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[batman2million]

Last night, I spent a good 3 hours taking my PC I built in 2009 apart to clean up and rewire. It's stressful and sometimes annoying but I wholeheartedly enjoyed it! This brought back my plethora of memories with building PCs, so let me make it simpler.

It's been a while so I put ? to things I'm not sure about. Most likely the dates are off. I'm trying to remember them the best I can.

1st rig (1997 -1999):
486/66 mHz
64 MB RAM?
Win 95

Games: Warcraft 1 and 2, Time Commando.

That's all I actually remember. My parents couldn't afford to pay rent so there was no way the could have afford a computer so this was a hand me down from my uncle who kept this machine in his construction office. We got it upgraded once adding a 14k modem so we can use the internet. Thing couldn't even play MP3s so we lived off of MIDIs to jam with. It stopped working one day b/c of over heating.

2nd rig (1999 - 2003):
400 Mhz Intel?
128 mb RAM?
Voodoo2 GFX - 12mb?
Win 98

Games: HL and all the add-on, SC and BW, TFC, CS, Quake 2, Theif?, many more.

We got this from Sams club for about $800 with a huge monitor. It was our first computer my brother and I tinkered with. We started off with the on board graphics chip and eventually bought a voodoo2 graphics card that promised to play ALL GAMES AT 60 FPS! Oh how simple things were. Then eventually got a CD burner ($200!). We whored that computer to it's last breath and we have a blast! We eventually put it out inf front of my dads store so he could use for this spreadsheets and stuff.

3rd rig (2002 - god knows):
1Ghz AMD something.
256 MB RAM
Win ME moved to XP eventually

Games: None, really.

This was actually a Compaq desktop my dad got for his business from Best Buy. It came with the whole mouse, keyboard, monitor and we got suckered into buying the warranty as well. All together I think my dad spent ~$1300.
This was more used to AOL Instant messenger and "school work." We had this up until last year when my dad gave it to one of this friends who said he needed a computer. More power to him, I guess.


4th rig (2004 - still have it):
3ghz Pentium 4
1024 gb RAM 400mhz dual
256 MB Gefore-fx 5600
Creative Labs SB live 5.1
120 gb HDD 7200 RPM
mobo -Powercolor I865PE AGP8X
Win XP home

Games: BF 1942, HL 2, so many more.

This was the first rig I got assuming I knew more about computers. I bought it from Cyberpower (I still have the email detailing the specs) for about $1500 with a viewsonic monitor. The mobo died once and I replaced it but the I went through a lot of video cards. This was one of my best friends as it was the first PC to be MINE! I mostly watched all my movies as it came with a DVD drive. I eventually kept it just for browsing and MS Office stuff. Now it sits in a closet in my brothers room!

5th rig (2009 - Current):
i7 920 - stock (recently OC'd to 3.4)
Evga x58 SLI
BGF GTX 280 > Gigabyte GTX 570 > hopefully Asus R9 280x
6 GB ram > 12 GB @ 1333 mhz
128 GB SSD and 1TB HDD 7200
Win XP > Win 7

Games: Everything from 2008 to now.

Sigh. This was the first computer I actually built. I worked a shitty full time job so it took me forever to get the money for the parts. Bought one each month and had to cut a lot of corners but went with the intention that I'd upgrade it as I could. And I did. I don't know how many time's I took this baby apart to upgrade the little things. But I think I've learned the most from this and since I have a better job I plan on building a monster rig come 2014 - 2015.

It's such a great feeling remembering how you started to where you are now.

Well, this post is longer than it should've been. I didn't even get to mention the laptops I've had, some other time!

Alright GAF, give it to me! How is it you came to be the PC-er you are now!

 

[The Hermit]

Ain't nobody got time for that

Hell I don't even remember my previous rig

 

[Sethos]

Man, I wish I could remember the exact details of the specs, what kind of machines, the games I played etc. my very first computer was some shitty old heap that was outdated when we got it; 5 1⁄4-inch floppy, monochrome monitor and I had one game, some flight game that worked like shit. However as a kid that was the most amazing thing in the world, I could spend hours taking off and crashing because the controls weren't working.

Then I got some used Amiga 1200 by some distant family, another piece of outdated tech but I had so much fun.

Later I stepped into the Windows PC area with some awful Compaq tower which my parents got me, I wanted to play Midtown Madness that I ( Read: My parents ) bought months beforehand without actually having a PC that could play it. Thing was too slow to even get past vehicle selection =|

My friend's dad got wind of this and decided to build me a PC with a ton of spare parts, I then spent months on Delta Force and Midtown Madness.

That was my early years, now I just compensate and spend way too much money on computers.

 

[Celegus]

I've built plenty of boxes over the past 10 years, but the memory that sticks out the most is when I tried to shove the CD drive in from inside the case instead of pushing it through the front like you should. Obviously it didn't want to go in that way, but I finally pushed hard enough to crush the bit of metal in the way, and the momentum cause me to slice my thumb wide open on the edge of something in there, and bleed all over my brand new components.

