How did you got into the PC Master Race?

[Salty]

flight simulator x

[minibois]

Uh, well I used to play only on PC, in the times before PS2.. When I got my PS2 SLIM (in 2004 or so, when I was 7) it was split 50/50. Played a LOT of Zoo Tycoon and Medal of Honor Allied Assault on PC, but a lot on PS2..

 

When I got my Wii (maybe like 2007), I just played a tiny bit of PC, but 90% Wii..

In 2010 I think, I got my PC and went into PC gaming again in 2011, when I started playing Minecraft a lot.

In 2011 I got a PS3 and played a lot on that and left Minecraft in 2013 I think, so not a whole lot of PC..

And now I play some PC (mostly Skyrim, but PC is not that good..) and a bit of Wii and PS3 and PS2.. Wanting to upgrade my PC now, to REALLY join the PC community.

[skywake]

I'm going to date myself a bit here! The first big moment was when I was 8 or 9 and my brother's friend put a whole bunch of games on our family PC. I stumbled across this one and was hooked. I thought it was the best game ever made. Because fighting robots.

which you can play here -> https://archive.org/details/msdos_One_Must_Fall_2097_1994

 

Then when I was a teenager I got my own PC which my brother's friend built for me. It was a 1Ghz AMD Duron with 128MB of RAM, integrated graphics and a 1GB HDD that was re-used from another PC. Maybe about a year later my friend gave me his old TNT2 and I put another 256MB of RAM in there. That was my main PC until I finished High School. I somehow played C&C Generals on it. No idea how looking back.

 

... but yeah, that's how I started. Went from that Duron to an Athlon 64, then switched to Intel with a Core 2 Duo and recently an i5. I don't upgrade anywhere near as much as I probably should. But still. Also I'm a pretty big Nintendo fanboy ontop of all that so it's pretty easy for me to get distracted by whatever Nintendo is doing and lose a year of good PC games here and there. But that's what Steam sales are for

[Dabombinable]

The OG Xbox had a 160GB HDD? Huh... I coulda sworn I pulled a 10GB drive outta one.

 

Anyway, I grew increasingly frustrated with the closed nature of consoles and the fact that they were getting so stagnant, so I switched to the PC.

I upgraded mine. It now has a 250GB server grade HDD in it.

[Pooherino ツ]

it was 1994 and i put together a P54C Pentium 90 racing the Papyrus NASCAR

with a flight stick (no wheels then) and Lucas Arts Tie Fighter.

still had it until last year, someone wanted some old tech for a museum and i

gave it to them ($2400 total build in 1994).

used a SB sound card and 1MB RAM (4x 256KB) 3x ISA and 3x PCI busses and

1MB HDD (5.25") in vintage beige with a turbo switch! Dos 6.22 and win 3.11.

$2400 in 1994. WOWWWW! im pretty new to pc build, and I still think old hardware are cool

[Pooherino ツ]

Well one of my earliest memories is myself playing Pajama Sam or Spy Fox on my parents' computer in Pennsylvania. We only lived there for the first few years of my life, so I had to be pretty dang young. When we moved, I remember at all of the school book fairs they would sell games like Roller Coaster Tycoon and LEGO Racers. I remember at age 6 or 7 or so, my parents moved the family computer into my room for some reason, and every single day I would wake up at maybe 4 or 5 AM just so I could play LEGO Island before school started. As I grew up my parents bought me a GameBoy Advance so I played on that a lot too. I remember one time I was with my dad at Staples and I saw Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 + expansion packs, and my dad bought it for me and I got super into that for a long time. Until second grade, I didn't even own a home game console so the computer was all there really was besides my gameboy. When I was in fourth grade my friend got me into the MMORPG MapleStory, which caused me to get really into PC gaming for the following years. We had consoles, but there were always better games on PC. 

 

I think joining the PC master race didn't REALLY start until Portal came out. I went out and bought it, and it ran pretty horribly on my computer. It was the very first game that I added to my Steam account back in 5th grade. I wanted to know why it ran so poorly, so at that point I just watched tons and tons of YouTube videos about computers and stuff. I remember watching Logan back when he was with TigerDirect. After that I pretty much always understood that the PC would always have the better experience and I even tried to convince my parents to let me build a PC in seventh grade. 

ur actually about my age. Wow, I wish I learned about PC a lot sooner. So many people here either got into pc building at an early age, or older people.

[ryantakesnaps]

My dad got me into it as a youngin'. I remember when the internet was all text but I mostly played games on windows 3.1

[pagani123]

started on pc when i was really young then went to consoles especially portable ones  then went back to pc although i will still play on my old consoles when i have people over because cant really do split screen on a computer 

[MrDynamicMan]

I dabbled in Xbox 360 for a bit, but sacked because I found the hardware so interesting. Steam was a massive pull qs well, especially multiplayer and the communities. My first laptop was when I was 9ish and it was a crappy $300 Toshiba thing. But it could run Minecraft at 18 fps so it was a gaming beast. I then got ripped off for a $800 HP laptop, and got so pissed off when it performed worse than my Toshiba. Then I forayed into the Xbox for a couple years but learned up and now have my current rig.

