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Thread: What was your first PC build ?

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    Going Retro!!! Ferral's Avatar
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    Question What was your first PC build ?

    I found a load of my old parts lying about in the bottom of a cupboard yesterday and got me thinking on how and why I got into PC gaming.

    For me my brother kept on slagging of me for owning a console (PSX at the time) and he kept going on about how great Quake 2, Midtown Madness and Grim Fandango were. So not to be beaten I decided to get myself a PC. First build was cheapo parts at a reduced rate from where I worked at the time.

    I decided to build moreso when Nocturne was released as I had a real survival horror thing going on and played Res Evil to death.

    My first spec (this is quite laugable) :

    Celeron 466
    256 Mb Ram
    PC Chips motherboard
    10 Gb Quantum Bigfoot Hard disc (Sat in a 5 inch bay! )
    2X CD writer that only recognised gold discs if you wanted to burn something
    Guillemot Fortissimo sound card (sure this was a replacement for a soundblaster 16)
    S3 Virge DX 8 Mb PCI

    Not sure if these bits of kit are still working even though I still have them, might be worth putting them back together later today and firing it up to see what happens. Put Windows 98 SE on there and I will have a real old school system!

    At the time I thought it was the bees knees, could run most things great in 640 x 480 resolution and the PSX soon got pushed out!

    Now I'm getting ready to do a new build (next month or two) and have my 360 hooked up to the TV. Wonder how long it will be before the new parts will be stuffed into the bottom of the wardrobe that time forgot!

  2. #2
    Sexiest Hexus user? quite possibly Russ's Avatar
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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    the first pc i built myself was a shuttle with a celery chip in. 9700pro, when i used to lan. then went back to atx with a 1700+ JHUIB and then my oppy 146, now im here with my q6600 4 computers in around 8 years seems low
    Gamertag - Russonf (xbox and ps3)

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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    My first ever build was from parts mainly won off the internet, from EXTREME Overclocking - Tweaking PC Hardware To The Max when they were first starting out a long time ago, they've grown a bit since those days

    PIII 550
    Forgotten mobo
    512mb PC3200 RAM
    ATI Rage3D Video card
    20gb HDD
    Creative Sound Blaster sound card

    It was an awesome overclocker, had the CPU up to 900mhz and later replaced the video card with a GeForce 4 Ti4200. Was a great step up from the Pentium 90mhz I had before it

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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    My first PC was a 486 SX50 with 4-8Mb of RAM and Windows 3.1. I don't remember what the GFX card was, something god awful no doubt. I remember upgrading the GFX card to a 2Mb Hercules Dynamite! the refresh rate was too high and it fried a monitor.

    First had a go at building a PC when I was 16(10 years ago ), my dad and I built an Athlon K7 500MHz system with 128mb of RAM. It was one of the slot A CPUs. I still have it! really strange looking thing by todays standrds.

    The first PC I built entirely myself was an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.7GHz) with 512mb of RAM. I had a GeForce 4 (the one with no pixel shaders) card to begin with then a Radeon 9800pro.

    Next I built an Athlon64 rig, this was when I really started to get interested. Bought a nice case got good airflow etc.

    Now I have a quad core monster OC'd to 3.0Ghz and thats the first time I've tried over clocking, mind you its more to do with budget than anything else. I have a career now and have more disposable income so i can buy more flexible gear that won't explode if I push it a bit

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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    First one i built myself....

    AMD T-bird 1.4Ghz
    Asus A7M-266
    Corsair XMS 256Mb PC2700
    Alpha PAL heatsink
    Geforce Ti4200

    Oh and a IBM Deathstar. 40.1Gb... succumbed to the click of death with all my uni work on it.

    Bless it. I'm still using the heatsink though.

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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    Cyrix 150 (PR266 or something like that)....ahhh good old "PR", Performace Ratings
    32Meg of RAM
    AT PSU with a huge switch that 'Clunked' on the front
    Onboard Vound
    Onboard Video
    AT Keyboard and mouse
    A CDROM that broke every other week
    Floppy

    Good times
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    I was surprised at the relatively modern first builds until I saw Agents. How old were you dude? About 3?

    I can't remember what my first proper build was. I worked in a computer store while at uni so swapped out components quite a lot and ungraded in little incraments because of that.

    First full new build i did for myself was after I finished there.

    Celeron 300 (oc to 450)
    256MB RAM
    ABIT BX6 Mobo
    Matrox G200 AGP
    Massive light blue plastic tower case

    I added the Adaptec SCSI card, Pioneer DVD-ROM, Plextor UnlraPlex 40x and Plextor 8x2 writer I already had. Can't remember which hard drives I had at the time, think it was a 40GB and a 60GB Maxtor, but I can't be sure.

    Oh and a 17" Digital (as in DEC) monitor that kicked ass.

  8. #8
    Going Retro!!! Ferral's Avatar
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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    Store where I worked used to use the Cyrix chips as a cheaper option for customers instead of the Pentium 166, 200 and top of the range 233!

