How did your very first computer build go?

ally_uk

Built myself a Quad Core rig 2 nights ago nothing major a Q8300, 4 Gig Ram going to be used to run Server 2k8 virtually. and have Win 7 64bit as host O/S, Was looking at building another rig saw a decent AMD Bulldozer bundle going on ebay

AMD Bulldozer FX 6100 3.3Ghz 16GB DDR3 1333mhz Asus USB 3.0 Motherboard Bundle | eBay

JDMurray

I built my first computer in 1983. A Heath/Zenith HZ-89a. Wire cutters, pliers, and a soldering iron was what you used to build them back then. I wish that I could say I built it completely from the ground up from the kit, but I only had to finish and expand it (I upgraded the RAM from 48KB to 64KB and added 8" floppy disk drives).

It wasn't until five years later that I built my first PC featuring a Beaver 80386DX 25MHz motherboard that I bought at cost for $800 (it retailed for $1200). 1MB of RAM cost another $100+ (the mobo was expandable up to 4MB RAM, which I could not afford). That was also the my first PC with a hard drive--a 200MB Conner I bought at cost for $200. I still have that rig sitting in my bedroom closet.

Last Xmas I built myself a PC around an Asus mobo with an i7-950 3GHz quad core, 6GB RAM, 3TB of hard drives, and an ATI HD video card--all for around $1000. Quite a difference in performance from nearly 30 years ago too.

Damn these discussions make me feel old...

the_Grinch

Built my first PC in 2005. AMD 64bit processor, 10k Raptor (SATA), and a gig of ram. I got all the parts together, plugged everything in, and then started the Windows XP install. Left to go to class and came back three hours later to find that the XP install hadn't finished. Ultimately found out that I didn't have the drivers for SATA and thus 32bit Windows would not install (no floppy drive). So I installed 64bit Windows XP and that thing chugged along for a nice long time. Up until an on-board fan went on it, I loaded Ubuntu onto it and used it for daily computing and as a media center to stream content to my PS3. Got 5 years of life out of it and if it wasn't for that fan I'd still be using the thing.