Your first PC Gaming Rig

trollnystan

I'm back, baby, & still dancing!
Dec 27, 2010
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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

New member
Feb 8, 2012
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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

New member
Mar 23, 2004
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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

Evil
May 1, 2009
20,147
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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'm dead inside.
Oct 25, 2008
648
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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

Senior Member
Dec 5, 2011
263
5
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New Troll said:
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.
 

antidonkey

New member
Dec 10, 2009
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well, the first PC I ever gamed on was a TI-99-4A. The floppy disk drive on that thing was about the size of a home theater receiver and had no hard drive at all. No clue how much it cost as I was 7. I loved that thing. Especially when we got the speech module and it would talk! It used a regular 13 inch tv instead of a monitor and you could load text based adventure games on it from a cassette player. Oh the sounds it made. Imagine having to listen to a modem handshake for 15 minutes before playing a game that was nothing but a wall of text! Twas the shit back in the day.
 

TehCookie

Elite Member
Sep 16, 2008
3,923
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Mine was an outdated windows 98 compaq laptop, and I don't know the specs. My dads work upgraded laptops and he managed to get a few old throw away laptops for my brother and me. If i wanted to play newer games I would go on my dads pc.
 

Inconspicuous Trenchcoat

Shinku Hadouken!
Nov 12, 2009
408
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Oldest thing I've used was some old Macintosh to play Lode Runner. Might have been an Apple II? I was a primarily console gamer until I got my 3rd hand-me-down in 2006-ish; I've been a PC gamer first and foremost since. I did pick up a used BC PS3 (160GB HDD in it) for $130 a year ago. Enjoy that too (though console graphics can be so frackin' ugly, lol)

Pentium II @233MHz
Some tiny amount of RAM...
Maybe a Nvidia TNT video card? Whatever it was, think it had 32MB of memory.
Sub 10GBs of harddrive space
Played The Sims at about 5 FPS; about 1 FPS when everything was on fire. StarCraft lagged on it when everyone had their armies built up.

Pentium III @833MHz
256MB RAM (I upgraded it to my MoBo's max of 384MB :D)
Nvidia 4 or 5000 series? (I upgraded it at some point to something Nvidia...)
80GB HDD
I remember having this when Oblivion was being shown... and it recommended like a 1.8GHz dual-core (and a min. of 2GHz Pentium IV), I was so far behind xD.
WarCraft III and Counter-Strike ran great though.

Two Xeon Dual-Cores @3GHz
Nvidia 6200? (I upgraded this to the fastest AGP card I could find, a Nvidia 7800GS 256MB)
2GB of RAM (Used to have 4GB, had to remove 2GB cause stuff kept crashing. Stumbled upon this fix, didn't know about the limits of Win XP and 3GB of RAM back then)
160GB HDD, 80GB HDD
This computer played TF2 pretty well, but I remember avoiding 32 players servers cause my framerate would tank. I think the most advanced game it ever could play was Left 4 Dead 2.

M4A78 Plus ASUS MoBo
AMD Phenom II x2 @3.1GHz (upgraded to: Phenom II x4 @3.5GHz
4GB DDR2 Kingston HyperX RAM @833MHz (Upgraded to 8GB, for no good reason xD)
Radeon 4650 (Sold that almost immediately and bought a Radeon 4870 1GB; currently am using a ATI 6950 2GB
Runs every thing I want to play well enough; it sucks at modern MMOs like Tera and Guild Wars 2. Think I'm CPU or old MoBo limited. Planning on building a new rig within the next year or so. But might wait longer, most games I like aren't very demanding and I run mostly everything at high settings with no AA at 40+ FPS, most often 60 FPS.

So, how much did it cost (most recent, bottom spoiler)? Well, I started with a weak prebuilt and buoyed it up from there. If I had been more knowledgable, I would have been able to get more for less. Unfortunately, I was pretty clueless a few years ago, but that's the past.

Built in Jan. 2010; upgraded over time; last upgrade: May 2012 (well, bought RAM for no reason in Oct. 2012)
Pre-built: $550 shipped ($550)
Sold included GPU: $40, Bought 4870: $162-40: $122 ($672)
Sold included CPU: $40, Bought Phenom II x4 970: $150-40: $110 ($782)
Replaced case fans: $25 ($807)
Sold 4870: $40, Bought 6950: $200-40: $160 ($967)
Bought 4GB more RAM (because I'm stupid; DDR2 is more expensive than DDR3, btw): $70 ($1037)

Total from Jan 2010 to Oct 2012: $1,037 ($550 initially + $487 in upgrades and ignorance-tax). Technically, I got the new processor for Christmas, so take off $150 if you like.

