[JR1911]

We got our first computer, a Commodore 64, in 1985 and ever since then I've always had a computer.

[SIGSEGV]

When I was a kid I used to sit on my Mum's lap and make shapes in MS word

[APrettyCoolWalrus]

Boredom. I got bored of BF3 on the PS3 in the summer of 2013 so I bought myself a used laptop with a 660m and an i7 for $650. I would play Arma 2 and BF4 on that until I got interested in the desktop side of computers in January 2014. I bought my current rig in March 2014 and I've been adding to it since, learning a ton along the way from LMG and this forum!

[APersonWithABrokenChair]

My dad was a techie and I guess he passed it off to me

[Ceatra]

Basically, my parents bought a PC (wow) and then it started having problems (It was old, with plastic case (the ones who turn yellow)and had XP), so they asked some friends if they knew someone who could repair their PC, they said yes. He worked in Migros (Swiss store), (luckily for my parents he was Portuguese) so he started to repair our PC. It broke after some years... we got a new one from him, bla bla, and then we got a Compaq, he had to install, someting, bla bla bla, he oppend the case and I saw all that hardware, and from that point i started to interest my self in PC's and hardware... But who got me really deep into hardware was Linus...

 

TL;DR

 

Basically My parents, the guy from Migros, and Linus got me into PC hardware 

 

[Tedster]

My dad is a tech author. He let/lets me play around with stuff before/after he writes about it.

Plus my asperger's/high functioning autism.

[KirbyTech]

My father has always had computers so when we moved to the city it made sense for me to learn them since there is nothing interesting to do in a concrete jungle. 

[Trik'Stari]

An overload of Nerd rage at how terrible battlefield 4 was on Xbox 360, and then an absolute breakdown at all the bullshit the Xbone was supposed to come with (originally)

[c3p0_]

Computerrepairs are a freakin ripoff. Way too expensive then they should be. That got me into it.

[Rettiekadettie]

My brother i guess,he was a pc gamer,i was a console gamer.

Then at a certain point,he convinced me to buy a pc to play with him and his friends,after that i got interested in pc's,learned myself trough the painfull process of building with flaws and errors,and soon enough my first self build pc was up and running.

It was completely water cooled,and spend a small fortune on it,had it for about 4 years,with some upgrades here and there ofcourse,then owned a pre-build pc (acer predator,i know),because of the lack of time.

After about a year and a half,i decided to build my current pc,i build so much pc's for family and friends,i decided it was time to treat myself again .

[LamboLaddy]

My uncle works for Playstation, so I always had the newest PS stuff, which was cool, up until all my friends got into PC's and my family couldn't afford one.

So I got a job doing oil changes and changing tires and bought a PC.

[Paranoid Kami]

I used to just play consoles, but then I got "Counter Strike: Source" as a present. I got interested in computers after I started playing on them and then after I realized that it was a better experience, I could never bring myself to play on consoles again.

[KemoKa]

I've been playing on computers since I was three. The seeds for my passion for computers were sown when my dad brought me to Maplin and showed me the motherboards they had. He said "hey, let's build us a computer!" and I was like "yeah!"

Later he bought a motherboard, which sat in its antistatic bag for a year, and was only taken out after we moved to the states. We put an Athlon X2 in it, and fired it up. I was so happy that I had helped build a computer. I used that sucker for about 2 years before deciding "I need a new computer, one that doesn't suck" Coincidentally AMD had just announced their Trinity APUs and new FX line, and I was torn between an 8-core and a quad core but with graphics embedded into it. I went for the APU, and for a while, I was happy. Then a couple years later at school I ran into some friends who were talking about their gaming rigs and I piped up, rattling off my specs. There were giggles. One of them took me aside and mercifully said "we need to help you, man". It was over the next year that I found that AMD was really sucky at CPUs, and that my rig actually sucked. I set to work on grabbing me a proper GPU. I ended up with a 7870 and a CX500 to power it. I was happy for about two weeks, then I came here and left the rig with my brother. I used my laptop instead. But my urge to build a computer was too great and I built a scrapyard wars-style build, which has a CPU and GPU that trounce my old rig and quite a few others. It's "up there" in the gaming world, relatively speaking. But this was the first computer I had actually built on my own.

So, yes, computers are my passion. They're an addiction with me. I can't help it. I must build and tweak les computers.

[bob345]

I would have to say games and a general interest in electronics.

[Mushious]

Dad bought a 286 ($10,000 oh dang) as he moved into an IT position many, many years ago. It had Windows 3.11 and Skifree. Hooked on games instantly.

[ManWithBeard1990]

I don't know, it kind of grew that way. I had a friend in high school who used to boast about how good his pc was because it was a Core Duo overclocked at 2.7GHz, and because it had a translucent red case with lights in it, and everything. The computer I had at the time was a 1.25 GHz PowerBook G4, a computer I still have fond memories of, but ever since that guy let me know you can actually build pcs yourself I always wanted to try it. Fast forward seven years, and here we are now, with my current rig. I'm not gonna lie, it's only the second machine I've built and the specs really aren't awe inspiring, but a lot of work went into it, and I'm proud of it.

[BurgerBum]

i would need to tell my life story for any of it to make sense.

[Oberon.Smite]

Linus and Linus alone...

[BentheMuffin]

I was a console gamer, but all the next gen consoles were coming out and I saw how much better PC gaming was, so I built my own PC.

[AtheistJesus]

The subreddit r/battlestations did it for me, it showed me how great I could make a computer. My father also has lots of old monitors lying around and after I hooked up a second monitor to my crappy old pc I felt this complete joy at doing something so cool.

[seabass9990]

upgrading the graphics card in my second desktop

[LongbowX404]

My dad. He helped me build my first computer and then rebuild it a few years later when the motherboard failed. That was in 7th grade. 

[chpoit]

I got into computers at the age of 2 or 3(for gaming) but started being really interested in what was inside computers only  around 5 or 6 years ago. I'm not so sure, but I think it was simply because I used to spend 90% of my time gaming on my crappy laptop and I was tired of not knowing what was inside, so I got a pre-built "gaming" computer (gotta love them gt620, super great gaming card...). I later got a gtx650ti of magical boost of +10 name length. Then 8 months ago my i7 diededed and it was when I used the knowledge I had gathered to build a "whole new" computer(still waiting on broadwell...).

[JoshK]

I was always into technology but what initially got me into building computers and pc gaming was I watched Robbaz and I really wanted to mod skyrim. I then went on the hunt to go prebuilt and I was looking at the iBuyPower Revolt I think was the name of it. I stopped looking into it because  of money issues and then 6 months ish went buy and then I decided maybe I should build one and then Linus came into my life and the first video I watched was Build A Better $1500 pc and I watched his videos ever since. And here we are about a year and a half later