Still have a nasty scar, and that was the only time I've ever had stictches. Felt like such a moron.

 

[Jack_AG]

Atari 2800 w/tape drive and dual-slot top loader.

I've always had PCs but I only have 1 horror story from the only time I never built my own. In 2004 I purchased a new gaming rig online from CyberPower - the price could not be beat so I pulled the trigger. Upon receiving the rig - whoever put this thing together left the VGA-DVI adapter on the card and squeezed it in the box. It was poking outside of the box before I even opened the damn thing. I took pics and videos with timestamps to show it was just delivered. I opened the box and sure enough my graphics card and mobo were cracked.

I called and explained the situation, emailed pics, etc. They sent me an RMA immediately and off went the rig. Weeks and weeks are going by and I'm calling once per week until about week 5 when I began to call every day. They kept telling me my GPU was out of stock. I asked to upgrade and they wouldn't allow it. It eventually took 9 weeks to get my rig back but this time I got 2 boxes. One contained my rig and a second box that was the size of my fridge. The second box only contained the VGA-DVI adapter. That tiny thing inside of that huge box.

I laughed but was extremely livid. The first and last time I ordered a rig instead of building one.

 

[Ghost Cell]

My parents bought me a HP in '96 or '97, I don't remember. Played Spy Fox, Pajama Sam, Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, Fatty Bear, the Backyard sports games and The Sims. These are some of my favorite gaming memories, but I abandoned PC gaming after my parents got me a PlayStation.

 

[Syf]

I don't remember the specs exactly.. but I think it involved a Pentium 4 and a 9700 pro (god, what a card <3). I built it for Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. I've put together three more builds since then.

 

[dave is ok]

The first video card I bought was a 9800 Pro and it came with a free copy of Half-Life 2.

 

[MrOogieBoogie]

I barely recall my first PC, as it was a crappy Gateway that I got twelve years ago. I only know that it had an integrated graphics card and an Intel Pentium 4 processor.

CPU
Intel Pentium 4 (6/2001)
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (9/2005)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (9/2007)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2/2010)
Intel Core i3-2100 (9/2011)

GPU
Integrated (6/2001)
GeForce FX 6600 (9/2005)
GeForce 8300 GS (9/2007)
Radeon HD 4670 (1/2010)
Radeon HD 6850 (9/2011)

The i3-2100/6850 combo has served me remarkably well. Such a great, low-cost alternative to the 360/PS3 for the latter part of the generation.

Although I doubt I'll be upgrading again for a couple years after getting the PS4.

 

[MikeE21286]

My first PC I built was an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ with a 9800 Pro Radeon. I think it had 512 MB Ram and a 320 Gb hard drive.

Ahh memories.

 

[BronsonLee]

The first ever real PC that was mine was a gift from my dad & his friend (who built computers at a store that I eventually did an internship at). A really nice custom one with a goofy case, the whole nine.

It wasn't supremely top flight, but it played most of the games I wanted to play and emulated stuff just fine, so it worked for me! Kept it for like 4 years, then gave it to my sister.

I won an Alienware M17x in a Twitter contest a few months after I sold that; also after I had moved to Philly and gotten robbed, thus losing most of my electronics. So it was a pretty good day for me that day

Since it was a contest one, they pumped it up, the whole nine, and I kept that one for a long while too before I eventually sold it as I was basically leaving PC gaming.

Then last Christmas, though I knew next gen was coming, I wanted to built a nice HTPC with DVR & cap card abilities, so I ended up doing that when I was at my dad's for Christmas. Still have that one now. It plays every game, is set up with WMC, and I can capture game footage off consoles too if I so desire. It's perfecto.

 

[Metalmurphy]

Too long ago to remember, all I know was that it had a S3Virge and there was some 3D descent like spaceship game that looked awesome i it and stunned all my friends.

 

[IcyEyes]

Nice idea, but I'm not able to help this thread because I changed too many rigs and I really don't remember any of them ... Sorry!

 

[Skeff]

My first real Gaming PC: I think in 2006?maybe 2007.

a Phenom quad core
8800GTX
Blu-Ray writer/HD-DVD reader
500GB HDD
8GB RAM.

It was beautiful at the time, and is now my Girlfriends "gaming rig" still runs games like Guild wars 2 very nicely at 30fps.

 

[Addnan]

I can post my last 3, anything else I had in my house before that fuck knows.

Current.

3570K, GTX670 to GTX 770, 16GB RAM

2008-2013

Intel E8400, 4GB RAM, 9600GT (Upgraded to GTX 560 some time)

Up to 2008 for about 3 years a shitty Dell. Dell Dimension 3000

Intel pentium 4, 1GB RAM, integrated graphics lol. Gaming was interesting. Played very very old stuff then.