    Windows 3.1 was still being used and the version of 95 we were getting in initially came in a stack of around 50 floppy discs! Used to love working there must admit and getting our hands on the first Voodoo cards to run Unreal and Turok was awesome.

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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    I just realised that this is the "gaming" forum so perhaps we should back track a bit...

    Was there a particular game that made you upgrade across your sucession of rigs?

    Earliest game provoked upgrade for me was duke nukem 3D because it required a math-co processor so my SX50 was no longer cutting it, DX2-66 baby! that did the trick. Was there a DX100? there was a DX90 I seem to remember?

    After that, vampire the masquerade bloodlines pushed me the way of the athlon 64 and Bioshock demanded that I purchase a quad core

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Games that I played on my rigs:

    486s: C&C, Prince of Persia, Monkey Island, Duke Nukem (though I was much too young really shhhh), Wingcommander 3/4, wingcommander privateer, wing commander armada (still have, still play!).

    Athlon XPs: Jedi Knight, Red alert 2, Thief, Thief 2 (probably more)

    Athlon 64: Splinter cell, vampire, NWN 1&2, Oblivion, Morrowind

    C2Quad: You name it, but mostly Titan Quest and the Witcher at the mo.

  10. #10
    Mike Fishcake
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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    I was an Amiga freak until about 1996, but I started off with a shop bought system based around a Cyrix PR166 (133MHz) with 1.2GB HDD and 32MB RAM, I upgraded the mobo to a cheap and crappy PC-chips board, CPU to an AMD 333MHz CPU, RAM to 64MB, stuck an additional 1.7GB HDD in there, then when the mobo buggered out on me after about 14 months, I built the following (well, something along these lines anyway)

    AMD K6-2 500MHz
    128MB RAM
    6GB Seagate HDD
    I think the video card was an 8MB AGP SiS 6320, but not sure

    I also spray painted the case blue, and it looked absolutely awful.

    The floppy drive in the original 1996 one survived through all my upgrades until I built my current PC last year! I sometimes wish that I'd put in for old times sake

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    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ferral View Post
    Used to love working there must admit and getting our hands on the first Voodoo cards to run Unreal and Turok was awesome.
    Doh! Forgot about the Voodoo card I had in there for a while. What a waste of money that was, never really used it.

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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    Quote Originally Posted by Zadock View Post
    Now I have a quad core monster OC'd to 3.0Ghz and thats the first time I've tried over clocking, mind you its more to do with budget than anything else. I have a career now and have more disposable income so i can buy more flexible gear that won't explode if I push it a bit
    That's pretty odd, I opproached OCing from the opposite angle, I used to really push to get the most overclock out of all my PC's because they were slow and that was all I could afford on my £10 a week paper round. These days I've got a proper job and can buy hig end components so I feel less need to overclock them. When I load up a game and put all settings to full, and it runs silky smooth, then I'm not gonna bother putting in a lot of effort to tweak it fully like I used to.

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    Senior Member Mithrandir's Avatar
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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    Still use my prebuilt PC I bought from Mesh about 9-10 years ago.

    Its got a slot a 900mhz (upgraded from a 700mhz)
    has 768mb pc100 ram (upgraded from 128mb)
    Gigabyte 71XE mobo (still using)

    Had a geforce ddr 32mb gpu and was proud of it as most were sdr ram.

    The rig cost me £1200 if I remember.
    Added various parts to it over the years until I built my own rig about 5 years ago or thereabouts.
    Cavalier-X: Biostar TP45-HP ¦ E4600@3.1ghz - Xigmatek Red Scorpion (OCZ Freeze) ¦ OCZ ReaperX 2x2gb (792mhz @ 4-4-4--12) ¦ Xigmatek NRP-MC651 ¦
    Palit 8800gt ¦ X-fi Fatal1ty Gamer ¦ Coolermaster Cavalier 3 (Silver/Windowed) ¦

    Poseidon Magma: MSI P45 Zilent ¦ E6300@3.0ghz - Coolermaster Hyper 212 (MX-2) ¦ Corsair 2x2gb (880mhz @ 5-5-5-15) ¦ Corsair HX450w ¦
    xfx 9600gt Alphadog edition (780/1950/1000) ¦ X-fi Gamer ¦ Gigabyte Poseiden ¦

  14. #14
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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    back in the amd athlon socket A days. I remember messing up the heatsink install. Had no bloody idea you needed a flathead screwdriver to force the clip down over the socket. I was scared I might break something. Ended up buying some akasa tim cleaner and thermal paste which is still in use today

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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    Pentium 75 running windows 3.1, had a single speed cdrom drive and a s3 virge video (i think as it was about 13-14 years ago)

    then it was a k6-2 350Mhz and then a Athlon 1.33Ghz on a KT7A-Raid

  16. #16
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    Re: What was your first PC build ?

    my first build contained a Voodoo 3 gfx card and a pentium 2 600mhz. Can't remember what else.

    The first build i can remember was:

    AMD Athlon 3000
    Radeon 9800Pro
    Abit K7 (something like that)
    1gb RAM
    150gb HDD
    Sound blaster live!

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