What was your first computer?

[skyress3000]

On my first build (what I'm running right now), one of the nuts of my CPU cooler wasn't screwed down for many months because it was almost impossible. Recently, I finally fixed this issue and made my Ultrawide Festival video about it, which improved thermals by 20-30C.

[aajjeee]

my favourite part was forgeting to buy a power supply and be stuck with my whole computer set up but unable to power while the warranty of my parts slowly faded away

[KemoKa]

It was an Athlon 64 X2 and it ran Ubuntu for two years before being replaced.

That is my only happy memory of my first computer.

[Reagy]

I blew it up. Melted that Athlon and killed the board, PSU went with it in an amazing bang.

 

It got replaced by a P4 build that I later clocked to 5.2ghz on just air, it was stable somehow.

[drwiggles]

I turned the bit that connects my cpu cooler to my mother board too much and the thread broke off and got stuck.

One corner of my cpu cooler is still connected with a zip tie.......It works.

[Security]

The Corsair X-Fi Xtreme Gamer card has pins on the back which you can fit a 4 pin floppy power connector on too and me thinking the card needs power and it fitting I put the connector on there. When I first booted the machine a cloud of smoke came from it as the floppy power cable melted... That gave me one hell of a scare, especially since it wasn't just my first build but also the first PC I paid for myself as well, and €1200-ish was allot of money for me at that time.

 

Surprisingly only the cable was damaged and everything else was fine.

[That_Random_Guy]

My first build. Was a couple years ago and its my daily pc as of now until i retire it in feb. My budget was like 800 us dollars. Didnt know that certain sockets took certain cpus and well i was quite surprised when it didnt fit. Then got a new cpu and found out i bricked the motherboard. Learned alot from it though and im looking forward to my dream pc build in feb. Gonna be sick hopefully. All depends on how i save this winter.

[skkane]

My first computer was a 486 DX/2 i think. I remember the windows95 install that I had with it. 2 boxes full of floppy disk's, insert one by one as the OS installed

 

 

 

[Walker998]

i started from my hp pavillion which i upgraded part by part, first i started the case since the one before that was a mini atx case so not the easiest to work in for a newbie and there was a ton of dust built up for only a year of use, i ended up getting a corsair carbide 330r because they didn't sell the fractal design r4 in store (maplins) and like me getting a mad catz cyborg v.7 keyboard before and to a lesser extent asus a88x gamer motherboard (the second thing i upgraded) i was impatient and wanted to get it instore instead of waiting to get it online.

besides needing help with the motherboard screws not going in properly due to the angle i did everything fine besides cable management because the cables were too short;

for the motherboard i believed i needed to get a new heatsink without knowing i had to remove the backplate so i got a cooler master 412s and with some help installed it. the main rookie mistake was i put the ram in the first grey slot meaning that the pc didn't detect it but besides that it was smooth sailing besides the problem where i remove the heatsink and a few of the standoffs screwed out with the heatsink, turns out the bolts were loose for both times i had to do it;

by the way this all happened less than half a year ago but for a now 14 year old it was impressive for me to do it even if before i had taken apart and cleaned old consoles then to put them back (mostly)

[booty_jose]

I want to start a topic about everyone's first PC 

 

Spec list of mine:

 

CPU: pentium 4 @ 2.8ghz 

 

MOBO: dell 210882

 

GPU: integrated

 

Storage: 160gb WD server drive

 

RAM: 1gb DDR2 833mhz

 

PSU: 250 watt none modular power supply

 

Case: some dell case

 

Monitor: average dell monitor

 

OS: Win XP Home Edition

[matx13]

What is the story of the first computer you ever built? How did it go, nice and easy or crazy and stressful? 

 

We all have one of those stories. The first time for me was pretty fun actually and quite relaxing. I was going through it pretty easy until I had gotten to having to plug everything in, at that point I wanted to cry because I stuck in my GPU before I plugged in the power switch and led controls and so I only had this tight little space and I don't have the smallest of hands or nimblest of fingers so it was painful. Now I know I could have easily taken out the GPU, but I was just far too psyched and really wanted to get this computer built, install windows and start playing games, you could say I took the hasty route, so since I was being impatient I had gotten all of my computer built and ready to test and I plug it in, turn the kill switch on and press the power button and you would never of guess the most amazing thing happened, THE COMPUTER DID NOT TURN ON! I know I am just as surprised as you haha, no anyway so I opened it back up and completely forgot to plug in the 18 pin connector, I mean I was about to break down and all for forgetting to plug in one thing (one big thing) so from then on I learned my lesson to never rush a build and always plan out and take your time it is always the way too go!

 

Please put your stories below and Enjoy! 

[ZombieLloyd]

The first PC I built originally started as a gaming build, chose a Be Quiet L8 PSU and ended up with a computer I'm now planning to use for work.

 

*EDIT* I'm now working on an actual gaming build.

 

*EDIT2* Don't forget to follow your own post

[Shimejii]

it started when my current laptop could not keep up with the games i am currently playing and its in my sig

[EposVox]

Mine actually ended up being quite stressful.

 

My first PC was a Hotwheels Windows 98 desktop. That 4GB hard drive my mom added in seemed huge.

 

Then in late middle school, I started getting my grandparents' old desktops to tinker with. Ran with the first one & Windows XP for a while, but then something went wrong and I tried to "fix" it.

