What Job did you have when you first started saving for a PC?

[SlashedM]

Inspired by the fact that the only place that is in walking distance for me (essentially under 3mi) said that can’t take me since they aren’t hiring, but may hire me in a month if someone leaves (hopefully anyways), I wanted to know

 

What type of jobs did you have when you saved up for your first PC?

 

What was your budget and what parts did you choose?

[NineEyeRon]

Research Scientist

 

£???? Can’t remember the amount

 

i7 920 based system

 

Cant remember the GPU, probably 3870 

[straight_stewie]

11 minutes ago, SlashedM said:

What type of jobs did you have when you saved up for your first PC?

Heavy equipment mechanic.

 

11 minutes ago, SlashedM said:

What was your budget

$3000 USD, peripherals (including table, chair, and all cabling) included.

 

12 minutes ago, SlashedM said:

what parts did you choose?

i7-4770k

Asus z87 TUF Sabertooth

2x GTX760ti in SLI

16GB Corsair Vengeance

Some combination of hard drives (SSDs were still just out of reach for me at the time).

[Doobeedoo]

Job? I was in school saving a buck a day haha. 

[X-System]

10 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Job? I was in school saving a buck a day haha. 

Me too

 

It was in 1998.

 

And the spec was Pentium II 233MHz, 32MB SDR 66MHz, Jetway 440LX motherboard, 2.1GB HDD, ATI 3D Rage Pro 4MB AGP, Smile 15" CRT 1024x768 and Windows 95

 

It was for 10,000 francs (with inflation in 2019 = 2,031,94 EUR)

[Parideboy]

Junior developer. Intern actually, I wasn't offered a contract yet.

 

770€, I already had peripherals from an earlier setup that was gifted to me.

 

The rig in my signature, with only 8 gigs of ram, no ssd, different psu and case

[Boyohan]

Working part time for my dad in the warehouse of his company in the summer/fall of 2000. 

I convinced him to let the company buy me a PC and allow me to work off my debt.

 

It was a beast !!

 

My spec:

AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1200mhz

ABIT motherboard

Geforce 2 GTS

256mb or 512mb SDRAM

30gb or 60gb HDD

 

Also bought a CRT monitor 17" 75hz

 

My previous PC before this was the "family PC" with Pentuim 2 233mhz with voodoo 2 graphics

 

It took me a long time to work of the PC but it was worth it !!

 

[IkeaGnome]

Heavy equipment mechanic, in mining, fresh off a DD214.

For desk, peripherals, everything I think it was like $2500.

 

i7 7700k, 1070 etc build.

@straight_stewie You in construction or something else down there? I figured this was an odd trade to run into someone else on here that's in it.

 

 

[mousesnob]

Did manual labor ever now and the for relatives, generally foresting and wood splitting stuff.

[PlayStation 2]

I was in high school when I built my first PC, but I plan on saving for a major upgrade in the coming months at my current job as a package handler at a shipping warehouse.

[Teddy07]

I was a son

[sub68]

so my dad got a new computer after are old one started to show its age.

everything is almost hand me down or salvage from some where 

keyboard is from my brothers roommate

mouse I bought

mouse mat I got from a game stop gift card

mic was from someone moving away

main monitor was from my old rig

secondary monitor was from a church I asked do you want it they go take it kid

mic stand is wood from the side of the road

headphones I got from cristmas like 3 years ago

webcam from my dads office

the chair I have was my dads spare office chair

 

my first external hard drive was from a salvage xbox 360 with usb adapter

my external hard drives are 2.5in and a ssd

got those from a family freind

I bought a 2.5in hdd enclose for my ssd 

and he already had a kingston hdd enclosure

 

[WillOfTheLand]

10 hours ago, SlashedM said:

Inspired by the fact that the only place that is in walking distance for me (essentially under 3mi) said that can’t take me since they aren’t hiring, but may hire me in a month if someone leaves (hopefully anyways), I wanted to know

 

What type of jobs did you have when you saved up for your first PC?

 

What was your budget and what parts did you choose?

Department manager at a grocery store, first job where I made enough to even remotely cover my bills so I decided to splurge and get something better than my stuff from 2009 in the area of cell phones (yes literally, I even still have it) camera(s) and a computer. Spent a little over a thousand on the PC since all the parts I got were clearance/used but after seeing the performance specs of ryzen a year later I wish I'd waited.

 

Fx 8350, r7 360, 16 gb of 1866 ram and a couple HDD's and fans, and a 500w PSU. It's bad, but it's still better than what I was using and I don't have to worry about not being able to play a video in 1080p because it chokes off the processor so it does what it needs to.

 

Should note I'm canadian so little over 1000 for me is like 650 USD at the time, I payed roughly the equivalent of 60 USD for the 8350 with the wraith cooler they now sell as the "wraith max/prism" for 60 USD alone so it was a ok price. 

[Pitbull Tyson]

Back in 1994 at age 17 doing mostly info typing input lot of numbers weird small business. I wanted a 300z but a computer at that time was something we had as my father got me and my cousin into gaming and technology and commodore atari and so on and 2400 baud modem to connect to bank. So we grew up with it and never had to pay for computer. Until I was 18 then I pay.

[GDRRiley]

none. I had saved from my allowance, gifts ect over 3-4 years.

6600k

z170m plus

16gb ddr4

GTX 970 Strix

H105

RM750x

 

Now looking at my 3rd upgrade for that build. I work freelance video and as an inter at a gov lab while being a college student

[straight_stewie]

1 hour ago, Voluspa said:

You in construction or something else down there? I figured this was an odd trade to run into someone else on here that's in it.

At the time mentioned in my post I was working as a technician at a Deere dealership. I've since moved on to operating, and run a tractor and pan for a local earth moving company.