[Techicolors]

got into it when a friend of mines helped me choose out parts for my rig a few years back. prior to that i was a pretty casual console gamer but i never heard of any pc games like cs:go. in fact looking back i paid way too much for console games. now i don't pay very much on pc since most games go on sale. 

 

my first rig changed quite a bit. used to have a fx-4300 and a 650Ti. kept me going for 2 or so years. now i upped with the rig i have now (in my signature). some of those parts though did come from my first rig, like the RAM. i wouldn't upgrade if i didn't like pc gaming, and so i went the extra mile. 

 

i still go back to consoles for exclusives and stuff but now i play most games on pc. 

[LimmyLammyLlama]

My journey into PC gaming started in 1991 when my parents asked me to choose between a Sega Genesis or a Super Nintendo, I chose the Genesis. Fast forward a bit I found myself at 5-6 years old not really knowing how to use a PC (because DOS) and being annoying and constantly asking my mom to install games on the family PC, she was a legend about it and was always enthusiastic about my interest in more thoughtful games. I remember being fascinated by the magic that was DOS as all I was seeing was the most complex thing ever that my 5 year old brain couldn't get over, nowadays I realise it was simple C> A: followed by A> Install but it got me interested. 

 

Now It wasn't until I was about 14/15 years old that I actually got my first computer and that was more because I'm a very awkward person when it comes to being bought things, so every offer from Birthdays to Christmas I would refuse the offer to be bought a PC or anything really. So I finally saved up enough to buy a epic rig.. In my mind it was, but it was terrible in hindsight. If I recall the spec was;

• Intel Pentium 4 HT 3Ghz
• 1GB RAM
• ATi Radeon 9600 XT

It was functional for 2003-ish I think. It ran games like Doom 3 alright and things like that, but after spending £1200 on this thing as I went pre-built off the shelf at some extortionate retailer in the UK, I kinda lost interest as I felt it wasn't as good as I thought it would be.

 

Cue the next 7-8 years of dabbling in PC gaming while spending most of my time on PlayStation 2 and then later Xbox 360. At this point I gave PC gaming another shot but I was out of a job, studying and had very little money so I sold the Xbox 360 and put whatever savings I had into building a new gaming rig as I wanted to recapture the love I had for PC's as a kid. So I built a new rig;

• AMD Phenom II X4 955BE 3.2Ghz
• 8GB RAM
• AMD Radeon HD 6850 

This went better I got into PC gaming far more this time as I was having a blast playing all those games I heard so much about like Crysis and that was insane fun, though I eventually ran out of games I had missed out on and by this point my GPU wasn't really running the current crop of games very well which ended my main enthusiasm, that said I still play indie games almost 100% exclusively on PC. Once my enthusiasm died out and I was left with the prospect of spend more to upgrade the rig or just be lazy and buy an Xbox One, I bought an Xbox One. This time it felt different as in the past the consoles were always good to me but Xbox One just felt wrong like I would have gotten more for my money had I just upgraded the rig, so here I am on attempt three of my grand PC gaming adventure.

 

My spec as of writing this is;

• Intel i7-6700K 4Ghz
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance 2400Mhz DDR4
• Zotac AMP! Extreme 980Ti 6GB
• ASUS Maximus VIII Hero
• 2x Seagate 1TB SSHD
• Antec TruePower Classic 750W Gold
• Corsair Carbide 300R

I went all in as every other time I have tried to enjoy PC gaming the way my 5 year old self did I have half-assed the build. Be it buying pre-built or buying mid-to-low end parts and I think that has a lot to do with it. I can tell you already that I get so much joy playing something like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive a game that my old rig would get 90FPS in and seeing that frame counter hit 500+. It's amazing to breeze games like Crysis 3 and run synthetic benchmarks for the hell of it. I actually feel like this is the time I finally crack it and break into a scene I have always adored, it feels good.

 

Hah.. Just reading through this post and I come off as such an impulsive moron that can't make up his mind, but I don't care I posted this more as a tale of how striving for something and never quite capturing it made me feel and react. I still have a space for consoles as they have been there every time PC gaming didn't quite capture my attention, but this time I think I am firmly on the path to being part of the PC Master Race.. Finally. 

[Watsyurdeal]

Got a gaming computer as a graduation present in high school, never looked back.