 

[Alric]

My first PC was given to me by my step mom in 1997

CPU - 166mhz

it had no sound card and only intergrated graphics so we went out and bought new ones because when I played Myst (first game I ever bought for PC) I had no sound and I'm sure some of you remember one of the puzzles required memorization of bird sounds from parts of the island.

Sound - Soundblaster
GPU - 8mb voodoo card

I've built all my pc's since then but damn was that giant tower a heavy beast of a pc for me at that time.

 

[TomPUH]

All I know is that it was a 333Mhz computer that literally took 15 minutes before I could do anything with it.

Now I have an SSD and all is well in the universe.

 

[Ricerocket]

486 133Mhz
Dont remember how much simm/dimm ram I had
Windows 3.11

and I remember that turbo button on my case lol.

The days when I had to fudge with MSDOS to play games, mess with himem.sys and all that jazz and setting up sound through irqs and all that.

Pretty sure my next comp was a Pentium 75Mhz. It's all too fuzzy atm.

 

[kennah]

Oy, I'd never remember all of them. The first was a 386sx 16mhz that I got when I was 10. It was $4,500. Had a 40 meg hard drive and I think maybe one meg of RAM.

Since then I've had a 486sx25, Dx66, Pentium 75, Pentium II 266, Celeron 300 (beast of an overclocker), PIII 500, 733, 1ghz. Dual 1ghz, Pentium 4 2.4 (still in action, was a video editing powerhouse in 2003).

Then I took a break for a few years. Got back into it with a Q6600 for like 5 years, and finally just recently upgraded to a 2550K which got swapped out with a 2600K (for video editing, of course).

Back in THE DAY of 1999-2002... I spent probably $25,000 a year on computer stuff. But since that was also my primary income I was able to use something for a few weeks or couple months, then sell it for more than I paid for it and upgrade again.

Good times...

 

[Fermbiz]

My first PC was a Gateway Pentium III @ 450mhz, 8mb Voodoo card.

This is the best PC I've ever built. I don't remember the specs but I took my time. I tried my absolute best to hide all the wireing. Even installed a car light to light up my blunts.

 

[besada]

The Osborne I:
Weight: 24.5 pounds / 11 kg
CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4.0 MHz
RAM: 64K RAM
Display: built-in 5" CRT monitor
52 x 24 text
Ports: parallel / IEEE-488
modem / serial port
Storage: dual 5-1/4 inch floppy drives
OS: CP/M on diskette

 

[kennah]

The Osborne I:
Weight: 24.5 pounds / 11 kg
CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4.0 MHz
RAM: 64K RAM
Display: built-in 5" CRT monitor
52 x 24 text
Ports: parallel / IEEE-488
modem / serial port
Storage: dual 5-1/4 inch floppy drives
OS: CP/M on diskette

That is beautiful

 

[robin2]

My first personal rig was a:
Pentium 2 (350 mhz IIRC), with a nvidia Riva TNT 16 MB; (don't remember the amount system ram).

Me and a friend immediatly glued a big PSU fan directly over the videocard's own little fan. The PSU fan was so large, it basically covered the whole videocard and enabled to us run the GPU at 120mhz (default was 90mhz): the framerate in games literally skyrocketed lol.

 

[Exuro]

I'm still using my first built pc rig from 2009. Haven't really had the need to upgrade. I will say though I had no idea what I was thinking when I got the antec 1200. It's just too big. Will definitely go for a smaller case whenever i decided to build my second rig.

 

[EdgeXL]

My first real PC was a laptop around 1996 or so with a 166Mhz processor and I can't even remember what the RAM was. Maybe 64MB? I do remember playing a shareware version of a Monopoly clone on it and some kind of jet fighter game on it.

My first desktop was in 1999 and it had a 500Mhz CPU (I think it might have been AMD.) It had either 128MB or 256MB of RAM. I played a lot of games on it but the one I most remember is Homeword GOTY Edition.

 

[ShinobiFist]

Man, my first build was for Half Life 2. I know I had 512mb of ram on a MSI board. With a Raedon 9800. Forgot the CPU, but I think it was a Celeron. The nightmare I went through at the time. Bought the wrong type of GPU due to Buying a AGP, not a PCI one. Then I discover the importance having a real PSU. Ram issues after that. But once I weather the storm, it was shoot sailing after that. Learned so much about PC's and electronics in general due to that experience. Now, I just mess with Alienware, due to the X51. But I do miss it. Might build one next year just for fun.