 

Mechanic at a mine? That ought to be a pretty good deal?

[IkeaGnome]

6 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

At the time mentioned in my post I was working as a technician at a Deere dealership. I've since moved on to operating, and run a tractor and pan for a local earth moving company.

 

Mechanic at a mine? That ought to be a pretty good deal?

I enjoy Service Advisor over SIS and the others. I've since moved into the warehouse down here in the shop. Went from turning wrenches to ordering parts so others can do it. Gives me time to mess around on here and do other stuff at work. 

Mining in general, especially here in the states, isn't a bad gig at all. It's so heavily regulated that we actually don't do a whole lot. It's nothing like it was even when I hired on here in '13 let alone the old time miners. Yeah it can be rough work, but for the most part it's not. The time away from home is what makes it hard. Pre pandemic we worked 2 and 2. 2 weeks at camp, 2 weeks at home. 12 hour days, 7 a week. Then 2 weeks at home where you don't have to think about work once or try to go from work to home thinking quickly. Makes separating work from home a cake walk. It's a little different for me because there's 2 people that do my job. Me and a guy that is having a hard time learning it, so I'll get calls at home about once while I'm home with questions, but it's still not too bad. On the 2 and 2 I've seen people start at $15 an hour(our base pay) make $48k. For what averages out to a part time job when you figure in PTO. I've seen people at $44 (my mine's top pay)make 140 in that same year. It depends on bonus and a few other little things. They do give about all the OT you can handle. I work with a guy that has no GED, diploma, no trade school. He's a truck driver. No family. Pretty much never leaves this place. He averages 260-290 a year. It's hard to beat for sure.

[BuckGup]

I won a $500 Amazon giftcard at a raffle and then a Beats Pill at a hotel lobby raffle ( it was as weird as it sounds) which I sold that helped pay for about all of it.

[CommanderAlex]

      It was my first job that my sister found for me on Facebook where someone was asking if anyone wanted to mow their front lawn and sides, settled at $25 a cut. I decided to use that money for a gaming PC that I built and I planned to build it at the end of the summer. Every week or so, I would go and cut the grass, provided that the homeowner gave the gas and mower to use. Their lawn was huge and my mother would drop me off and watch me in her car as I cut the grass. 

      At the end of the summer, closing in on my first day of high school,  I had nearly about $1000 of the $1300 I needed to build the computer, so I decided to pull money out from a savings account my family set up for me as a child. It wasn't until Sept 21, 2015 that I finally was able to build my computer, just the tower was needed as I already had a HP monitor, some monitor from ALDI many years ago, and a HP keyboard and mouse. 

      

      My budget was around $1300 as stated before and it consisted of the following:

• CPU: Intel i7-4790k 
• CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
• Motherboard: MSI Z97 Gaming 5
• RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 2x8GB sticks
• GPU: 2x XFX R9 270X in Crossfire
• SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 
• HDD: Western Digital Blue 1TB
• PSU: CX 750
• Case Fans: 3x 120mm provided by the case (two white LED intake and the exhaust fan) 
• OS: Windows 10 Home 64bit
• Optical Drive: Some optical drive I had laying around
• Case: Corsair 400R 

 

[SlashedM]

Thanks for everyone who responded, just trying to learn more about what people did to get some money before. I sent out another application to a retail store so hopefully that goes somewhere.

[Uttamattamakin]

21 hours ago, SlashedM said:

Inspired by the fact that the only place that is in walking distance for me (essentially under 3mi) said that can’t take me since they aren’t hiring, but may hire me in a month if someone leaves (hopefully anyways), I wanted to know

 

What type of jobs did you have when you saved up for your first PC?

 

What was your budget and what parts did you choose?

Begging Santa Claus for a Tandy Sensation to upgrade my Tandy 1000 RL.    That was so long ago that the mall I did it in, overby Hillside IL is now a vacant lot where their used to be a Car Max.  Being from Chicago you may know.  

IF you are hard up for money and need a computer NOW.  Really anything beats nothing.  A laptop that'll get most any job done can be had for less money than a smart phone.  Saving up for a GAMING PC now... may feel like me wanting a 486 SX processor and 1024x768 graphics then... Truth is any computer beats no computer.   Plus unlike those days... that 300-500 dollar computer will likely do everything you need, including games...just not as well. 

[thrasher_565]

i have no job as i was lucky i dint start working tell 18. so i got a p4 for about $800 that i saved form birthday, xmis money. i was hook on pcs and i was hogging the family pc so it was time for me to have my own.

[Pixel5]

i saved for my first PC with the little money i got from an apprenticeship program i was in.

used that money to spend like 1800€ on my first PC with an AMD 5000+ CPU a 7950GX2 GPU 4GB ram and i even splurged on getting two 160GB HDD´s at the time.

 

that PC was a beast but the 7950GX2 was a horrible graphics card.

[SlashedM]

16 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Begging Santa Claus for a Tandy Sensation to upgrade my Tandy 1000 RL.    That was so long ago that the mall I did it in, overby Hillside IL is now a vacant lot where their used to be a Car Max.  Being from Chicago you may know.  

IF you are hard up for money and need a computer NOW.  Really anything beats nothing.  A laptop that'll get most any job done can be had for less money than a smart phone.  Saving up for a GAMING PC now... may feel like me wanting a 486 SX processor and 1024x768 graphics then... Truth is any computer beats no computer.   Plus unlike those days... that 300-500 dollar computer will likely do everything you need, including games...just not as well. 

Nah, I have a laptop currently. I have a low-end gaming laptop (by todays standards). Im just trying to get a job now because as games get more demanding, its struggling. 

[Andreas Lilja]

First PC with my own money I was around 20 working part-time in a gas station.

 

Had previously had a new computer by my parents every 3-ish years.

 

Got my first own at 8.