What was your first computer?

[Syraz]

Some 486 pc is all I remember from back then

[FranBunnyFFXII]

I was a little kid when I built my first PC, this was back when 100mhz was pretty good. Pentium processor.
The case had an actual working Turbo button.

[Thony]

Myr 1st build which im using now is in my signature
Playing Watch Dogs, LoL, WoT and CS:GO, impatiently waiting for GTA V.

[pizzadave2]

I think it was like an A64 3500+, 2 gigs of RAM and a 6800GT. I don't remember the rest of the specs though. It was a beast at the time. That was the first PC I ever built from scratch. I remember throwing in a Voodoo2 or Voodoo4 in an old Compaq to play Soldier of Fortune. That game was the shit.

[GrandBandit]

My first build was decent, just far too budget and I cut too many corners.

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor

MOBO: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard

RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

GPU: Asus Radeon R9 270 2GB DirectCU II Video Card

CASE: Rosewill CHALLENGER ATX Mid Tower Case
PSU: Some cheap 400w I got at best buy way back when, wasn't modular or 80+...wtf.

[Grrizz]

First self build;

PIII 566MHz (while I waited for my 666MHz to arrive )

Geforce 2 pro

128MB RAM (I think?)

40GB Maxtor HDD (I think? could have been 10-20GB even)

Everything else was beige and generic

[Sousuke]

My First proper PC Build back in December 2010.

 

Intel i5 760 2.8GHz Socket 1156 8MB L3 Cache
Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz/PC3-12800 XMS3 i5 Memory Kit CL9(9-9-9-24) 1.65V
250GB Seagate Barracuda 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
LiteOn DVD-RW SATA Drive
Asus P7P55 LX P55 Socket 1156 8 Channel Audio Out ATX Motherboard
PALIT GTS 450 1024MB GDDR5 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card
Be Quiet 530W Pure Power PSU
Antec 300 Three Hundred Case
Windows 7 Home Premium

 

Tinkered with plenty of machines in the past upgrading them re-building them but this was the first I built 100% from new.

[LapX]

This beauty.

[AvoK95]

Pentium D 2.8GHz 

Generic 512MB DDR2 533MHz RAM

8GB+40GB Enhanced IDE HDD

Intel D102GGC2

Nvidia 7300GT 

Generic PSU

Generic Case

CDRW

 

Upgraded it to:

2GB RAM 667MHz

250GB SATA HDD

DVDRW

GPU died

 

Then built:

i3 540

DH55HC

6GB RAM

GTX560Ti

InWin Commander 750W 

Thermalmaster case 

1TB HDD

 

Then built my current rig in sig.

[juretrn]

That's cute.

My first one was a teardown and rebuild of a HP Pavilion 8250.

Pentium II 300mhz

48MB RAM

20GB Hard Drive

I think I recycled my Voodoo 3 2000 until I got a random nvidia card shortly after.

Second build was a Duron 1100. That machine was a monster.

All time favorite processor was an Athlon XP 2400+, back when AMD made Intel it's bitch.

Had an Athlon 64, those were amazing. A 2 GHz one simply demolished 3 GHz pentium 4s. Hard to imagine these days. after buying ATI, it kind of went downhill for them. Such a shame.

[rutwik]

Well I first built my pc in

My fifteen in 2011

It was as this

Cpu-i5 2300

Mobo- Intel dh61ww

VCard- nvidia 9500gt

Harddrive- Seagate baracuda 7200rpm 1tb

Optical drive- Samsung DVD burner

Monitor-Samsung 23 inch something

Mouse- iball aero

Keyboard- iball

Speakers- Dell

Ups - APC 600 watt

[BiG StroOnZ]

Was a long time ago, I was 12 years old. In the summer there used to be a huge convention center where they had these gigantic computer part meets with vendors. 

 

I picked out a 600MHz Athlon Thunderbird CPU, a Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro GeForce graphics card and a no name brand Bluish-Green Acrylic Case that was entirely "see through" at the meet. My father and his "hacker friend" selected the rest of the components. We went back to the friend's house and we put it together (they basically told me where to place everything, what to plug in, what to screw in etc.). Took it home afterwards and played Diablo II on it for probably 8 hours straight. 

[aquiesse]

Taking me back a bit here but as memory serves it was something like this.

P3 500 (slot 1), 20GB hard drive, 256mb RAM, S3 Savage GPU running on AGPx4, Windows 98se.

Believe it or not it was top end at the time around mid 1999 and RAM was running at about £1.00 per MB

How times have changed

[EMENCII]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/6TJqrH

oh, has also red leds from nzxt... ^^

 

-EMENCII

[toughtrasher]

Had a Pentium 3. All I remember

 

I called it Jeffrey

[Lord Gaben]

Current PC

 

Bitfenix Shinobi Mid Tower Windowed

 

ASUS Z97-PRO

 

Intel i7-4770k

 

16GB Kingston HyperX Blu 1600mhz

 

1TB WD Blue 7200rpm 3.5"

 

ASUS GeForce GTX 770 DirectCUII OC

 

LG DVD Writer, I don't know the model and don't care it's a optical drive

[FatalityDiablo]

My first build was April 2013, although I was trained to build one throu videos that linus has made over the last few years was so much fun

 

Edit: specs are listed below.

[LemonSpice]

What was your first pc that your built? What were your problems while building and recommendations for future builders.

This is an open ended chat so post away

[gundershot]

First PC I built is my current one. My recommendation for new builders would be to spend a LOT of time researching, and ask around on forums, it really pays off.

[Polyvalent]

First PC I built had a single core Athlon and a really old ati card, and 2x1GB sticks of RAM.  Played counter strike like a boss.  Recommendation for future builders: build what makes you happy, not what is gonna impress people or be the biggest epeen.

 

It really is great to see so many first time builders here who have just recently gotten into PC gaming.  It makes me happy that people are keeping PC building and tweaking alive and well.

[OfficialJsP]

my first build is my current and i had no problems at all started up first time

[LemonSpice]

My first build is my current one. The first problem was the aio an h100i was dead on arrival so my pc would die every five seconds and shut down. My recommendation build what you want and if you are using an open air gpu cooler buy extra fans

[Interfectorem]

My first is my current one in my signature. I was actually very afraid I would screw something up with the installation of Windows and Drivers. The actual "putting-stuff-together" part was very easy and straightforward. Since I had watched like maybe 5 hours worth of YouTube building tutorials, I had that part covered. But when it came the time to install Windows, I found out it was actually drop dead friggin' easy. I just popped in the CD into the CD-ROM drive (I heard you can install off a USB too, but I wasn't patient enough). So yea, installing Windows was drop dead easy, contrary to what I had though. Installing drivers was drop dead easy too, Asus had all their motherboard drivers nicely labeled and orginized.

[CoronaBlue]

It has been so long that I don't even remember the specs on that piece of junk. I was totally lost when trying to select components on my own, and my cable management was bad. Seriously bad.

 

So, advice:

1. Research and understand what each piece of hardware does and how they interact. Otherwise you might end up disillusioned when 16GB of RAM doesn't make your computer run fast like you thought it would.
2. Realize that you can very rarely just look at the hardware specs and choose the best product. This is doubly true with graphics cards. Benchmarks are your friends.
3. Anti-static wrist band.
4. Cable management is key. If you do nothing else well, do your cable management well.

Hmm, the first two don't really pertain to the building part itself.  :huh:

[Polyvalent]

Oh another tip is don't build computers like I do, you wont have the same luck.

 

I build on my carpet, with no antistatic wristband, usually with a diet coke sitting very close to where I'm building.