Your first PC Gaming Rig

[Vault101]

Good eye, those are 2x GTX 570s (overclocked). As for the mobo, not really sure what you're referring to but the most obvious things is the massive CPU cooler with dual 140mm fans.

ah yes....the big fans they look like theyve been slapped on there with tape and carboard amongst all the shiny electronics

just out of interest whats the difference in performance between 2 mid-low range cards vs one High range card?

 

[Damy]

One of those colorful MACs upgraded from 32MB of ram to 64MB to be able to play the Diablo 2 expansion. It was bad.

 

[Kinitawowi]

Excluding the ZX Spectrum and later Amstrad CPC 6128 I had, the first proper gaming PC I had regular access to was my Dad's, a machine he picked up from some of the money he received in compensation after being on the wrong end of ABH.

It was absolutely BEAST for the time; a 486SX 33Mhz (we managed to pick up a DX emulator for it), with 4Mb of RAM, and a 130Mb hard drive - upgraded to 210Mb by the shop after the first one turned out to be faulty. Also two floppy drives, a Creative Labs SB16 sound card, and - most amazingly of all among my peers - an SVGA card. DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1, naturally, although we configured up Quikmenu to handle all the DOS stuff (I can still remember the serial number for that program), and even had it boot to multiple menus from CONFIG.SYS for the three games that needed EMS memory to run and the seven that needed specially stripped down memory builds. Later upgraded to an SB Pro, a 2x CD-ROM drive (we spent fourteen hours trying to make that fucker work - you had to run it through the sound card in those days - just so we could play Command And Conquer), and eventually a 7200 baud modem (and much later, a 56.6K).

 

[Dryk]

The only PC I've personally built is the one I'm still using, it has a i5-2500K and a GTX 560 Ti and cost ~$AU1100 not including the monitor, speakers, keyboard which I already had

 

[MercurySteam]

Good eye, those are 2x GTX 570s (overclocked). As for the mobo, not really sure what you're referring to but the most obvious things is the massive CPU cooler with dual 140mm fans.

ah yes....the big fans they look like theyve been slapped on there with tape and carboard amongst all the shiny electronics

just out of interest whats the difference in performance between 2 mid-low range cards vs one High range card?

The fans may indeed look tacky but they're perform quite well in terms of cooling and low noise.

As for the cards, there are many factors to consider when it comes to SLI/Crossfire setups. More cards means more power draw, space taken up, noise and heat. Multi-card setups don't always scale very well (though in most cases it's with games that don't require much graphics processing power) and some people can even notice microstutter. However, the technology is improving all the time and with the introduction of PCIe 3.0, it's never been easier to squeeze out every last drop of performance you can from these setups. Along with that, performance per watt has been dramatically reduced e.g. two GTX 660Ti cards can be powered by a decent 600W PSU. I like the idea of having multiple cards because it means I can buy a card then wait 6-12 months and by another one, which means I only really need to purchases new GPUs every second release of a series as opposed to every series (and still have blistering good performance, and usually a cheaper second card to boot).

 

[sniddy_v1legacy]

It was 386

Ran DOS mostly, did have windows 3.1 installed a little later, but dos was better

1 meg of ram

2 3.5" floppy drives

I upgraded it quickly to a CD ROM player and 2 meg of ram (that was showing off back then) and put in a sound blaster

Hard drive was tiny....I cant recal spec but not a lot

Man, thoese were the days

 

[Weaver]

My first... was probably a 386 way back in the day.
I didn't BUILD it, (I was too young) and I have no idea how much it cost, as my parents bought it.

Keep in mind, it was a family machine; not mine alone.
The first computer I bought all on my own money, built and was mine was probably around the year 2000? I honestly don't remember lol.

 

[Oltsu]

huh....

is that a computer without a case laying on its "side"?

It's a test bench. I can't really use a closed case because of my cooling system and I also happen to chance the hardware so often that a normal case would be somewhat annoying

It's probably the bulkiest and most impractical thing in the world but I like it.

 

[Easton Dark]

It's a test bench. I can't really use a closed case because of my cooling system and I also happen to chance the hardware so often that a normal case would be somewhat annoying

It's probably the bulkiest and most impractical thing in the world but I like it.

Oh my gosh the dust would get on everything, all the time, oh that'd be my nightmare of a PC to have.

I much prefer my little Dragon here. I keep him closed up and hidden away so none of that dusty dust gets near him.

 

[rapidoud]

$1300 for my best price/performance.

Asus p5k-e mobo
$80 logitech 5.1 speakers
4850 for $220 (in 2008; 2005 was some nvidia GPU that broke and I went onboard for 2 years)
Some corsair (iirc) PSU that has no labels on it
intel core 2 duo 6 something
WD 250GB HDD I think

Some other stuff too like keyboard, CPU heatsink and stuff I can't quite remember.

