Question What was the very first PC you ever bought/built?

[Riker2Enterpise]

I'm interested in hearing what y'all's first rigs were.
Mine personally was a dinky Costco thing with a fan that sounded like demons screaming. I don't recall the exact specs, just that it did the job (well, sort of) and that I had it for like 4 years before deciding I'd had enough.

 

[Colif]

Bought:
1999 IBM Aptiva
Intel Celeron 300
no idea about ram
no idea about hdd
ATI Rage integrated 2d graphics

I installed a Voodoo 2 in it.
think I put a creative soundcard in it as well.

Made every other one since. It was somewhere to start and learn what not to do... no, wait, that was the 1st one I made... but I don't want to remember that

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

A prebuilt Pentium 100, 8mb RAM and a 1GB hard drive desktop with a 14'' CRT monitor from a company called Atlantic Systems that doesnt exist anymore. It was from an advert in a PC magazine, maybe Computer Buyer and I had to phone and order it myself. I had a strict £1000 budget so I had to lower the GPU from 2mb 64bit to a 1mb 32 bit to get it under. I dont even know if that just meant I got a lower end motherboard.

At the time it was really exciting, but really it was fine, I had worse luck with later prebuilts.

 

[Johnway]

The answer varies with me.

The family's fire pc was (technically) the amstrad. No idea what version, we got it when i was for and very quickly it was swapped out with an amiga 500. We added 1mb ram later. i had that till 1999 when i finally bought a pc (more on that later). Would have died sooner if i hadn't replaced the drive.

The first Microsoft pc was a p166 can't remember the amount of ram. i think it was like 150mb or something. The pc maker was Dotlink.

But MY first MS pc? It was a p3 500mhz with 500mb of ram with a voodoo 3 3000 graphics card. My PC was from Mesh computers. i bought it after my amiga had died and needed it work work. It was alright until voodoo series was killed off so its days were numbered. kept that till 2004 when i went to university. most pcs those days lasted for like 3 to 4 years before they became obsolete spec wise.

 

[Colif]

The answer varies with me.

Must you be difficult

It reminds me my 1st computer was a Tandy Colour computer... but when I think PC I think IBM Compatible from 1980, which is what most modern PC are built on. X86 is yet to die.

 

[Zloth]

My first PC: An Apple 2+ with 48K memory

First PC I bought: Atari 800XL with 64K memory (I think? did I get that with birthday/Christmas money or did I get it as a birthday present?)

First IBM clone PC: Something made-to-order by Micron. No clue what the stats were, but it had Windows and OS/2 Warp.

 

[dxchase]

The first one i truly built myself wasnt super long ago, 2014-ish. I "gamed" on a Gateway 2000 in the 90s and when i went to school, i had some PC that i had put together, not by myself, and wasnt equipped with a GPU so it wasnt for gaming outside of things like old school runescape and older pc games like doom etc. But nothing current (this was 2004-2005ish)


At the time of my first build, i initially bought a GTX 750ti because i wasnt really sure where to jump off at in PC gaming, especially building it myself for the first time. At that time too SLI was a big thing so i sold my 750ti and used that money to buy 2 GTX980s:

I eventually sold 1 of these and built the mrs one around the other while i moved onto a 1080/1080ti, the rest is history...

 

[Johnway]

Must you be difficult

It reminds me my 1st computer was a Tandy Colour computer... but when I think PC I think IBM Compatible from 1980, which is what most modern PC are built on. X86 is yet to die.

Well to add more details, my first built PC was back in 2008. Can't remember the specs tbh besides being an i7 with a geforce card and 500gb. Built that with my work mate to learn how to do stuff. My current pc built back in 2017 was the one i built by myself. it wasn't difficult, but i took my sweet time making sure things were done properly. So what should have taken maybe 2 or 3 hours tops took half the day. I think it was the power sockets and the fiddly power buttons that made me pause.

i think for my next pc i'll probably delay building by an hour or 2 thumb through the manual have a look at the pc case and visualize the build before starting. Maybe taking time to prepare the work area rather then just putting everything on the table on the floor.

 

[Colif]

Better still, most hardware has manuals you can download and read before you ever get them. I always look to see what I can find before buying/installing.

