What brought YOU to PC gaming and building?

[halomaster8000]

I was just really curious as to what brought people into this hobby. For me, it was because I started to get sick of Microsoft's crap, I wanted a gaming system that would let me play online for free, games that weren't overpriced and more storage and uses. I first went over to my pops when I was in early year 8 and I managed to find some parts being a core 2 quad (I forgot the model) and a gigabyte motherboard that didn't work. I ended up buying an Aussie p5 (something something) and I had put it together. I found a xt 2600x lying around and a case that had a broken front panel. It's was crap but I loved it and maintained it until I could afford something flash. It was cool and even though it would bring me some days of non stop rage filling troubleshooting. I don't even ever remember seeing one of those errors that windows 10 always manages to do. I remember having to open the case though because the airflow was crappy and that ATI card was very hot... And very slow. It even had a tiny little fan ?. Then one day I managed to buy myself a decent system with some overkill parts.

 

I bought a r9 270

Pentium g4560

Some Chinese case

AsRock b250 fatal1ty k4

A corsair FORCE Series 3 120GB

And some fans. Then I went from there. This build took me months to save up and a remember having the piles of parts just sitting there and me opening them up to check if their still in there ? (what? I was excited). I had built multiple computers for family and fixed multiple computers for family aswell. So that helped me out as they would buy me a part. So what's your story?

[dizmo]

My dad. He loves games, bought a gaming computer when I was a kid. Then he'd constantly upgrade it, so I just took parts out of his upgrade pile when I built my first system when I was 19. After that I just bought my own stuff.

[DrMacintosh]

I don't even remember  

 

World of Warships! Played back in closed alpha on my 2011 iMac with a Radeon HD 6520M dGPU with 512MB of VRAM  

(back when an entry level iMac came with a dGPU )

 

Could only play at 1080p on medium detail settings so I upgraded to the rig I built and use now with a 4690k and an R9 380 4GB. 

 

(oddly enough my iMac still has more RAM than my PC @ 12GB vs 4GB)

[divito]

My dad worked at Digital and that early access to PCs just lead to a natural interest in them.

Memory is a little fuzzy but it would have started around 1990-1992 (so I would have been 4-6).  We had a couple PCs in that time frame, DOS-based obviously, which included my interest in a game called The Legend of Tully Bodine which came out in 1995, among some others like Pitfall. I tried searching for the models the PCs would have been but haven't had much luck. 

We went from DOS to Windows 95 so I missed using 3.1, but the next PC I remember having was a Digital one with a Pentium Pro 200Mhz. I was stuck on that PC until 2001 when I bought my first "gaming" PC with a P4 1.7Ghz, 512MB of RAM (though I think I upgraded to 1GB), 60GB hard drive and a GeForce 2 MX 64MB. 

The further I got into the gaming community and online life, I learned more about what was out there for custom PCs, and I started building my own after that.

 

[halomaster8000]

3 minutes ago, divito said:

My dad worked at Digital and that early access to PCs just lead to a natural interest in them.

Memory is a little fuzzy but it would have started around 1990-1992 (so I would have been 4-6).  We had a couple PCs in that time frame, DOS-based obviously, which included my interest in a game called The Legend of Tully Bodine which came out in 1995, among some others like Pitfall. I tried searching for the models the PCs would have been but haven't had much luck. 

We went from DOS to Windows 95 so I missed using 3.1, but the next PC I remember having was a Digital one with a Pentium Pro 200Mhz. I was stuck on that PC until 2001 when I bought my first "gaming" PC with a P4 1.7Ghz, 512MB of RAM (though I think I upgraded to 1GB), 60GB hard drive and a GeForce 2 MX 64MB. 

The further I got into the gaming community and online life, I learned more about what was out there for custom PCs, and I started building my own after that.

 

Damn, I bet the technology has improved super fast for you. The furthest back I remember is windows XP. I used to try and play halo on it ? when I was 5. I missed the golden age of retro games ? I just got the improved AAA part. I wish I was alive when the Xbox came out and halo came out. I wonder what I would have thought of it. 

[Princess Luna]

It's just where I always played games on.

[halomaster8000]

5 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

It's just where I always played games on.

Me and my friend used to fight about what's better in grade 5. I used to say that Xbox always had better graphics. I would say that Xbox was so much better and he would say that it's stupid. Then one day I came over and played his PC and I played games that weren't 15fps for the first time in my life... Now here I am lol

[tatte]

One of my older brothers got the first PC in the house, and I'm assuming he made it possible for me to eventually get my own PC and upgrades to it. Being young I would of course happily use anything I could get my hands on, categorically I still do. No one kept handing me new consoles over the years, but my PC grew with me. First full build followed ten or so years after the first contact, years surrounding that were also my personal peak for the PC hype.