That was back in 2005; before that I used my parents computer and it essentially became mine for gaming as my brother got his laptop for school in 2003 (high school).

Now I have an intel core 2 quad (since '08), another HDD (Samsung 250GB, still got my WD), an SSD, my brother's mobo (although mine is in the media PC now), same speakers, same PSU (although I need a batter one as this one isn't coping), a new monitor (had a viewsonic that had some stuck pixels on it; had a samsung 2333sw for years now), Sapphire 7970 (just bought).

I like to stay in the high-ish region of game performance; not enthusiast level like 1440p monitors or 120Hz or 3D or tri-monitors; just enough so my games look great. If pixel density starts increasing then I'll grab a new monitor.

My rig would've stayed very cost-efficient if I went with a 7850 (around $200 like the 4850) and overclocked but the never settle bundle tempted me.

 

[Bostur]

For everyone talking oldschool, I got you all beat: a TRS-80.

Thats pretty old school. I can't beat that but I can get close: a Commodore Vic 20. Although whether it can be considered a PC is arguable. But it was a gaming computer with a keyboard.

Now where did that tape with Missile Command go...

 

[Archangel768]

First "gaming" computer? Or first computer that I got to play games on?

If it's the latter, then that would be my first pc ever as a birthday present when I turned 8.
486 100mhz CPU, 8-16mb (can't remember exactly) 540mb hdd, 1mb video card? 14" monitor etc

First "gaming" computer? That would be my current desktop. After a decade I finally have my first job and I can afford to build a current up to date computer for the first time.
i7 3770k 3.5ghz, 8gb 1600mhz ram, 3tb hdd, 500gb hdd, 128gb ssd, 2tb external, GTX 660ti video card, blu ray drive, 27" 3D IPS Dual Play monitor, 23" monitor, 21.5" monitor, 5.1 surround sound.
All up probably cost close to 2000.

 

[wabbbit]

As in the first PC I played games on that I actually owned (Or rather my family..)

AMD Duron 800mhz, a stonking 128mb SDRAM, CD-Rom drive and an insane 20GB of storage. That think lasted a good few years before I gave in and bought my own PC in about 2004(ish). The latest game that I ran on it was CnC Generals which was only getting about 20FPS. Saddening.

Before that I think it was an upgraded 33mhz(at least thats what it said, may have been 333mhz) Win95 custom build my grandad picked up in '98 from work, hardly any RAM, under 1GB hard drive and a TON of floppy disks.
best thing about it was the TURBO button on the front which stepped up the processing power. Playing RCT, London Racer and Monstertruck Madness was my life one summer.... never worked out why someone wouldn't have TURBO turned on...

When I bought my own system in 2004(ish) it was:
- AMD64 3000+
- 1GB DDR2
- Some AMD 128mb graphics card
- DVDRW
- 80GB HDD

A long way off the overclocked 3570k I run these days

 

[New Troll]

First "gaming" PC was a Commodore 64/128. No hardrive. Ran the games straight from memory. I fondly remember putting in my Fairy Tale Adventure disk, typing RUN, and then heading outside to play for a couple hours while it loaded. Those were the days...

Best price... hard to say since most every PC I've ever had has been partly new and partly re-use of components. I've built machines, but never truly from scratch. Usually, since I work electronics retail, I will wait for a decent rig to go on clearance, pick it up for half price (or lower,) and then dissect the hell out of it to reassemble it as my own. Very rarely do I spend over $400, but that's not including all the reused parts nor the labor of love.

 

[trollnystan]

I don't think I've ever had a computer gotten solely for gaming. Well, I guess the Commodore 64 my brother handed down to me when he got his Amiga 600 back in the day.[footnote]Yes, I'm OLD, people. 30 this year. Now get of my lawn! *shakes walking stick*[/footnote] My big sister broke it =/

Most of my computers have been mostly free however, thanks to generous hand-me-downs from same brother. This last one cost me a total of 600SEK (that's what? 90USD?). This is why I'm a PC gamer and not a console one; I can actually better afford a PC than a console.

It's a quad core with 4GB of memory (I'm considering upping it to 8GB but need to work up the courage to do it myself), a GeForce GTX 460 graphics card, plus I'm sure a lot of other computey technical stuff. It's not awesome but it plays most of my games pretty well. My biggest problem is my rather run down hard drive. Need a new one pretty badly but can't afford one.