[Admiral Naismith]

I was born into it. My parents have always been a bit more... progressive about computers. By the time I was born we always had two computers in the house (more than the average at the time) and they used them extensively. I played games on these because we didn't have consoles that weren't from the Atari 2600 days.

[iamdarkyoshi]

Actually, it was quite ironically the point where I realized that a pc the same price as a wii could run a wii emulator...

[Dabombinable]

My journey into PC gaming started in 1991 when my parents asked me to choose between a Sega Genesis or a Super Nintendo, I chose the Genesis. Fast forward a bit I found myself at 5-6 years old not really knowing how to use a PC (because DOS) and being annoying and constantly asking my mom to install games on the family PC, she was a legend about it and was always enthusiastic about my interest in more thoughtful games. I remember being fascinated by the magic that was DOS as all I was seeing was the most complex thing ever that my 5 year old brain couldn't get over, nowadays I realise it was simple C> A: followed by A> Install but it got me interested. 

 

Now It wasn't until I was about 14/15 years old that I actually got my first computer and that was more because I'm a very awkward person when it comes to being bought things, so every offer from Birthdays to Christmas I would refuse the offer to be bought a PC or anything really. So I finally saved up enough to buy a epic rig.. In my mind it was, but it was terrible in hindsight. If I recall the spec was;

• Intel Pentium 4 HT 3Ghz
• 1GB RAM
• ATi Radeon 9600 XT

It was functional for 2003-ish I think. It ran games like Doom 3 alright and things like that, but after spending £1200 on this thing as I went pre-built off the shelf at some extortionate retailer in the UK, I kinda lost interest as I felt it wasn't as good as I thought it would be.

 

Cue the next 7-8 years of dabbling in PC gaming while spending most of my time on PlayStation 2 and then later Xbox 360. At this point I gave PC gaming another shot but I was out of a job, studying and had very little money so I sold the Xbox 360 and put whatever savings I had into building a new gaming rig as I wanted to recapture the love I had for PC's as a kid. So I built a new rig;

• AMD Phenom II X4 955BE 3.2Ghz
• 8GB RAM
• AMD Radeon HD 6850 

This went better I got into PC gaming far more this time as I was having a blast playing all those games I heard so much about like Crysis and that was insane fun, though I eventually ran out of games I had missed out on and by this point my GPU wasn't really running the current crop of games very well which ended my main enthusiasm, that said I still play indie games almost 100% exclusively on PC. Once my enthusiasm died out and I was left with the prospect of spend more to upgrade the rig or just be lazy and buy an Xbox One, I bought an Xbox One. This time it felt different as in the past the consoles were always good to me but Xbox One just felt wrong like I would have gotten more for my money had I just upgraded the rig, so here I am on attempt three of my grand PC gaming adventure.

 

My spec as of writing this is;

• Intel i7-6700K 4Ghz
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance 2400Mhz DDR4
• Zotac AMP! Extreme 980Ti 6GB
• ASUS Maximus VIII Hero
• 2x Seagate 1TB SSHD
• Antec TruePower Classic 750W Gold
• Corsair Carbide 300R

I went all in as every other time I have tried to enjoy PC gaming the way my 5 year old self did I have half-assed the build. Be it buying pre-built or buying mid-to-low end parts and I think that has a lot to do with it. I can tell you already that I get so much joy playing something like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive a game that my old rig would get 90FPS in and seeing that frame counter hit 500+. It's amazing to breeze games like Crysis 3 and run synthetic benchmarks for the hell of it. I actually feel like this is the time I finally crack it and break into a scene I have always adored, it feels good.

 

Hah.. Just reading through this post and I come off as such an impulsive moron that can't make up his mind, but I don't care I posted this more as a tale of how striving for something and never quite capturing it made me feel and react. I still have a space for consoles as they have been there every time PC gaming didn't quite capture my attention, but this time I think I am firmly on the path to being part of the PC Master Race.. Finally. 

Considering the upgrade gap and the fact that you were willing to save up for your rigs, you weren't really impulsive. I mysefl used went 14 years without upgrading my desktop, because I wanted to save for something really good. Of course I managhed to do that, but I got screwed with my particular GTX 970 and the Corsair CX850M (put it under anything more than a light looad, and it has really bad coil whine).

[Sir Asvald]

Got bored of consoles. Had enough of crappy 1080i crap.. Also my friends were on PC.

[TheMastr13]

Linus is pretty much who got me into all of it

[Dabombinable]

Got bored of consoles. Had enough of crappy 1080i crap.. Also my friends were on PC.

Now now, when the Xbox came out 1080i was actually quite good-if you could find a screen with RCA component input and a 1080 resolution. Failing that there was always 720p.

[Trik'Stari]

You can all blame @LinusTech for me being here. I kept seeing his videos on youtube, decided to watch them, and boom here I am.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secretly hoping Linus responds with a snarky, trolly comment.