I read the Manual for my case a year before I got it. I research every part between when I pick them and when I buy. Generally that is the same with anything I buy besides essentials.

Latest trick is to have a link inside box to their website to get manuals from there anyway. Motherboard manuals have gone from several 100 pages to a sheet of cardboard with a link.

 

[Zimbaly]

First computer was a old Texas Intrument, first pc was a 486, 33mhz, 8 megs ram, 1 meg svga card, 128mb harddrive and 19inch monitor......which weighed a ton, but my god it was beautiful.

 

[Johnway]

Better still, most hardware has manuals you can download and read before you ever get them. I always look to see what I can find before buying/installing.

I read the Manual for my case a year before I got it. I research every part between when I pick them and when I buy. Generally that is the same with anything I buy besides essentials.

Latest trick is to have a link inside box to their website to get manuals from there anyway. Motherboard manuals have gone from several 100 pages to a sheet of cardboard with a link.

Good tips there. i think i might just have my phone to the side and perhaps do some reading on good practices to building and wiring a pc. i hear that the best thing to do is plug the power connects on the motherboard itself install motherboard into case and THEN connect them to the PSU to keep it clean.

I'm still day dreaming for my new pc, but the more i look the more i realize the best deal is getting a prebuilt one with all the parts i want. The only draw back is you're not sure what they've done on the cheap and build/part quality is questionable.

 

[Alm]

I built my first PC in 2001 when I moved into halls at uni. I had a blue Chieftec Dragon case and an AMD Athlon processor.

 

[Zloth]

...and 19inch monitor......which weighed a ton, but my god it was beautiful.

I've still got one down in the basement! It will have to stay there, too - nobody in the nearby area family has a back good enough to get it up the stairs. 2048x1536 resolution! Or 1280x960, or 1024x768, or 1856x1392... CRTs were awesome.

 

[mjs warlord]

My first pc back in 2002 was a packard bell 5095 and the packard bell flat screen monitor ( and other brands of flat screen ) had only just come out so as with all new tech it cost more , the monitor cost nearly as much as the pc , it only had a 60gb hard drive and a work mate said why do you want a hard drive as big as that . I also planned on buying an epson printer and a packard bell scanner

Considering i was about to spend £1800 ... a lot of money in 2002 , i asked what free software bundle i was getting , their were some free software bundles on display , when i asked the question he just laughted at me so i walked out.

The next day i got the same equipment AND some free cad/cam software and a few free games from a different branch of the same store chain.

Back home i tried like hell to get the Lide scanner to work and a work mate had to come to try and some it out cos i knew zippo about pc gear , straight away he said somethings not right because when you plug it in it should say new hardware detected but it did not do it. Store visit number 3 , i took the scanner back and a tech guy said PB scanners dont know how to talk to a PB pc , he swapped it for a canon canoscan Lide scanner and all was good. the only downside to the scanner was the laser was very powerful so if you scanned thin paper it would see both sides at once and print them both on top of each other so on thin paper i put a piece of A4 card on top of the item to be scanned.

 

[Zed Clampet]

My first PC was an Atari 800 in either 1979 or 1980.

I immediately started learning Basic and tried to make a text-based DnD game. The biggest problem was saving and loading. You had a little tape recorder. If you wanted to save something, you basically recorded noise from the TV. It was not a reliable system.

 

[Colif]

I'm still day dreaming for my new pc, but the more i look the more i realize the best deal is getting a prebuilt one with all the parts i want. The only draw back is you're not sure what they've done on the cheap and build/part quality is questionable.

Not being able to pick parts or even know which ones they include is one reason I wouldn't choose that. Are there any companies that let you pick from a list of parts, as then you can research each part and pick right ones. A few places here offer such services.

Some OEM make their own parts and I don't know if I would trust them. Cyberpower for instance make their own PSU and I know I wouldn't trust it.
Alienware at least use standard parts in some of their new prebuilts. Better than how they used to be.

I am trying to work out how I was so lucky to build a PC a few months before it all went mad. I was going to make new one this year and that wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't have the same ram as it costs 1k more here than when I bought mine.

another thing I did was print out any manuals that might help. Having the layout of the motherboard helps as well