It is my primary gaming platform, plus I edit videos, browse the internet and do other work and entertainment on it. I'd do it all again, but smarter this time :p
 

Jfswift

Hmm.. what's this button do?
Nov 2, 2009
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Vault101 said:
Jfswift said:
- 160 mb hdd
.
....wow

I know you said it was the early 90's but...wow there was almost as much storage on your graphics card as there was on your hardrive
I'm just guessing there. I can't remember how big my hdd actually was or specifically what graphics card I had back then. I imagine in ten years we'll look back and chuckle about how small a GB is too. :p
 

mfeff

New member
Nov 8, 2010
284
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A hand me down Timex Sinclair 1000 with the 16kb ram dongle and high speed 300 baud magnetic tape storage. Played such riveting titles as Froger, Asteroids, Lander, and learned Basic... wrote a simply "monopoly" game on it when I was 8.

Cost
Unit: FREE
10 bucks in blank tapes
20 bucks in books



Go Go Gadget Nostalgia!
 

infohippie

New member
Oct 1, 2009
2,369
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*leans back in his rocking chair, puffing on his old pipe*

Well, my first gaming PC was a 120MHz Pentium, overclocked to 133MHz with eight megabytes of RAM. 1Gb HDD. S3 Virge video card, which let it achieve the highly respectable resolution of 1024x768, although if I wanted a decent frame rate I would have to drop it down to 800x600. I doubled the RAM to 16MB before long, though, and when the first 3D cards began to appear around a year or so later, I got myself a Matrox Mystique. It cost me just over $1100 to put that together, and another $300 for the Matrox card. This was back in 1996.

Of course, I had been gaming on desktop machines for years before that, this was just my first PC. I had several models of Amiga over the years, and before that a couple of old Z-80 based computers, one with a tape drive only, and the other with an actual 360kb floppy disk drive. I got my first actual computer back in 1985, and my first Amiga in 1989.
 

Jamous

New member
Apr 14, 2009
1,941
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My first was a very recent acquirement. Got it late last year.
i7 3770k Quadcore
24GB RAM (Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz) 2*4, 2*8
2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
GTX 680 (ASUS DC2T)
ASUS Intel Z77 B3 Revision Motherboard (If anyone cares)
It's watercooled too. It's beautiful and I love it. Cost me about £1000 (1.5k usd) but SO worth it.
 

invadergir

New member
May 29, 2008
88
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My first gaming PC, I built in 2000 for about $1,000. I was rocking the voodoo 5 and I thought I was the sh*t. lol
 

Abomination

New member
Dec 17, 2012
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Atari ST - it was purchased for me by my parents as an edutainment machine. They thought it would be a good idea to introduce me to new technology in an entertaining manner... it kind'a stuck.

I didn't get into computers from an IT perspective but the self-taught knowledge of damn near 23 years of interaction with the things has come in incredibly handy with any occupation I find myself in.

I did recently purchase an 8 Core AMD which has served me so well it was able to run Impire without any issues, Natural Selection 2 on full settings at over 100 FPS and every other game on ultra settings never droppign below 60 FPS - I am convinced this has been a worthwile investment.
 

Zeke63

New member
Jul 10, 2012
133
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windows 95, it was hardxcore. I played mr potatohead, and putt putt, and freddy the fish. you got nothin on those games
 

teh_gunslinger

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. did it better.
Dec 6, 2007
1,325
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Pentium 100 Mhz
16 Mb RAM (Crazy much!)
1 Gb HDD
2 Mb S3 Something somthing Virge
Sound Blaster Pro (I think)

Cost an arm and a leg back in the day, but god damn, was it awesome!
 

nightingale

New member
Nov 10, 2012
24
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Oh, wow! Sweet memories.

My first gaming PC, I can't remember what was in it, but I distinctly remember that loading screens for Warcraft III took like 5 minutes. Sometimes they froze. If I was lucky, I went to the kitchen, made a shake, and came back to see them unfreezing.

The best price/performance ratio rig is my current. Got it in 2009, it cost about 900 Euro, and can still run everything that was released in the meantime on maximum settings. <3 <3
 

mohit9206

New member
Oct 13, 2012
458
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My first gaming pc was a prebuilt from hp with amd dual core cpu,3gb ddr2 ram and radeon 5450.
now i have a intel pentium, radeon 7750 and 8gb ddr3 ram
my ideal gaming pc would be intel i5-3570k, 8gb ram, radeon 7950 for under $800