 

[b0bbyJ03]

My one and only rig... i built it for half life 2. ill never forget how excited i was when i saw the first E3 video of it running. I've always been a console guy but that video blew me away. I built a PC for about $1400 even tho i had no clue what i was doing. i bought an AMD card at the time and i remember having a Hyper threading intel cpu and a PCI express motherboard and PCI express card being a really big deal at the time

I put it all together and had a ton of fun. I also considered it a learning experience since i was going to school for network communications. My first two games where Half life 2 and Doom 3. I also purchased Call of Duty 2 which was awesome. A few months later i started having problems with it just randomly shutting down and i couldn't really figure out why... i was a noob and it discouraged me from building another one. I still consider doing it again all the time. Maybe i will in the near future. all i will say is that Half life 2 was worth it... I loved it that much

oh, and i also got my ass majorly kicked in counter strike (it came with HL2)

 

[dmr87]

Too young to remember or know the speccs of the first computer we had in the family. The only things I remember are that it only had a 3,5" floppy disk drive, Win 3.1 or 3.11 and I played games like Lemmings and Sim City 2000.

After that it was some shitty Compaq PC that could Counter-Strike at a shitty frame rate.

Then we got a decent Dell PC with a 9700 Pro and 256mb RAM, think I upgraded the RAM later on. I could finally play Counter-Strike with proper settings and frame rates.

After that I started to build my own PCs with various parts.

 

[b0bbyJ03]

Man, my first build was for Half Life 2. I know I had 512mb of ram on a MSI board. With a Raedon 9800. Forgot the CPU, but I think it was a Celeron. The nightmare I went through at the time. Bought the wrong type of GPU due to Buying a AGP, not a PCI one. Then I discover the importance having a real PSU. Ram issues after that. But once I weather the storm, it was shoot sailing after that. Learned so much about PC's and electronics in general due to that experience. Now, I just mess with Alienware, due to the X51. But I do miss it. Might build one next year just for fun.

holy crap dude, read my post, almost the same experience. hahaha

 

[hlhbk]

I don't remember all the ones I built. I do remember the first two we owened when I was a kid.

The first was the origional Macintosh released in 84 and was given to us by my Grandmother in 1990. I played MAC football on it! Then in 1993 when I was 12 my parents bought us the following PC:

Packard Bell
486 DX2 66 MHZ (the damn sales guy at Best Buy convinced them not go to with the Pentium because the process was only a 60 HZ, I am still bitter about it 20 years later).
8 MB of RAM
420 MB HDD (Which I thought I never could fill )
On board video and audio
9600 baud modem

I still remember about 2 months later trying to download Doom the night the shareware was released on BBS's and it taking 18 hours to download the 2.4 MB zipped file. I followed some instructions to configure the autoexec.bat and config.sys to run doom and didn't know enough to backup the files and we couldn't get back into Windows.

The next several days trying to figure out how to fix everything launched my interest in computers and eventually my career in IT.

 

[DJ_Lae]

My first PC was a Commodore Vic-20. I...didn't really care for it, to be honest.

After that my family cycled through various Macs starting with a Plus, then an SE, then a Classic, and after that a PowerMac 6100. Only real modifications I made was to add memory. I think we had a massive 80MB external hard drive for the Plus, too.

My first PC was a Pentium 90 with other specs that I cannot remember. I did some mucking around with replacing sound cards and disc drive. The first one that I actually had a hand in building, however, was based around a Celeron 300A, and I believe that's also when I got my first 3D card (Diamond Monster 3DII).

 

[SneakyStephan]

The first proper pc (had a 386-2x before that and a pentium 1 pc with some early version of windows at my mom's house of which I can't remember the specs either) was in 2001, very late

My parents didn't care about computers and they were really expensive throughout the 90s.

I got a pentium 4 2ghz with 256MB ram and shitty integrated gpu.
Bought a geforce 4 ti 4200 and 256MB of extra ram a few weeks later.
CS, medal of honor allied assault , rtcw , ut99 , quake 3 , ut2003 (which released in 2002 btw) , max payne and the older 3d marks were glorious on it.

SoF 2 ran like crap though ohwell it was a terrible game anyhow, first game I remember seeing that had an impressive jungle environment (for the time)


in 2003 I built my own pc
athlon xp 2800+
radeon 9800pro
512MB ram (bought another gigabyte a year later)
I also bought a new monitor, an iiyama vision master,19" 1600x1200 @85 hz, it was absolutely amazing compared to the shitty packard bell monitor of the pentium 4 pc.
I still use this monitor today since LCD tech is useless for gaming, no point in a massive downgrade just to have 16:9 res or a larger size screen. I REALLY wish I had spent 150 euros more and bought a sony fw900 I even considered it back then but the iiyama got excellent review too and was quite a bit cheaper.
Ended up spending over 1200 euros on this pc, but for the time that was a good price considering a gaming pc cost well over 2000 euros in the 90s.


The pc was such a beast, ran bf1942 maxed out and really smoothly, ran world of warcraft very very smoothly when it came out in 2005.
It wasn't until doom 3, half life 2 and nfs:most wanted that it started showing its age , those barely ran at 30-40 fps, low enough for me not to bother.

Then in 2005 gpus started becoming loud (the infamous geforce 6800ultra) , more expensive and barely faster year on year, the geforce 6000 architecture was simply terrible, and the amd x800 etc were minor improvements as well and costed an arm and a leg.

