https://pcpartpicker.com/list/CNgJPs
My first true 100% build from the ground up. I still actively use in my main rig the: RAM, PSU, Mouse, HDD(mass storage), Disk Drives, and I think thats it. Some of that I gave away or sold as I added and changed parts
Cyrix 486dx2 80MHz with 12MB of RAM mixed 72pin and 30pin. X-Com Apocalypse never looked so good. :)
I just completed my first build and so far it's exceeding my expectations. I'm not a demanding gamer, I just appreciate good graphic quality with a price point that won't ruin my day.
I had a very tight budget, basically I needed to get this done for around $400-$500. I started by splurging on a high end graphics card but changed my mind before it shipped and did a reassessment of the graphics demands in the games I am playing now and the overall performance of the 4-year old Alienware I had been using for everything from my writing projects to some photo presentation projects, etc. I also took a look at what I would need to do in order to play games that might come out 3-4 years from now. That was a good move, on my part.
I splurged instead (much more modestly) on an MSI Z270 board an an i5-7400 because a) I wanted a Kaby Lake and b) I decided against overclocking my CPU. I probably have WAY too much motherboard for what I do with my PC, but I have no regrets.
I also got a deal on a Fractal Design case, which was fun to work with and nice to look at.
The rest of the PC is composed of scavenged parts from various other PCs I had in storage as well as a few new items. I found a gold-rated 650 watt psu ($20) at a tech recycling center, a 7900rpm 1TB Seagate HDD on sale at Fry's ($30), and I traded the Alienware to a used/repair PC shop for a used 3G GeForce 960 and 2x8GB 2400Mhz sticks of RAM.
Total cost: $435, and if I ever change my mind and decide to try overclocking, all I need is a new chip and a cooling system.
I got a free 286 at work with a full height 68 meg MFM drive and 14 inch crt. Doom needed a 386, went to Fry's.
486 DX/2 50 from Cryrix cost the same as an Intel 386 both w/MB. Did not count on how expensive 4 meg ram would be:)
Doom was a 5 dollar diskette from the used software store. Remember spending hours trying to figure out the best config.sys and autoexec.bat file for performance. Even tried a low level format to speed up the HD, typing in the error list from the sticker on the HD was a pain.
I'm 19 atm and didn't get into PC building until late 2011 for Skyrim. My first PC ever (pre-built) was an AMD Athlon Dual Core 5000+ and an Nvidia Geforce GS 9500.
My first ever build had:
CPU: AMD Phenom x4 965 (Still holds a special place in my heart, alongside my old AMD FX 8350).
GPU: EVGA Geforce GTX 560.
RAM: 8 GB, forget the brand
MOBO: Pretty sure it was the Asus Sabertooth FX AM3 socket mobo. Started with the Phenom then put the FX 8350 in there later.
Lol it's funny, A 386 was my first system in 1996 and late last week I had a customer come in with a dead 386
Wants me to fix it. It's his accounting machine. Old electrical engineer.
Probably a failed PSU since no power on but haven't seen one in some time
Yea, that sucked. I know I spent around $500 to put 4mb in my 486.
Day 1
CPU: Fx-8120 3.1Ghz @ 4Ghz boost (stock cooler)
MB: ASUS M5A97
RAM: Corsair vengeance 1333mhz 4gb x2 (8GB)
GPU: amd Gigabyte HD6870 Super overclocked edition 1gb gddr5
PSU: 500w "microcenter branded" 80+bronze
HDD: 80gb barracuda 7200rpm drive (i had externals for storage)
DVD: Samsung burner
$650 with tax before rebate 2011
3 months later $30 : Heatsink: hyper 212 evo
inbetwen this time : garbage picked 2 1TB drives i use to this day
5 months later : ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z AM3+ [$370 at the time on sale for $280]
(yes i know the MB was over kill but at this point i had been through 3 M5A97 's a was sick of killing them)
6 months later (christmass gift 2012) : Sound card : asus xonar essence stx (for my sennheiser HD598)
8 months later : $350 [on sale for $279] OCZ Agility 4 Series 256 GB Internal SSD
Next Christmas 2013 : Antec High Current Gamer HCG‑900 Power Supply
christmas 2014 : samsung 850 evo SSD 500GB
christmas 2015: $50 to me but still new : 5TB WD RED
june 2016 : $100 used ASUS hd7970 directcu ii
DEC 2016 Christmas: Corasiar h100i & 8gb 4x2 corsair vengence 1600mgz ram
Current Build
CPU: Fx-8120 @ 4.5ghz 45C max temp 100% load
Heasink: Corasiar h100i
MB: ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z AM3+
RAM: corsair vengence 1600mgz 16gb 4gb x4
GPU: ASUS hd7970 directcu ii
PSU: Antec High Current Gamer HCG‑900W Power Supply
SSD: samsung 850 evo 500gb
HDD: WD RED 5TB
DVD: samsung dvd burner
this PC has gone from Pikachu to Raichu over the years LOL cant wait for my ryzen build some time 2018
Still have mostly the same system I started with.
