How old were you when you assembled your first PC, and what was it?

[Eigenvektor]

If I remember correctly, it was a 486 DX4 100, with 4 MB of RAM and an 80 MB HDD, complete with MS DOS 6.2. Fun times, having to write a special autoexec.bat for some games that needed that extra bit of precious low memory.

[Mister Woof]

1 hour ago, Eigenvektor said:

If I remember correctly, it was a 486 DX4 100, with 4 MB of RAM and an 80 MB HDD, complete with MS DOS 6.2. Fun times, having to write a special autoexec.bat for some games that needed that extra bit of precious low memory.

Had to do that on my compaq presario for TIE fighter.

 

Boot disks lol

 

Also my parents got us a 486SX2/66

 

No fpu so I couldn't play quake. Fnl

[Slayerking92]

Does un-boxing and plugging in a VIC-20 count?

[Falkentyne]

On 8/21/2019 at 1:30 PM, Plutosaurus said:

Not OEM PC, but one you chose each component and assembled yourself.

 

For me, it was 1999, and I was 17 years old. We had computers in my house since I was a kid, with my earliest memory being our old Tandy 1000 with a 286 8mhz, but my parents never allowed me to buy parts on their dime.

 

At the time, I was gaming on an old IBM with an AMD K6/2 266 w/onboard ATI Rage Pro graphics....I played Diablo I and a new game came out, Asheron's Call, but I needed a new PC to play it.

 

So I saved up a bunch of money working part time washing dishes at the Chinese restaurant, and bought the following, as close to my memory as possible:

 

Intel Pentium III 450mhz

128MB Crucial PC100 RAM

Diamond Micronics 440BX 

Antec Case w/PSU (Can't remember exact model)

Western Digital 9GB HDD

Nvidia RIVA 128 4MB (free from friend who bought a TNT)

STB Black Magic Voodoo2 12mb x 2 SLI (I got these for $100/each on sale at Electronic Boutique because the Voodoo3 had released)

17" NEC CRT monitor 1024x768

US Robotics 14.4k modem

Sound Blaster AWE32 (free from friend who upgraded to some turtle Beach card)

 

Since then I've assembled numerous PCs.

 

What was yours and how old were you?

Id have to say 1997(?) so I was 25 I think.  But it was originally a Zeos 486 DX2 case that I later gutted and I put a shuttle(?) motherboard and a Pentium 166 MMX@262.5 mhz (83 mhz jumper? or was that 41.5 mhz? or am i talking about the FSB or ISA or PCI bus?), and I don't remember what video card either.  Eventually had a 3dfx card in there.  Monitor was an old beat up CTX crappy CRT.  SB16 ISA and Roland SCC-1 sound canvas were the darlings.

[Bananasplit_00]

I was fourteen when i first tinkered around, and a year or something later i build my first computer.

 

specs were:

I5 4690K (used in the Toaster)

GTX 970

ASRock Z97 anniversary(thats still in my main system )

8GB of 2133MHz DDR3 (That stick is in the Toaster now)

60GB SSD that quickly died 1TB HDD that i still use

Zalman GT1000 case

rando 500W CM PSU

[TheEpicDuck]

I was 14
i7 3770k (Still use it today)

Msi z77 mpower (Also still in use)

Radeon 7950 (Now a 980 ti)

cx 750m (Now an rmx 850)

Cooler master scout 2 (now an s340 elite)

2 Seagate barracuda 1 tb (Both dead now)

And 16Gb ram (upgraded to some hyper x sticks later)

 

Saved up a long time to buy it and had watched enough ltt and ncix tech tips to build it

Edited August 22, 2019 by TheEpicDuck

[Kisai]

On 8/21/2019 at 1:30 PM, Plutosaurus said:

Not OEM PC, but one you chose each component and assembled yourself.

 

For me, it was 1999, and I was 17 years old. We had computers in my house since I was a kid, with my earliest memory being our old Tandy 1000 with a 286 8mhz, but my parents never allowed me to buy parts on their dime.

The first PC I had, I was 8. A Tandy 1000, which was an 4.77Mhz 8088 "PCjr" clone and it had to be upgraded to 640K via an 8-bit expansion card. No hard drive.

 

The first that I built was 1993 or so. I scavenged/salvaged a bunch of parts between all the people I knew and put together a 286 with an amber CGA CRT, and 10MB 5.25" RLL hard drive and a floppy drive that only worked as B drive because I didn't have a cable with a twist in it. 

 

It's a bit harder to say what was the first I built with my own money however, as I had access to a lot of hand-me-down parts until the 486. The first that I would say I put together with no hand-me-down parts was in 1998, the Pentium II (which I later learned had been over clocked by 50%, it had been rock stable until MMX-requirements creeped in, and I guess that's what didn't work at any clock speed.) This BTW, is where another lesson was learned. Read the labels on OEM parts, because even though the shop/person you buy it from says something is X, it might be a lower grade part that they are selling for the retail price. In this case I had also saved 50% of the cost of buying the CPU, so I didn't think about it. (This was from another BC-Richmond-based computer store that was was doing shady things unfortunately.)