I ended up limiting myself to just playing what ran smoothly (older games) all the way until early 2009.
This wasn't an issue though as cs and bf1942 kept me entertained for years, and I started playing wow quite a lot for the first 2 years it was out.


In 2009 , which for me was the golden age of hardware value I bought:
Phenom II x3 720 BE (3 core) for 130 euros, and a 512MB hd 4870 for 138 euros , the am2+ motherboard was only 60 euros as well, 50euros for 4GB ddr2 ram, 80 euros for a 1TB samsung spinpoint hdd

The entire pc (including case etc) cost me under 650 euros and both the cpu and gpu were high end at the time (only the 940BE quad core , q9000 quad cores and hd4890/gtx 280 were faster, the new i7 intels weren't even out yet)
It ran all the latest games like a dream

Replaced the gpu with a 1GB 6870 (the 4770 equivalent of 2011) in late 2011 for battlefield 3 , intended as a tie me over card until the 28nm cards were out


Sadly since 2009 gpu prices have more than tripled in their respective performance brackets, and it looks like I'm in a similar situation like the one I was in in 2005
I stuck with my 9800 pro build for 6 years and will do the same with this build if I have to, until gpu and cpu prices come down to reasonable levels. A new build in the same performance bracket as in 2009, today would cost me almost 1000 euros.

 

[Mudcrab]

Pentium 90mhz
16 MB ram
2x CD Rom Drive
VGA
Windows

That's as much as I can remember from my first real rig, but I remember everything about Day of the Tentacle, Fate of Atlantis, Star Craft and various Star Wars games which were my most played games on it.

 

[Professor Lich]

Back in 2008, a friend of mine went to NewEgg and ordered all these parts for me.

- ASUS M4N75TD AM3 NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

- AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT90ZFBGRBOX

- LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS424-98 LightScribe Support

- CORSAIR DOMINATOR-GT 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000) Desktop Memory Model CMT6GX3M3A2000C8

- Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

- Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

- Antec CP-1000 1000W Continuous ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V v2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

- RAZER Lachesis Banshee Blue 9 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Laser Gaming Mouse

- RAZER RZ03-00181400-R3U1 Black USB Wired Lycosa Mirror Special Edition Gaming Keyboard

- LG W2053TP-PF Black 20" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor

- GIGABYTE GV-N465UD-1GI GeForce GTX 465 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

All for 1,500.

Then he came over on my 18th birthday, had some beers, and I watched him put it all together. Everything works great five years later.(Except my Razor mouse just recently died.)

 

[Baron_Calamity]

This is a bit more work that I planned but here ya go.
Got my first PC (but far from my first computer) in 1986. It was a Tandy 1000 EX.

Specs:
CPU 7.16 mhz 8088
RAM 256 k
Video CGA with special 16 color mode
Sound 3 channel beeper
Drive 360k 5 1/4 floppy

My next PC I built in 1989 (mostly to play Wing Commander)

CPU 386sx-16
RAM 4 megs
Video ATI VGA Wonder
Sound Sound Blaster
Drives
360k 5 1/4 floppy
720k 3.5 floppy
60 meg Hard Drive

In 1992 I went crazy and built a monster rig.

CPU 486 dx 33
RAM 16 megs
Video Trident 1 meg VLB
Sound Sound Blaster pro
Drives
360k 5 1/4 floppy
720k 3.5 floppy
250 meg Hard Drive
2x CD rom Drive

The amount of ram this machine had was almost unheard of in a pc for home use. The ram by itself cost $1700. 2 megs as still common and 4 was what they put in high end consumer machines.

1994
CPU 486dx4 120

1996
CPU Pentium 100
RAM 16 megs
Video Intergraph Reactor & a Diamond Monster 3D
Sound Sound Blaster 32
Drives
1.4 meg 3.5 floppy
2 gig Hard Drive
16 x CD rom Drive


1997
CPU Pentium 166 mmx
RAM 32 megs
Motherboard Soyo
Video Intergraph Reactor & a Diamond Monster 3D
Sound Sound Blaster 32
Drives 1.4 meg 3.5 floppy
two 2 gig Quantum Bigfoot Hard Drives
DVD rom
16 x CD rom Drive

1999
CPU Pentium II 300
RAM 64 megs
Motherboard Soyo
Video TNT & a Voodoo II
Sound Sound Blaster 32
Drives1.4 meg 3.5 floppy
two 2 gig Quantum Bigfoot Hard Drives
DVD rom
16 x CD RW drive

2000
CPU Athlon 850
RAM 384 megs
Motherboard ASUS
Video Geforce SDR
Sound Creative Labs Sound Blaster 128 Live
Drives 1.4 meg 3.5 floppy
Twin 4.5 gig Quantum Bigfoot Hard Drives
DVD rom
32 x CD RW Drive

