Why/How did you get into building PC's?

[ThatSweetGamer]

Well my story starts almost 2 years ago. I was 15 at the time and me and some of my friends where talking about what we wanted for Christmas and my one friend King said he was getting an Alienware M14x laptop. I thought this was really cool and decided that's what I wanted too. So I ended up getting an Alienware M18xR2 and wasting $2000 on it (well, my dad did). It had a 3rd Gen i7, a 500GB hard drive, and a GTX 660m. I didn't know what any of that meant and I was expecting to play everything on Ultra and to see at least 60FPS on everything. So the first thing I did was run Skyrim on Ultra, and it was super laggy. After Christmas break, I tell my friend what happened, and he tells me it wasn't lag, I just had a low FPS. I asked him how to fix it and he told me to get a better GPU. I had no idea what that was either, and he went into explanation into it. Then he just ended up telling me to sell the laptop and to build a desktop." WHAT? YOU CAN BUILD THOSE?! DON'T YOU HAVE TO BE A GENIUS?" "No, they're like expensive Legos." So from there I went home and started watching YouTube videos about building PC's, and I did this for months on end. I never researched what good parts where, just how to build PC's. So I was on Amazon and I saw an AMD processor "on sale" for $150! It was an 8 Core CPU, the AMD FX 8150. It was originally ~$300 (I think). So I went to best buy and asked a Geek what he thought of the sale. He told me "Gaming computers don't need 8 cores, go with an i3 or i5". I looked those up and it was a 2 core processor for the same price so I was like, "He don't know nothin', tryin' to rip me off". I thought I was getting a good CPU because it was originally ~$300 but it turns out Amazon will say it's on sale if the price lowers everywhere. So I was ripped off. And from then on I researched every part for my soon to be PC and it all turned out great, except for the processor (I'm upgrading this Christmas to a 4790K or 5820K, I can't decide.). And somewhere in that process I found Linus and his forums. I also found Tech Syndicate, too. So how does your story go?

 

EDIT: On the 24th, it'll be a year since I've been a member of this forum.

[Thebman712]

i have yet to build a pc

 

but i have almost completely overhauled it

[seabass9990]

Being cheap, wanting better computer. still havent completely built a rig from scratch

[nj4ck]

Needed a PC - wasn't happy with any prebuilt or notebook options - started researching parts to build my own - found linustechtips on youtube - started building.

[Rashy]

Well i was a console peasant... then i got bored of all the dirty and pay to play online games, decided that it was easier to get an pc. and cheaper... and i started googling, found linus, loved him, cherished him, and now i join him

[Wano97]

Well I don't have a story about PC building, but I got into PCs more since my dad allowed me to sell my mac (after using macs for 13-14 years) and buy a PC

[Mateyyy]

first I had a pre-built, and I started upgrading it and upgrading it again, then LinusTechTips appeared and a few years passed and I'm now an approved master first class to the extreme PC builder

 

 

#PCMasterRace

[BloodWithIce]

My laptop broke so I decided to buy a gaming pc. I bought a prebuilt one that costed $999 and had an amd a8 6600k or something like that. I obviously thought that was gonna run everything max, but guess what...it didn't. So I started gathering information and I realized that I got ripped off very badly. Now I'm sitting here with my lil beast and I know that I couldn't have made a best choice than become a pc gamer <3

[Thalandros]

Got a custom made prebuilt 3 years ago, since I've gotten more tech savvy and started replacing everything separately.

[AMICLG]

I started PC gaming very young after playing the badass skill based consoles like NES,Genisis, N64 etc., do to by brother being a PC gamer; I would always see him open up his computer and replace things so I found it interesting enough to learned as much as I could about it and built my first PC a few years later in 2005-6 which was a frankensteined pre-built then a fully custom one in 2008 and haven't looked back since. 

[Rashy]

first I had a pre-built, and I started upgrading it and upgrading it again, then LinusTechTips appeared and a few years passed and I'm now an approved master first class to the extreme PC builder

 

 

#PCMasterRace

Im still in Economic Class, well if you wanna play Travel Classes:

Budget PC = AMD Cpu, Budget tights = Economic Class

Middle PC = Intel Cpu, GPU>750Ti, Air Cooling = Business Class

Enthusiast PC = Intel Cpu, High-End GPU, Water Cooling = First Class

[Mateyyy]

Im still in Economic Class, well if you wanna play Travel Classes:

Budget PC = AMD Cpu, Budget tights = Economic Class

Middle PC = Intel Cpu, GPU>750Ti, Air Cooling = Business Class

Enthusiast PC = Intel Cpu, High-End GPU, Water Cooling = First Class

hell no. where's the MLG class?  :lol:

[Rashy]

hell no. where's the MLG class?  :lol:

MLG Class = 420GB HDD, MOUNTAIN DEW WATER COOLING, DANK CPU, 2FAST4U GPU

[Tech_Dreamer]

Get ready for a TLDR, Well, Basically i loved handling Tech things that i cannot afford (still do) , i do High Mid range & End PC's for some of my friends & distant relatives & the ones that are close to them who didn't know anything about PC's whatsoever , So it began by me doing  build for one of my distant relative who was about to get everything from a local 'builder' who was charging his a quite reasonable price for mediocre performance PC, all they focused on was doing this & that didn't care if they got ripped off by the local dealers, so i stepped in & suggested my recommendations & how it'll benifit him overtime & such, so for some reason he gave me more than twice the amount he was going to spend on the current buy & trusted me with it (it was a lot considering that time to spend on a Desktop PC) so i delivered quite astonishingly the build was a little uber for that time, He kinda expected me to keep it under the cash, but i flat out covered the whole build with the cash, but later after explaining to the benefit behind it, he got it i guess, he hasn't changed the PC till this day even tho i called him once & recommended that it's time to change, but he's more than happy with it & is performing good , he hasn't had the need to open his chassis up till this day(i can imagine how dirt up is it by now)..

 

So that's it, from that moment on , for some reason i build up a passion for assembling these behemoths (eventho i don't get to keep it) & been doing it till this day, irony of it is i still run pretty much a below average ghetto PC , currently as i type this, But i still love it & get excited when something new in the market comes up & you know, the unboxing the smell of fresh cardboar package it comes in , the sound the static bag makes when you take the components out, i'm still like a kid & get excited when it comes to things like that.. That's my story..

[DigitalHermit]

I started when I first tore down my P4 rig for a cleaning... I did this every year afterwards... I took things a step further by completely disassembling the PC when it plain won't work...

 

The rush of satisfaction when she makes that first POST beep after assembly is the thing that made me want to build my own PCs and keep building more...

 

I didn't get into the hardware scene until when I was researching the parts that I'd want to put in my current rig... Let's just say that I'm now itching to build her sister...