That feeling

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1

Hi guys, I'm pretty new on the site although I've followed The Tek on youtube for quite some time.

My name is Simon, I'm from Sweden, so there.

So The Tek and Linus inspired me to pursue the boy dream I've had since I first saw a custom-made PC: Build one on my own.

Long story short: 

I got the parts a week ago and after a sweaty afternoon of piecing it together (I'm a big guy, big fingers and absolutely awful at little tricky work and details) since it was my first time building one from scratch.

I fired it up and after two evenings of troubleshooting with the help of a close friend who's way better at computers than me and alot of cursing I came to the conclusion that the motherboard, a Maximus VI Hero was at fault. It just wouldn't POST properly and that annoying LED Q-code kept giving me 00. So I sent it back and ordered a MSI Z87-G55 and anxious and paranoid I clicked the power button on my R4 case and boom, it fired up without any trouble and went into BIOS instantly! 

That feeling when my own built system suddenly worked... :')

For the curious my specs are:

CPU: Intel i7 4770K at stock 3,5Gz (May overclock in the future) 

Stock cooler (Aim to get a Noctua NH-U14S real soon)

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Arctic White with just stock fans at the moment. I aim to put in a Noctua 140FLX fan real soon.

Motherboard: Like I mentioned a MSI Z87 G55

GPU: Gainward GeForce GTX 770 4GB PhysX CUDA (Might get a second GTX 770, if so I'm interested in the Gigabyte GTX 770 4GB, so a similar one)

RAM: Crucial BallistiX Sport 16GB 1600Mz

SSD: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB BK OEM where my OS and Steam is so far.

HDD: Seagate Baracuda 1TB 7200RPM

Screen: Asus 24" LED VG248QE 144Hz

Aaand that's it, I also got Windows 8.1 so playing around with that all evening for the first time... It's weird, but fast!


Any constructive feedback on my system, questions or similar events/stories with your first or recent system are more than welcome :)

 

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Man.....my first build was 9 years ago...gosh I feel old lol. I'm 27. It was my graduation gift from high school and I was given $400 to play around with.

Since I had a limited budget I needed to be cost effective and yet still get some performance out of my machine. I went with a Foxxcon case, an ECS motherboard with Radeon Xpress 200 intergrated graphics, 512 MB of DDR2 RAM, a whopping 80GB hard drive and a 300 Watt PSU , LOL I thought I was smoking!

I planned my rig around being able to play Unreal Tournament 2004 and Doom 3. Suffice it to say that I wasn't able to play Doom 3 but I was able to play Unreal Tournament 2004 just and, also Half Life 2 at 800x600 resolution.......I know, it sounds ridiculous now.

Luckily I had little to no trouble putting together the parts when it finally fired up and I was playing a game on it........was pure bliss and pride. I'll never forget it.  :)

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I purchased an old used rig, not knowing what I was really getting.  I did a lot of research looking on how to upgrade it, then upgraded it and sold it for more than I paid for it.  Using those funds, I build a little ITX system, but left out the GPU as I didn't have enough money at the time.  I've had to RMA my motherboard twice, and although the motherboard I have now no longer has intermittent problems, the WiFi doesn't work on this motherboard at all.  I snatched up a HD 7950 for about $200, and now I can play all the games I've wanted for quite some time.

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Awesome stories fellas!

Nerodante: Bit older than me, I'm 23 (Soon 24) but not that old mate ;)

Yeah pure bliss, pride and relief pretty much sums it up. "Yes! I can build a PC without destroying half of the components or breaking the motherboard in two" :D

Some Tech Noob: Building, upgrading and making Money of it, impressive!

Yeah I'm still awaiting the RMA on the Maximus board. Bought all parts from a big online PC Company in Sweden ( actually based in Norway I Think) Called Komplett.se.

I had to pay the frikkin' shipment for the RMA though which cost me around 20$ which kinda pissed me off.

I Think my system should have me covered for the future, especially if I add a second 770.

5

the first time I bought/recieved parts to build a PC from scratch that wasn't dell or compaq was when I was in college, I got a biostar AM3 matx board, 2x1GB kingston low profile ram, EVGA GT 240, and a athlon II x2 2.8Ghz

3 month later when I was at a friends house and he was teaching me how to overclock I misheard him and put +1volt instead of +.01volt

I effectively melted the CPU, but I had just recieved some other parts and lived off a AM2 1.8Ghz single core system until I bough a phenom II x3 off a member of RazeTheWorld

another time I was going on the information that I was building a "Gaming Machine" for my friends mom, turns out the games were BigFish point and click games