2002
Dell Dimension 4400
Pentium 4 Processor at 2.0 GHz w/ 512K L2
Memory: 1024 MB DDR Ram
Video Card: eVGA 5900se 128 meg
Hard Drives: Two 80GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive
Optical Drives: 16X DVD ROM Drive, 4x DVD burner
Sound Card: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP

2004
CPU: Athlon 64 +3200
Motherboard: MSI "K8N Neo Platinum"
Memory: Two Geil Value Series 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200
video: ATI RADEON X800 PRO Video Card, 256MB GDDR3, 256-bit, 8X AGP
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS GAMER Limited Edition
Drive: NEC 8X Black DVD+RW/-RW Drive, Model ND-2500A

2006
Model: Gateway GM5084
CPU: AMD x2 4200+
Memory: 2048 megs of DDR
Video: BFG Tech 7900 GT OC

2008
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Memory: 4 x Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
Video: EVGA 512-P3-N841-A3 GeForce 8800GTS 512MB 256-bit GDDR3

2010
Model: Gateway: FX6831-03
CPU: Core i7 860
Memory: 16GB DDR3 1333
Video: ATI Radeon HD5850

Current:
Model: Dell 8500 xps
CPU: Core i7 3770
Memory: 12GB DDR3
Video: EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5

 

[mug]

First one I built was a 333mhz Celeron + a TNT2. 128MB of memory and a 15GB HDD. Pretty snazzy once I upgraded it to a PIII-400mhz

Original computer I used was a 386 of some kind to play Commander Keen.

 

[DCharlie]

Spectrums, c64s, amigas and STs aside ...

1993 - i can't exactly remember the spec but a 486-DX2 for my university course ?

At some point ants got into the rig and i remember one night doing a Pascal assignment (had to code Lemmings!) when the ants came marching out of the case.... :/

 

[XiaNaphryz]

First computer we owned I think was a TRS-80.

Zilog Z80 CPU @ 1.77 MHz
4 KB of RAM
I think the max resolution was something like 128×48?

Then we got a Commodore Plus/4 and then a Commodore 128. Our first Intel based system was a Tandy 1000, I think the SL/2 model:

Intel 8086 CPU @ 8 MHz
512 KB of RAM
Tandy video (640x200@16) and audio
We had a hard drive in that sucker too! Around 10 MB or so I think

We got a 486 rig after that one.

Intel 486 DX2 @ 66 MHz
16 MB of RAM
Some Cirrus Logic video card that I can't remember that supported SVGA
Soundblaster AWE32
100 MB hard drive

After that it was a Pentium rig, a P2 rig, an Athlon XP rig, a Core duo, and then my current i7 2600k rig.

 

[FlyingSaucer]

My first PC was around 1995-96 I guess ?
Pentium 75MHz
16Mo RAM
Win 95

I was purely a console player till then so even if I played my share of Duke 3D, Quake, Ultima 8 and Syndicate Wars on it, I spent most of my time playing classics, adventure games mostly : Indy 4, Gabriel Knight and the Monkey Island games. The joys of configuring an MSDOS boot

My current rig is the first one I've completely built by myself. I'm proud of it

 

[batman2million]

This is a bit more work that I planned but here ya go.
Got my first PC (but far from my first computer) in 1986. It was a Tandy 1000 EX.

Specs:
CPU 7.16 mhz 8088
RAM 256 k
Video CGA with special 16 color mode
Sound 3 channel beeper
Drive 360k 5 1/4 floppy

My next PC I built in 1989 (mostly to play Wing Commander)

CPU 386sx-16
RAM 4 megs
Video ATI VGA Wonder
Sound Sound Blaster
Drives
360k 5 1/4 floppy
720k 3.5 floppy
60 meg Hard Drive

In 1992 I went crazy and built a monster rig.

CPU 486 dx 33
RAM 16 megs
Video Trident 1 meg VLB
Sound Sound Blaster pro
Drives
360k 5 1/4 floppy
720k 3.5 floppy
250 meg Hard Drive
2x CD rom Drive

The amount of ram this machine had was almost unheard of in a pc for home use. The ram by itself cost $1700. 2 megs as still common and 4 was what they put in high end consumer machines.

1994
CPU 486dx4 120

1996
CPU Pentium 100
RAM 16 megs
Video Intergraph Reactor & a Diamond Monster 3D
Sound Sound Blaster 32
Drives
1.4 meg 3.5 floppy
2 gig Hard Drive
16 x CD rom Drive


1997
CPU Pentium 166 mmx
RAM 32 megs
Motherboard Soyo
Video Intergraph Reactor & a Diamond Monster 3D
Sound Sound Blaster 32
Drives 1.4 meg 3.5 floppy
two 2 gig Quantum Bigfoot Hard Drives
DVD rom
16 x CD rom Drive

1999
CPU Pentium II 300
RAM 64 megs
Motherboard Soyo
Video TNT & a Voodoo II
Sound Sound Blaster 32
Drives1.4 meg 3.5 floppy
two 2 gig Quantum Bigfoot Hard Drives
DVD rom
16 x CD RW drive