 

[Schtoobs]

Hmm... I actually can't remember for sure, about 1994-95 but I think it was a P100 (Pentium 486 @ 100Mhz!) . As far as RAM goes I haven't got a clue and the first graphics card I can remember knowing the name of was a Voodoo Banshee but that wasn't the first one I had. It was top of the line at the time and could run games like Wing commander 3 (awesome) and Tie Fighter, System Shock, Descent and Fury 3 (pretty much the same game), SW: Dark Forces, C&C, X-com, TES:Arena... I had to look through a list of 94-95 pc games to recall most of them. I was about 12-13 at the time and didn't consider things like frame rate or input lag*, so no idea if they were running well or not. My old man bought it for me so no idea of cost either. I know he paid more for a 15 inch CRT... thing weighed a ton.


*I put this down to being introduced to gaming on an Amstrad CPC (DOH!) which I loved but, I have since found out, was a POS that some games weren't even playable on, I still have The Tolkein Trilogy games on tape but only one of them worked consistently and one never worked at all.

So after writing ALL that I realise the Amstrad CPC (1988ish) was infact my first PC (hints in the name I guess) but tbh it was so basic it was not much different to the consoles ... just had a text prompt user interface with the hardware all integrated into the keyboard casing. Tapper was one of the earliest games I remember despite not playing it for long because it was boring and impossible (he is in the Wreck it Ralph film ), The Prize, the dizzy games were good, Gauntlet... I also had one hundred games on one floppy disc, basic games (multiplayer snake) but how cool is that?

Sorry, started reminiscing there.

 

[Wolfram23]

The first gaming PC I bought myself was around $800-900 and had a 2.4ghz Intel C2D and an Nvidia 8600GT. Played a lot of WoW on that.

My current gaming rig I've got up to roughly $3200 spent. Looking at the prices, it's amazing how much they've dropped now for basically everything. Like, I bought an Intel X25M 80GB SSD for $215. $215! That would almost get you a 256GB drive now with a sale, and it would be much faster too.

Anyway, for the curious:

Intel i5 750
Patriot Viper 2 Sector 5 1600mhz CL8 8GB
Asus P7P55D Pro
Sapphire 5850 x2 with Scythe Setsugen coolers
EVGA GT 240
AuzenTech Bravura 7.1
Seagate 7200rpm 500GB x2 (RAID 0)
Corsair 750TX
Intel X25M 80GB
Corsair Force Series GT 120GB
Scythe Kaze Master Pro fan controller
Swiftech Edge 220 water cooling (upgraded from Zalman CNPS10X Extreme)
Antec 900 II
Sennheiser PC 350 headset
Logitech X540 speakers
Samsung 2494SW monitor
Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard
Cooler Master Sentinel Z3RO-G mouse

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Well, I can't remember, it's such a long time ago and I'm several PCs further now.
I only remember what the case looked like and what the first game was I bought to play on it. (Not my first game ever, just the first one that was my own, since this was also the firts PC that was my own.)

Anyway, the game was Blood Omen 2.
It was fun.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

I got my first gaming computer back in 2005. It was a pre-built DigiPro computer with the standard DigiPro case, 256MB of RAM, Geforce 5200FX GPU with 128MB of memory and a 3GHz single-core Intel Pentium 4 CPU. I do not know how much it cost, I was 13 years old and my parents bought the thing for me.

In a way, I'm still using the same computer even though none of the components are the same anymore. I kept on switching up components depending on the need, getting a RAM upgrade here or a new power source there. I only did a major rebuild twice, once in 2008 and once last year. In 2008, I got a new motherboard, CPU, GPU and RAM. The specs were at 2 GB of RAM, Geforce 9600GT with 1GB video memory and a 2.7GHz dualcore AMD Athlon X2. The upgrade cost me slightly more than 200 Eur total.

I got a new GPU in 2011 and then did another major rebuild last summer. I changed the motherboard, RAM and CPU again and this time, I also got a new case (the old one couldn't cope with the amount of heat generated by the newer hardware and the thing would overheat as a result). The GPU cost me 170 Eur, the rest of the upgrade was around 300 Eur.

I'm currently at 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX560 1,5 GB and a 3.2 GHz quad-core Ivy Bridge Intel i5.

 

[Nielas]

First "gaming" PC was a Commodore 64/128. No hardrive. Ran the games straight from memory. I fondly remember putting in my Fairy Tale Adventure disk, typing RUN, and then heading outside to play for a couple hours while it loaded. Those were the days....

My first gaming computer was a Atari 800XL and I had to use a tape drive to load the games.

After that I inherited a 286 from my father that I used for gaming. 1 MB or RAM and an 80MB harddrive.

The first gaming computer I bought for myself was a 386DX that I no longer remember the stats for. I think I had it upgraded to a 486 at some point or I might be confusing it with a Pentium I got later. I did not have much money so they were hardly 'gaming rigs'.

My current computer is a Dell that I got mostly for work reasons but still plays most games fine. I will be looking to upgrade to a proper gaming rig sometime in the next 3 months though.