 

Anyway, that PII lasted until Dad bought a new computer for himself (all the computer equipment hand-me-downs had been abandoned and given to a relative when moving.) When I moved, I had the PII (now a PIII) and a the Athlon 700 they had bought at some point.

 

I still have it collecting dust.

 

[Domrockt]

So first own and bought  PC,

Athlon 1700+ @ 3200+ Troughbred with some sort of serial stepping

on an 70€ Abit NF7 and whopping 256mb ddr @  200 MHz OC 

A Kyro2 GPU (worst GPU ever) about GeForce 2 MX 400 niveau 

A random generic powersupply

 

I swapped the Kyro2 to an GeForce 4600 as soon i could aford it about 2 years later.

[dkerber77]

19 when I built Cyrix  686 4 mb of edo s3 stealth graphics 1 gb hd with cdrom sb sound card jazz drive external and zipp drive external also with scsi card.  Dad worked for iomega.  Otherwise first computer was when I was 15 with a 486 dx2 50 mhz

[RyomaSJibenG]

25 a bit late but damn its really satisfying

[MeatFeastMan]

I was 18 when I built my first one(Now 20). I am still using it just over 2 years on. I'm gonna be honest, I had no clue what I was doing and..that isn't usually a good sign ESPECIALLY when you realize how far into the deep end I went for my first build.

 

The goal was to go cheap on the cpu and gpu, but make everything else total overkill. I valued upgrading down the line and using the same parts in those future builds rather than raw horsepower. That thinking is about to pay off, because I am upgrading in September to a 3950x with a Radeon VII, but keeping everything else aside from RAM and motherboard obviously. I'm also adding the new Corsair MP600 SSD (As you may be able to tell, I'm a big Corsair fan), but I'm swapping the roles so that the mp600 has the OS and the old SSD will be there in case I run out of space. For me, reliability comes above performance as this build is about to tell you:

 

CPU: AMD FX-9590 (Yes, that really was my first cpu. When I said deep end, I meant it!)

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA UD3 R5

 

RAM: 2x8gb Corsair Vengeance LP 16gb 1600mhz

 

GPU: ASUS Strix GTX 1050ti

 

Case: Corsair Carbide Air 740

 

Storage: Corsair Neutron XTi 960gb SSD

 

PSU: Corsair AX860i

 

Cooler: Noctua NH-D15

 

Keyboard: Corsair K95 RGB Platinum

 

Mouse: Corsair Katar

 

Monitor: LG 34UM69G 2560 x 1080 75hz

 

In case anyone was wondering about framerates here, believe it or not the build still just about hangs on. I play a lot of Battlefield V and I am able to get 75 fairly consistently on low settings, although there are some drops depending on the situation. But for the overwhelming majority of gameplay, the game goes no lower than 60fps. Is it playable? Absolutely it is.

 

And again, I don't mean to brag but...MY HOUSE IS NOT BURNT DOWN.

 

 

 

[Guest]

I was 20-something.

It was a long time ago... Don't really remember the build.

[thekingno001]

I was 12 years old when I assembled a pc in 2017

 

[Stormseeker9]

Built my first pc at 27 (last year) and it’s the pc in my sig

[Stroal]

Oh man, I'm old. 

 

My first "custom built" PC had a Intel Pentium Pro.  I believe it was 150MHz, 400MB HDD, and I think 4MB of ram. 

 

1996 was a good year. 

 

But my FIRST pc was a hand me down Commadore 128. I believe it was around 1992, and my uncle, who had a lot more money than my family did, gave it to me as a birthday present. 

 

Here we are 27 years later, and I work in the industry as a programmer, and I pretty much owe it all to that Commadore. 

[20_below]

I was 21 and a senior in college and had no idea what I was doing. I distinctly remember following the "so you need a new pc" guide on Neogaf to guide me through every step of the process. My first build was an:

 

i5 4690k

GTX 760 2GB

120gb ssd

1.5tb hdd

8gb ram

 

I blindly bought an NZXT case from Best Buy and realized halfway through building that it didn't have USB 3.0 headers on them and had to frantically return it and buy a new case because I didn't want to wait to assemble everything. The thing that makes me laugh the most is the ssd ended up costing something like $95 back in the day, and now the same drive can be had for under $30. Good times. To this day though, I am still rocking the ASUS VS239H-P monitor that I bought in college. That thing is a beast of a monitor. 