2000
CPU Athlon 850
RAM 384 megs
Motherboard ASUS
Video Geforce SDR
Sound Creative Labs Sound Blaster 128 Live
Drives 1.4 meg 3.5 floppy
Twin 4.5 gig Quantum Bigfoot Hard Drives
DVD rom
32 x CD RW Drive

2002
Dell Dimension 4400
Pentium 4 Processor at 2.0 GHz w/ 512K L2
Memory: 1024 MB DDR Ram
Video Card: eVGA 5900se 128 meg
Hard Drives: Two 80GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive
Optical Drives: 16X DVD ROM Drive, 4x DVD burner
Sound Card: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP

2004
CPU: Athlon 64 +3200
Motherboard: MSI "K8N Neo Platinum"
Memory: Two Geil Value Series 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200
video: ATI RADEON X800 PRO Video Card, 256MB GDDR3, 256-bit, 8X AGP
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS GAMER Limited Edition
Drive: NEC 8X Black DVD+RW/-RW Drive, Model ND-2500A

2006
Model: Gateway GM5084
CPU: AMD x2 4200+
Memory: 2048 megs of DDR
Video: BFG Tech 7900 GT OC

2008
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Memory: 4 x Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
Video: EVGA 512-P3-N841-A3 GeForce 8800GTS 512MB 256-bit GDDR3

2010
Model: Gateway: FX6831-03
CPU: Core i7 860
Memory: 16GB DDR3 1333
Video: ATI Radeon HD5850

Current:
Model: Dell 8500 xps
CPU: Core i7 3770
Memory: 12GB DDR3
Video: EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5

Holy crap! Talk about doing it old skool. Crazy to know that most of phones are more powerful than half the stuff up there.

 

[Chakan]

It was a piece of junk.

3x86 33mhz with 4MB Ram and hell if I remember the HD size. It was very small. The monitor was 14', made by some bankrupted company.

That useless computer couldn't even run DOOM properly.

 

[JaseC]

The first proper PC my family bought included a Pentium 200MHz, 32MB EDO-RAM, a 2MB S3 card (with only DirectDraw support) and a 6.4GB HDD. At the time (1997, IIRC), it was fine, as I was able to play the likes of Doom, Quake and Age of Empires, but eventually the lack of Direct3D support became more of a problem and I distinctly remember being upset when I received SiN for Christmas one year and found that it ran worse than the demo. My friend's family bought a PC some months later and it was noticeably better: Pentium 2 333MHz, 64MB RAM and a 4MB S3 card with Direct3D support (can't recall the HDD size).

My parents approved an upgrade in 2001 or 2002, and it was also the first system I built myself. I was so excited at the prospect of finally being able to play Quake 3 that I actually had my parents buy it before we even had the system: 1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird, 512MB DDR-RAM, 64MB GeForce 2 Ti and a 20GB(?) HDD. Needless to say, the vast majority of my time was spent playing Q3, but I also eventually developed a liking for Counter-Strike and began splitting my spare time between the two.

The next upgrade, in 2006, was the first one I paid for myself: Athlon XP 4200+, 1GB DDR2-RAM and a 512MB 7900GS (again, the HDD size/s elude me). It was around this time that a mate and I began LANing -- I distinctly recall the two of us playing through FEAR's SP campaign at the same time (we didn't have anything else ) and later smashing through Titan Quest/Immortal Throne and Serious Sam 2 co-operatively. We also began playing Counter-Strike: Source, but I can't remember if we invented our GunGame drinking game around this time or it was later, when I upgraded again. (To this day we still occasionally catch up to play said drinking game. It's rather amazing how long it's endured.)

In mid-2007 I had my first full-time job and so I treated myself to an E6420 (overclocked to 3.2GHz), 2GB DDR2-RAM, 512MB 2900XT (the 8800GTX was much more expensive at the time, but receiving the Black Box was a nice surprise) and a 250GB HDD. Although I now had a fairly high-end system, most of my time was still spent with CS:S, however I did play through the occasional new release, such as BioShock and of course Episode Two/Portal. This PC would have the longest tenure yet (~5 years), though I added storage to it on the odd occasion, bumped up the RAM to 4GB, and eventually had to replace the 2900XT with a 5750 after it decided to kick the bucket.

I built my next and current system in mid-2012. Originally comprised of a 2600K at 4.6GHz, 8GB DDR3-1600, 1.28GB GTX 570 and a few HDDs, it presently sports two overclocked 2GB 670s and 15TB of space (including a 60GB SSD for Windows, which is a very worthwhile upgrade regardless of how one's system fares). A month later, during Steam's Summer Sale, I caught "the bug" and so now purchase far more games than I actually play, but regardless I've developed a taste for playing PC games at max settings -- I intend to upgrade again in mid-2014.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

It was a piece of junk.