[LienusLateTips]

1. Parents taught me about computer stuff (Used to work at MSI one of them)

 

2. Cousin builds PCs

 

3. Uncle/Aunt computer enthusiasts 

 

4. It's fun

[LogicalDrm]

Gaming? Well, we had cousin who owned Super Nintendo and later Win95 with Action Supercross, Worms, Tommi Mäkinen Rally and so on. So when our family got PC with Win95, we started to get those kind of games. Later Age of Empires 2, Settlers 3 also from family friends influence. And then some fps when WinXP got into picture with last prebuild bought by our family (AthlonXP, Radeon 9600+).

 

Building? At that point (2002/3 maybe) I started reading new PC magazine and get more into hardware. So much that I would do upgrades on that prebuild. I actually build first full custom 2008 after moving out from parents. When neither my laptop nor that upgraded prebuild (it had Athlon64 something and GT 8600 GTS) could run games I was playing at the time (BF2 and CoD4). My DVD drive is only thing still somewhat working from that 2008 build (actually mobo, RAM, cooler are too, just not in this build).

[Underi]

My first touch with games was back in 2005-2006 or so when I played a rally game on my parents Windows XP. After that I got a PS2 on which I played Ratchet and Clank all day all night, figuring out what to do since I didn't know English back then.

 

I got into building and PC hardware just before 7th grade (4-5 years ago) and went on some kind of a PC building course at the local University of Applied Sciences. I met my new best friend there who I talked with in teamspeak for the next 3 years, until he got into trouble for DDoSing city and government sites and Finnish banks. Basically all of his friends (including me) created their own group and left him out. We still talk sometimes.

[Valentyn]

My old man. I was 7 years old when he took me a computer convention in Port Elizabeth in South Africa. Everything blew my mind; and we left with a Creative 3D Blaster; a joystick, and Mechwarrior 2. 

It changed everything for me.

[PurplDrank]

On 4/7/2018 at 6:53 PM, halomaster8000 said:

I was just really curious as to what brought people into this hobby. For me, it was because I started to get sick of Microsoft's crap, I wanted a gaming system that would let me play online for free, games that weren't overpriced and more storage and uses. I first went over to my pops when I was in early year 8 and I managed to find some parts being a core 2 quad (I forgot the model) and a gigabyte motherboard that didn't work. I ended up buying an Aussie p5 (something something) and I had put it together. I found a xt 2600x lying around and a case that had a broken front panel. It's was crap but I loved it and maintained it until I could afford something flash. It was cool and even though it would bring me some days of non stop rage filling troubleshooting. I don't even ever remember seeing one of those errors that windows 10 always manages to do. I remember having to open the case though because the airflow was crappy and that ATI card was very hot... And very slow. It even had a tiny little fan ?. Then one day I managed to buy myself a decent system with some overkill parts.

 

I bought a r9 270

Pentium g4560

Some Chinese case

AsRock b250 fatal1ty k4

A corsair FORCE Series 3 120GB

And some fans. Then I went from there. This build took me months to save up and a remember having the piles of parts just sitting there and me opening them up to check if their still in there ? (what? I was excited). I had built multiple computers for family and fixed multiple computers for family aswell. So that helped me out as they would buy me a part. So what's your story?

So i've always been a mainly a pc gamer. Ive went rogue and played console games and bought a console once or twice but ive always enjoyed pc more. Especially multiplayer fps games. I started out playing Unreal Tournament 1999 back when i was a toddler, from there i went on inheriting each of older my brothers gaming pc's when he bought or made a new one. I actually didn't build my own PC until Battlefield 3 (so 2011, i was 19 or 20 years old at that time.). That was a very good build for me to run Battlefield 3. in fact a guy on this forum helped me with the build, i dont know his name or if he still comes on here but god bless him whoever he is. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

If there was any real point where I was showed what PC gaming was, it was probably way back in elementary school when there was a computer lab (probably with original Apple II machines) and my parents owned a computer. Though PC gaming was basically just another platform to play on, and way back when, PC games weren't exactly any better than console ones (le gasp!). But I do remember playing games like Crusader: No Remorse, One Must Fall 2097, and Quake. That all picked up around 2001 though when I finally had my own PC instead of a shared one. And I tinkered with that one for a bit before my dad built me a custom one two years later that I've also tinkered with.

 

Though it was a friend in high school that really perked my interest in custom built PCs.

[Aeres]

The main things that pulled me towards PC gaming were Minecraft and my old laptop that could only runs things like CSGO but it was really good fun.