Ended up with 3 PCs completely torn apart, parts all over my carpeted floor, couldn't get something working.

My mom took it to a co-worker, who salvaged what he could and built me a new computer with two hard drives (seemed badass at the time), a free game and a couple extra parts.

 

From that I learned a TON about building/working on PCs - though at the time it was stuff we don't see today; IDE cables, AGP slots, etc.

 

That started my #PCMasterRace path of hardware interests.

[corbetto]

The first pc i built took 1 hour for me to figure out that i didnt have cpu power plugged in. Derp

[DebatED Nothing]

My first PC is the one I'm still using. The build itself was fine, I had some friends helping me who knew what they were doing (we did forget the power LED though) however the part list made by a friend was questionable. It had the current Mobo, RAM, CPU and Corsair SSD, however the GPU was a Radeon HD 7850... Yes, that's right, on a "gaming" PC I spent less on my GPU than on my CPU (or at least almost the same amount). The build had an estimated draw of 400 watts maximum, so we bought a 750 watt psu...

[Noyu]

....I wanted to cry because I stuck in my GPU before I plugged in the power switch and led controls and so I only had this tight little space and I don't have the smallest of hands or nimblest of fingers so it was painful..........

ditto here.

 

but I was "cool, calm, and collected" that I decided to remove both my GPU and my WiFi adapter. ahahahaha

I just built my first rig about 5 days ago. Was pretty happy when everything worked fine and booted from the first try.

After a few hours, I was actually on windows 10 and stuff (trying out edge etc etc) when I was researching fans for the Hyper 212x.

Then and there I realized that I installed the cooler the other way (instead of blowing to the exhaust, I t'was blowing to the PSU)

.....to be continued....

[RevoltTrain]

My current PC. All I've done is add the second GPU and add another HDD from when it was originally built

[KrakensKitchen]

I actually thought about building a PC back in early 2014 (I originally wanted an Xbone solely for Forza Motorsport 5) but only until November this year I was able to build it.

 

So in October 2015 I got the parts and managed to assemble it together but the motherboard died during the process (I think it was faulty from the beginning) and that delayed my ascension until November (Just imagine a bunch of components just lying on your desk in your bedroom for a month). In November I finally got the replacement motherboard and everything worked and booted fine the first time however the WD Blue drive I got brand new was all along DOA so I thought I put in this 8 year old Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 I found in a Seagate Desktop backup thing I salvaged would do fine until I got the replacement.

 

Bad idea, the Seagate soon started to die on me and soon enough it gave up and I lost some of the games I installed from Steam earlier, GTA V was the biggest loss since It took 17 hours on my crappy ADSL connection to download 

[matx13]

ditto here.

 

but I was "cool, calm, and collected" that I decided to remove both my GPU and my WiFi adapter. ahahahaha

I just built my first rig about 5 days ago. Was pretty happy when everything worked fine and booted from the first try.

After a few hours, I was actually on windows 10 and stuff (trying out edge etc etc) when I was researching fans for the Hyper 212x.

Then and there I realized that I installed the cooler the other way (instead of blowing to the exhaust, I t'was blowing to the PSU)

.....to be continued....

Hahaha loved that one!

[matx13]

I actually thought about building a PC back in early 2014 (I originally wanted an Xbone solely for Forza Motorsport 5) but only until November this year I was able to build it.

 

So in October 2015 I got the parts and managed to assemble it together but the motherboard died during the process (I think it was faulty from the beginning) and that delayed my ascension until November (Just imagine a bunch of components just lying on your desk in your bedroom for a month). In November I finally got the replacement motherboard and everything worked and booted fine the first time however the WD Blue drive I got brand new was all along DOA so I thought I put in this 8 year old Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 I found in a Seagate Desktop backup thing I salvaged would do fine until I got the replacement.

 

Bad idea, the Seagate soon started to die on me and soon enough it gave up and I lost some of the games I installed from Steam earlier, GTA V was the biggest loss since It took 17 hours on my crappy ADSL connection to download 

Silence for a fallen brother. That sucks man hope it works out!

[Quincy15]

My current PC is my first build. (Spec in my profile) I did not start with a budget build and went balls to the wall and bought some of the most expensive components I could and amazingly I did not screw it up

[TIM74UK]

Back in the day lol First computer I built was a 386... That was when the motherboard had no integrated anything. You had to plug in IDE cards just to connect your HD.

 

At a time when the soundblaster was the biggest card you had in your system, and GPU's didn't even exist

 

The system had 500MB hard disk (which I might add was huge for the day, sizes of HD could be as low as 20mb) and the processor ran at 16 or 33hz, I had 1mb of ram but if you had 2mb of ram you were packing 

 

Games of choice of that day were Xenon 2 / Sopwith / Indy 500 / Populas

[ZombieLloyd]

 (Just imagine a bunch of components just lying on your desk in your bedroom for a month). 

 

This is my current situation. I've got my case, motherboard and ram and I can't get the CPU, PSU, Hard Drive and OS until the 31st of this month

[Quincy15]

Bad idea, the Seagate soon started to die on me and soon enough it gave up and I lost some of the games I installed from Steam earlier, GTA V was the biggest loss since It took 17 hours on my crappy ADSL connection to download 

I take for granted the high speed broadband in London, takes about 30 minutes to download ;-(