 

 

[UnwantedLinks]

basically 4 years ago

 

specs:

 

i3-4170

hyper 212 evo

asus b85m

1x8 gb patriot (ddr3)

seagate 1tb 

msi gt 710

diy-pc diy g5

thermaltake litepower 350w

 

 

(edit: also i and my parents sold the pc for like 500 bucks lol)

[SpiralTTGL]

14 years old - i5 3570k, gtx 650ti, 8gb ram, 1tb hdd

[DavidKalinowski]

my first build was when i was 17 ( i had a computer at 12, and managed to keep it working for 5 years. it was had a Cyrix 233 or something cpu 32 MB of ram 4GB HDD)

 

Any way first actual build. Hodgepodge of parts I found in my "electronics" class in high school. (we did consumer electronics/computers. reading o-scopes, soldering etc.) the CPU was a AMD k6-2 450 the motherboard a tyan brand but I do not remember the model. I was able to overclock the CPU to 500mhz with it., I found 128 MB of RAM for it, I want to say the video card was an S3 Virge.. but I'm also remember a Riva TNT for some reason..and I think i was able to slap a 10 GB HDD in it. maxtor i believe. the sound card I'm not sure what i used. Had to be a really basic sound blaster. This was all slapped into a full tower beige monster. (I painted it black, except the power button. I painted that orange.)

 

 

[Euchre]

I think I must be the oldest guy around here.

 

First computer in the house was a Tandy TRS80 Model II. After that we got a Model 3, then I got a Commodore SX64, which was a portable version of the C64. When using internet based services became important to me, namely email, going to my parents Compaq with Windows 95 became a challenge, so I built my own with help from a friend who knew a lot more about them than me. He scrounged up a free case, floppy, motherboard, and CPU - a Soyo mobo, and an AMD K6 166mhz. I bought a used Seagate 4.3gb hard drive, and a 13" CRT, the two biggest purchases of the build. We scrounged up a free video card (don't exactly remember what), a sound card, and I bought a PCI modem. Later I got a network card. I was 28 years old. I ran Windows 95 on it, because my parents had an OEM copy I could borrow. After a few RAM upgrades, a second hard drive (actually smaller, but I moved Windows itself onto it), and learning how to tune things, it ran super stable and like a scalded cat for what it was. I still have it.

[BrinkGG]

First build was age 10. 

Athlon XP 2800+, 1GB DDR memory, GeForce 4, 40GB Hard drive.... 

It was 2008 and it was built from retired work computers from my dad's company. TL;DR, I learned how to bend pins back real young.  

[TomvanWijnen]

On 8/23/2019 at 4:23 PM, 20_below said:

120gb ssd

The thing that makes me laugh the most is the ssd ended up costing something like $95 back in the day, and now the same drive can be had for under $30. Good times.

Ah yes, old SSDs. My 120 GB SanDisk Extreme II from 2014 was also about 90 euros ($100)... A few years later I bought a 128 GB SanDisk SSD for my laptop, which was about 50 euros ($55). Then a year ago I got a 250 GB Crucial MX500 for a friend for about 50 euros ($55) again... and just a few months ago I bought a relatively high end 960 GB NVMe drive for about 150 euros ($165)... prices keep going down.

[LamoidZombieDog]

i was 12 or 13

[SenKa]

First PC was..... 2014? Yeah, has to be. I was 13. Specs (may not be exact, that system is LONG gone now. My memory of 13 year old me is vague.

 

i7-920

Sabertooth X58 Motherboard

8GB DDR3

GTS 450

I have no idea what the PSU was, it was junk

Case was okay at best, but it had VU meters in the front panel and I really miss it, no idea what the model was. Blue LED's, VU meters and another gauge that was temperature(?) on the front door, it was an ATX Midtower. If anybody can help me figure out what case it was I would be eternally grateful.

[-rascal-]

When I was 11? 12?

Of course, I had my cousin help me out, but the intention was the learning process.

I didn't pick out most of the parts.

 

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ rev T-Bred B (good little side story)

Gigabyte 7ZXE Socket A motherboard

384 MB PC-133 SDRAM (eventually bumped it up to 512MB? 768MB?)

nVidia TNT2 AGP Video Card (eventually upgrade to a Radeon 9600 XT)

20 GB IDE HDD (eventually added a 40GB yeeears later)

FSP 300W PSU

Some beige coloured case...classic

 

I actually kept this PC (albeit in pieces) up until around last year, where I finally threw away the PC, and kept the CPU and Video Cards.

 

The Thoroughbred B revision was a special one.

I didn't realized this until about 12 ~ 13 years later (in 2015?), when I started looking at the serial number, and manufacturing date on the CPU.

With the OG "lead pencil" trick to bridge two contact points together, along with a compatible motherboard, you could UNLOCK the CPU Multiplier on this chip.

Yes. Unlocked. CPU. Multiplier.

Too bad the Gigabyte motherboard did not support it, and I was only able to push up to 1.7/1.8 GHz from the stock 1.4 GHz.

People were able push these chips to 2.5+ GHz ON AIR.

Stock is 1.467 GHz... 2.5 GHz ?!

 

I now have this spacial little Athlon XP 1700+ in a transparent clam shell display box/case.