First PC Build?

Mehphisto

Weaksauce
Joined
May 19, 2009
Messages
96
What is the first PC you ever built all by yourself?

I built an AMD rig around 2000?, I honestly don't recall the specs, and that newegg account is long gone, but I fondly remember being terrified I had a dead motherboard as the clear cmos jumper was set at clear out of the box and until I read about trying to reset the cmos, I didn't notice it.
 
first full custom build for me was a duron 600 that i promptly OC'd to 1133 as that was as high as the voltage limit on the mobo would allow, i think it was KT7A (KT133A). had the second highest oc i could find online.
 
My first builds were cobbling together the best parts from second hand store PCs back in the mid 90s. I also did a bit of dumpster diving at a PC repair shop and got quite a few good things.
 
integrated AMD 386DX40 on some PC Chips motherboard
8MB FPM memory (wow!)
Trident 512kb ISA video card
original SoundBlaster Pro ISA sound card
Seagate 270MB IDE hard drive
Creative CD-ROM drive plugged into sound card lol
DOS 6.22 only, no Windows
flimsy AT tower case with LED speed display

It was a beast, and how I wish I still had it. It was the machine that started a hobby that I still enjoy today, though I definitely like messing around with older hardware and games more then I enjoy the new stuff that's out there now......which is why I run such an old potato as a daily driver just to see how well I can get 'new' games and software to run on it, it is still plenty capable for my needs......:whistle:

And to the OP.....those were the days when newegg didn't suck! I can't even remember the last time I have even looked at newegg's website after a bad experience I had with them years ago.
 
My very own first PC I ordered an AMD K6 200mhz based system from a little mom and pop computer shop. It has the esteemed SoundBlaster AWE64 sound card which I think I paid close to $200 to upgrade to. That PC purchased with lawn mowing money the summer before my first year of college. 1997.

I started building them after that.

The first one I built was an AMD K6-2 400.
Then an AMD Duron 700
Then an AMD Thunderbird 1.1
Then an AMD Thunderbird 1.3
Then a Pentium 1.6 A (big upgrade feel)
Then a Pentium 2.4 B
Then a Pentium 2.4 C
Then a AMD 3200 x64
Then a Core 2 Quad 6600
Then a Core 2 Quad 8400
Then a Core 2 Quad 9300
Then a i7 920 DO (big upgrade feel)
Then a i7 4770k
Then a AMD Ryzen 1700
Then a I7 6800k
Then a I7 6850k
Now a I7 6950X (and I haven’t seen much reason to upgrade from here)


I can’t remember my kids own Birthdays half the time, but somehow I remember every processor I had in my primary gaming boxes.

I noted the two upgrades I felt made the most difference at the time by my subjective experience. I’d say the 6950x I have now didn’t really feel any different than the 6850k I had, but nothing seems to put the hurt on 10 cores/20 threads and at this point I have no earthly need to upgrade CPU. Still STRONG...
 
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First build? My dad brought home some very EoL 386 work computers that I mixed and matched for the best 386 DX that I could get. Learned a lot at the time, and forgot a good 90% of it since it's now irrelevant.

First build that I purchased with my own money from working - from what I remember it was an Athlon 700MHz slot A (those were fun!). I honestly cannot remember the drive size, but it might have been a 10GB one (I remember wanting a bigger drive). I don't remember what/how much RAM, or the motherboard. And I can't remember what my first video card was, but I remember getting the 3DFX Voodoo 5 5500 as a birthday gift later. Oh, and a 56K modem with my very own phone line that I paid my dad for. And Netzero internet with the ads removed with the help of some geeks at high school with 3.5" floppies ;)

My dad actually gave me a catalog to pick parts from and I gave him the money. Ha - those were the days!
 
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