3x86 33mhz with 4MB Ram and hell if I remember the HD size. It was very small. The monitor was 14', made by some bankrupted company.

That useless computer couldn't even run DOOM properly.

That was the min spec for Doom, of course you were gonna have issues. Should've stuck to adventure games.

 

[subversus]

1987

x286, 15 mhz CPU, EGA monitor

 

[NuclearSpy]

First computer
1999?
P233
32MB RAM
SVGA gfx card

Good times. I was just happy I was able to play D2 on it since Blizzard games is what got me interested in PC gaming

2002?
P6 1.6Ghz
128MB RAM (I think)
TNT2 gfx card

I later upgraded the graphics card and RAM, so I can play HL2. I think I needed to add another stick of RAM and I upgraded my card to a Radeon 9800. Lasted me a while.

2006?
AMD 3800
1GB RAM
Radeon X1900XTX

This thing was a beast at its time. Unfortunately, it couldn't remain temperature stable when I wanted to play L4D, so I needed to move on

Current
Mac Pro
2.8 Quad core Xeon
7GB RAM
Radeon HD 5770

Needed it for work. Serves me well. No interest in a new computer anytime soon.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Back in 2008, a friend of mine went to NewEgg and ordered all these parts for me.

That was 2009, the phenom II x6 wasn't out until late 2009.

I also used to have a razer lachesis, by far the best mouse I've ever owned, it's too bad all of them had a hardware defect, the scrollwheel click would eventually stop working after a few years (took 3 years with mine), I assume that is what broke for you too?

 

[Hrothgar]

My memory is really fussy on the first few PCs during my childhood.

1st (~'96): I think it had a Pentium II ~300 MHz processor running DOS, floppy drive only, don't remember beyond that. Might have been a slower Pentium I from 1995.

2nd ('99): PIII 800 Mhz, 256 MB RAM, with Windows 98, Video card unknown, probably an early GeForce, but good enough to run Shogun: Total War

3rd (early 2005): P4 3.4 GHz, ATI Radeon X700 Pro (PCI-E, I remember that being all the rage), 512 MB RAM.

4th (early 2007): Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, NVidia 7950 GT 512 MB, 2 GB RAM, 500 GB HD. The first PC I bought myself.

Current (mid 2010): Intel i5-760, NVidia GTX460 1GB, 4 GB RAM (now 8 GB), 1 TB HD.

We might have had another PC in the mid-late 90s, the DOS PC and the Pentium II might have actually been different PCs, but I can't remember.

 

[Damaniel]

My first rig was a shitty Packard Bell PC that I got from Circuit City in 1996 (and it cost pretty much all of the money I was making from my part time job at the time):

Specs:
Pentium 133MHz
8MB RAM
On board video (no 3D), 1MB video ram
1.2 GB hard drive
14.4 modem
Win 95

My first upgrades for this system were a Pentium Overdrive-style processor (K6-233, to be precise) and a Voodoo Banshee card, along with a memory upgrade to 16MB. This probably happened 2 years after I originally bought it. The 3D card was mainly for Everquest, but I played a bunch of other stuff with it too.

Unfortunately I can't possibly remember all of the rigs I've built over the years since then (mainly because I only ever started from scratch twice and upgrade components regularly). My current rig:


Specs:
Core i7-2600K, OC to 4.4GHz, with a Noctua NH-D14 cooler
16 GB RAM
2x GeForce GTX 680
256 GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD + 3 platter drives for a total of 7 TB additional storage
2x 27", 1440p Korean gray-market monitors (Shimian QH270)

 

[ekim]

486 with 33MHZ and 4 MB of RAM. Good times back then.
Later I got a pentium 133 with an Elsa Erazor 3D and a Diamond Monster 3D.
The next one was an Athlon 600 with a Voodoo 3 3000 GPU in 1999 - that was a monster rig back then. I was able to play Ultima IX at more than 20FPS.
After that I had a Celeron something PC with a GeForce 2 MX until 2006 - after that I only had Laptops until this week. (And consoles)
Now I got myself an i5 4670, 8GB Ram, Radeon HD 7970 and cancelled my Xbone and PS4 preorders.

 

[Wyndstryker]

I barely remember the specs of my old machines...

1996
Pentium MMX 200mhz
32 MB Ram
3.2 GB HD
Upgraded to a Voodoo 2 later.

2002 - This rig was upgraded a bazillion times. But was easily the most influential in my early PC days.
AMD Athlon (I forget what speed. This later got upgraded to a better processor when I upgraded the MB)
126 MB Ram (Later upgrade to 256 then 512 after buying a new MB)
32 GB HD
Geforce 2

Current (2008)- I really need to upgrade
Intel Pentium Dual Core E6500
4 GB Ram
Currently 750GB HD. The original 1TB crashed.
Geforce GT 220

I bought that rig so it can play Starcraft 2. So it succeeded in it's goal lol.