How old were you when you built your first PC?

[Andrei_316]

Just wondering, a thread made me question this question. How did you feel and how old were you?

To start it off:
- I was very exited, anxious and nervous... But after everything and when it booted smoothly it was the best feeling I have ever gotten in awhile...more than blowing a cake on your birthday.
- Built it a couple months ago and I was 14 by then. Many didn't believe I had the knowledge but with the Internet nothing was impossible. Furthermore those countless hours researching on forums paid off when my current PC booted

 

[hjj174]

Well I built mine back in February when I was and still am 17. I was pretty excited but really not all of that nervous. I do feel like an idiot for some of the mistakes I have with parts I have purchased. Now I'll be building my second one fairly soon and I can't wait for it. It's an addiction and a costly one at that. I kind of want to sell my 290 and buy a 970 lol.

 

[delaro]

21 how did I feel? anxious to play Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness that came out later that year.

 

[Warukyure]

I built mine when I was 16. Where I'm from there wasn't a lot of places that sold OEM parts to build computers, and its not like we had the luxury of picking parts easily like we have with newegg. Parts back then were also a lot more expensive compared to now (though not as expensive as buying a boxed PC).

First PC was made with an AMD Athlon X2 4400 almost 10 years ago when 4 GB was a lot. Back then we'd never though 1 TB drives were gonna be out for another 5 years and the only way to get 1 TB was to buy like 4 300 GB HDDs (They used to be 300 GB before they changed it to 320 GB...)

Things were simpler back then none of this "Will it run at 1080p and 60 fps?" or "Whats the score on 3DMark?" nah back then then benchmark to hit was "But will it run Doom 3?"

 

[orthokid]

I think I was 12 when I built my first one. My grandfather gave me about $500 for Christmas and my dad picked out the parts. When they arrived it was few hours of Youtube videos and another hour of building alone in a room, then viola, a decent computer that could run all regular use programs.

I'm 15 now and I've upgraded it a few times to give it decent gaming capability. Its been a pretty fun ride.

 

[USAFRet]

Built from boxes of parts that I selected? I believe I was ~39. 1995...
No Internet tutorials, no videos, no Tom's.

 

[L4N3Y]

i got my first gaming rig already built off one of my brothers friends i think i was 18. After a while when some more demanding games started to be released i needed to upgrade so did a lot of research as i was a complete noob. first thing i changed was the GPU. a simple task i know but for me i was really worried about breaking something. it all went well and i was chuffed to bits when i turned it on and nothing blew up. now a few years down the line and a lot lot more reading up about how they work i think i could do one in my sleep. lol

 

[Andrei_316]

I think I was 12 when I built my first one. My grandfather gave me about $500 for Christmas and my dad picked out the parts. When they arrived it was few hours of Youtube videos and another hour of building alone in a room, then viola, a decent computer that could run all regular use programs.

I'm 15 now and I've upgraded it a few times to give it decent gaming capability. Its been a pretty fun ride.

Nice! Do you still have the computer?

 

[Andrei_316]

Well I built mine back in February when I was and still am 17. I was pretty excited but really not all of that nervous. I do feel like an idiot for some of the mistakes I have with parts I have purchased. Now I'll be building my second one fairly soon and I can't wait for it. It's an addiction and a costly one at that. I kind of want to sell my 290 and buy a 970 lol.

Know the feeling... I always think about what I would've bought if I just waited for a couple of months. But at the end no matter what, our PCs booted up sooo we have that going for which is nice

 

[Andrei_316]

Built from boxes of parts that I selected? I believe I was ~39. 1995...
No Internet tutorials, no videos, no Tom's.

haha! A lot changed in 10 years... I wonder if PC Desktops will always be around... I'd love to see what I can build for $1000 now and compare it to something in 10 years. I remember being really small looking at average CPUs at a GRAND!

 

[USAFRet]

Built from boxes of parts that I selected? I believe I was ~39. 1995...
No Internet tutorials, no videos, no Tom's.

haha! A lot changed in 10 years... I wonder if PC Desktops will always be around... I'd love to see what I can build for $1000 now and compare it to something in 10 years. I remember being really small looking at average CPUs at a GRAND!

(20 yrs)
1MB RAM = $100....

 

[Deleted member 217926]

This thread makes me feel old. Except for you USAFRet. So thanks for that!

Bought my first IBM desktop in early 96 when I was 22. Pentium 233 MMX with 48MB of RAM, a 6.4GB HDD and a 2MB ATI Rage II+ graphics processor running Windows 95. It was close to $3000 after all the accessories and tax and boy was I proud of that thing. It came with a copy of Mechwarrior 2 optimized for the Rage 2. Still one of my favorite game series of all time to this day. Did my first build about 2 years later when I was 24 or 25. So 1998 or 1999.

I paid at least several hundred extra for that first IBM box to get 48MB of RAM instead of the 32MB norm!

I have been using computers since I was a little kid though. I used the Apple 2e and original Macintosh starting in about 3rd grade. Early 80s. I had a Commodore 128 and an Adam. Look that one up. It used cassette tapes in place of floppies! It also had the loudest dot matrix printer that has ever been made. It sounded like gunfire.

 

[klrman]

I bought my first pc when I was around 30 (1991). A Zeos 386sx with a whopping 1MB hard drive and a dotmatrix printer. I think it cost me around 3K and it hurt, but I was so proud of it. I remember the first time I opened the monitor staring at the DOS screen in a slight panic not knowing what/how to proceed.

First pc I actually built from scratch was this year in Sept and now I'm onto my 4th one. The internet and Tom's Hardware and all the good people here sure made it a lot easier. Just reading this thread though I'm starting to feel old.