Fx-8350
Sabertooth 990fx r2.0
16gb corsair vengance
Noctua nh-c14
Asus 270x
Rosewill lineglow case
Corsair hx 750 psu
Samsung 840 pro 512gb
2x 3tb wd black hdd
My first purchase was an i286-16, which was a hot rod, 'cause most 286 CPUs at that time only ran at 12 megahertz. It came with one megabyte of RAM, of which DOS could only see the first 640 kilobytes, without some fancy trickery. Not being one to leave well enough alone, I quickly added a sound card, modem, math co-processor and I upgraded to 4MB of RAM. It all went down hill from there!
After a while, i was anxious to build an i486, but I couldn't purchase the parts that I wanted, for less than I could get them pre-assembled from Gateway. : ( I ended up building an i386-DX40 for my parents and I bought the Gateway for myself.
I had a friendly rivalry with a buddy who had an i486-SX25. Back then, you had to be a tinkerer to get these DOS/Windows machines to run worth a damn, if at all. We used to trade printouts of benchmark scores and eventually he got tired of the "big numbers" that my machine was pumping out, so he got himself a Pentium 75. I retaliated by installing a heat sink on the i486 CPU, upgrading the GPU and increasing the RAM to 24MB. I then wrote a batch file which first created a RAM disk and then copied all of the critical Windows files to the RAM disk. With these mods, my i486-DX33 could still kick some serious ass on the benchmarks! After spending "all the money" on his Pentium rig, I thought that my buddy was going to cry! Soon afterwards, he lost all interest in benchmarks.
Those were the days!!!
I had several hand-me-down Pentium 4 and older machines for the first few years of my life, all laptops. My first desktop was actually intended to be a game server (and got me into networking - I still use it as a Proxmox server to run pretty much everything I run) and I went stupidly overkill and got an AMD FX-6300 and 8GB of RAM. Don't really know what I was thinking, I suppose prices were good enough it made sense. Whatever, it got me into networking and I'm glad I did it cause I put 24GB of RAM in there along with 3 HDDs, and now I've got a pretty sweet little hypervisor server.
This build was based in 2006
First Build Ever 2006
CPU: AMD Athlon FX 62
Mobo: Biostar NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI
Ram: 4gb DDR2 OCZ Platinum
GPU: ATI Radeon 2600
HDD1: 320gb Seagate Baricuda
HDD2: 500gb Seagate Baricuda
PSU: 750 watt Ultra
Second Build 2007 aka spider platform (remember those days of the spider and dragon platforms?)
CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9850
Mobo: MSI K9A2 Platnium
Ram: 4gb DDR2 OCZ Platinum
GPU: AMD Radeon 3870
HDD1: 320gb Seagate Baricuda
HDD2: 500gb Seagate Baricuda
PSU: 750 watt Ultra
Current Build 2017 we ryzen to the top
CPU: AMD Ryzen R7 1700
Mobo: MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon
Ram: 16gb Corsair Vengeance DDR4
GPU: ASUS GTX 1060 6gb
SSD1: 275gb Crucial MX300
SSD2: 500gb Samsung 850 Evo
HDD1: 1tb WD Black
HDD2: 2tb Seagate
PSU: 750 watt Corsair
Case: Corsair AIR 540
First build:
Phenom II X3 720
Some AM2+ motherboard
4gb DDR2
6600 GT (soon after got a GT 630)
Some 500gb HDD
Nvidia edition Thermaltake case
A 450watt PSU
Stock amd CPU cooler
I think that was everything
I remember those... People were killing their 700 series processors on mass trying to unlock them to quad cores... A few people have been successful with that and there we go... Craziness...
Kinda weird when you look how many people reacted negatively towards the unlock of Vram in the RX480 reference...
That entire build + the GT 630 I got like 2 months later cost me a whopping
$250
In 2012 lol.
I was pretty happy.
If you still have it, you may try to unlock it... You will get basically 940, and 940 is still within requirements for a lot of new games... Still a capable cpu...
Nah I got rid of it a while back
I wish I would have kept the CPU at least but oh well
My first self build is my current computer.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 3.1GHz Dual-Core Processor ($0.00)
Motherboard: Asus P8H77-M PRO Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($64.99)
Memory: Kingston Value 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($0.00)
Storage: Toshiba 160GB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($208.90 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Storage: Samsung Spinpoint F1 RAID 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($0.00)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB Video Card ($57.10)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($32.95)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($62.72)
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow (Red) 69.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($8.79)
Case Fan: NZXT FN-120RB 47.3 CFM 120mm Fan ($24.52 @ Amazon)
Other: Intel stock cooler ($5.89)
Total: $465.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-03-17 03:19 EDT-0400
But i had other PCs before this one, one of them was a birthday present from my cousin (he built that PC for him and later gave it to me). I remember it had a Pentium 4, like 2gb of DDR1 or 2, 500gb hdd and i used the integrated graphics to game on it.
