Thread: Share your trip down homemade computer lane

Well, I got into this PC thing late.

My first "computer" was a commodore 64.
Don't know what that had in it, but it can't be much.

I wasn't hooked by it, 'cause my job didn't require computer know-how.

Then about 10 years later I bought an Amitech computer and wrote some documents on it. Played a few games of Warbird and I-panzer and Diablo every now and then.

A couple years later I got the first "half decent" computer.
I can hardly remember it, but I guess it was an Athlon of some such,
with onboard graphics and all that

But I could play BF1942 and it was that game who really got me into online gaming. Always been fascinated by WW2. Since my childhood actually, because over here in Europe we are... Well, it's a long story.

A few years went by, and I had serveral computers in that period. Not much better than the "half decent" IMO

I always visited a friend when I felt like playing a game once in a while.

Then, with a little help from my friends, I bought and assembled a custom rig.
It was an... Errr.. An Athlon 1.8Ghz, with a GeForce 7300 and some PC3200 RAM. Just enough to play my beloved BF2.

I had that computer for a long time. Sold it 4 months ago. Then I bought and assembled the beauty right here beside me.

Man I could use a picture to post of it right now.

Cheers guys, and game on!

It all started when my Grandma bought me an AST 486 100MHz PC. It had a 400MB HD, 14.4 modem, and 16MB of ram that I eventually upgraded to 32MB. I hadnt really played any PC games before this system.

Shortly after, I began playing all of the Wolfenstein, Doom, Heretic, Rise of the Triad, Need for Speed...

But it wasn't until Command and Conquer came out that I realized that it was probably time to upgrade. I got hooked on this game and was jelous when my friends with their pentium systems could run it so much better.

I then set out to build my first PC. I remember that I had to sell my SNES, Sega Genesis, and my Bicycle, just to purchase the CPU/Motherboard and new case.

I was on a budget, so I purchased a Cyrix 686 150MHz system. It was half the price of the Intel system, and AMD had yet to come out with something great. I also purchased a Diamond Stealth II PCI card which had 2D/3D graphics, but I also purchased a Pure3D VooDoo 3D accellerator.

Upgrading the CPU helped out with running Command and Conquer Red Alert, but the 3D card helped when playing Moto Racer, Need For Speed 2 SE, and eventually Quake.

About 6 months after I built this machine, I decided I wanted more, so I sold it to a good friend. I then purchased an AMD K6 266, 64 MB memory, 1.2GB hard drive, Creative Sound Blaster 16 card, and here is the kicker... 2 x Diamond Monster 12MB VooDoo2 cards to run in SLI. I purchased a generic card to handle the 2D processing. So yes, I had 3 video cards in this system. I also purchased a 19 inch Hansol CRT monitor and my first ever 2.1 speakers with subwoofer. I also had to purchase Windows 98 Retail ($120).

Needless to say, this PC ran Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Need For Speed: High Stakes like a dream. I also played Quake 2, Unreal, and the Original Half Life on this box. I did make a swap to an AMD K6-2 450 somwhere in there because it was a Socket 7 chip, but it was near the end of the life of the system, just to keep it going.

My next big upgrade was when I decided to scrap my old mini ATX case and get a full tower. This was had to be in about 2000-2001. I bought a BioStar motherboard, an AMD Duron 900MHz, ATI Radeon 32MB graphics card, 20GB Hard Drive, Sony CD Burner, Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 sound card, and 128MB Ram. I purchase some Cambridge Soundworks 4.1 speakers and I also got my hands on a copy of Windows 2000 while owning this rig.

I bought this PC so that I could play Max Payne, Unreal Tournament, and Quake 3 without any slowdown whatsoever. I also started playing Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed.

About a year later during my first year of college, I upgraded the my Socket A Duron 900 to an AMD Athalon XP 1700+. I had to buy 256 MB DDR to get the most performance out of this system. I also upgraded to an nVidia Ti4200 video card. It was at this time where I really started playing CS. I always wanted to have the best possible FPS to have that edge over my enemy. I also started playing Command and Conquer Generals, Mafia, and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 with this system.

A year after that, I upgraded to my AMD Barton 2500+ and my ATI Radeon 9600XT. I also upgraded to 1GB PC2700 DDR. The video card came with a free copy of Half Life 2 and also allowed me into the CSS Beta. It was in this system where I took the plunge into Windows XP from Windows 2000. The Barton finally breathed its last breath (or rather the motherboard did) after being overclocked for nearly a year and a half.

With this rig, I was able to play Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, Battlefield 2142 and Vietman, Half Life 2, CSS, DODS, Battle for Middle Earth, Need for Speed Underground, and many more titles.

After burying the Barton, I had to find something on a budged. A friend of mine just purchased a Pentium 4 3.4 GHz with an ASUS motherboard, 1GB PC3200DDR, and a Sony DVD Burner. He purchased this equipment for over $800. He was having money problems and needed to liquidate something, so I bought it from him for $400. I then upgraded the CPU cooler from the stock to my current Zalman 7000, threw in another gig of memory, and put it all in a new Cooler Master Cavalier case.

This system was great, but my 9600XT was bottlenecking me. I asked my girlfriend to get me an X800 video card for Christmas. To my surprise, she got me an X850XT Platinum Edition ($500 at the time), and she gave it to me early when I told her that I couldnt wait to get my new video card.

So this system was pretty much top of the line. Only the Extreme Edition P4s and a few of the high end AMD chips were better. It has lasted me quite some time. Upgrades since then were more to help the gaming experience. I got a Viewsonic VX922 LCD, Razer Copperhead mouse, Razer Tarantula keyboard, Razer Barracuda Headset, Creative Labs X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card, D-Link GamerLounge router, and a few different sets of speakers in attempt to find the right ones.

I will be upgrading again this winter, but this PC has lasted me almost 2 years and still plays most of the games that come out.

And that's my story!

My first PC was a Packard Bell 386DX with 4 MB or RAM and a 40 MB HDD and a Soundblaster. DOS 5.0 but no windows because I did not Dos Shells.
It still runs in my moms office as a print server running Windows for Workgroups.
I replaced that with a Packard Bell Pentium 233 MX 64 MB of RAM and a 20 GB HDD. I fell in love with PC gaming and upgraded that one to include a dual VooDoo 2 SLI setup and 96 MB of RAM.
At this point I was working at a computer shop and was building machines for customers all day long, but I was still running the crappy PB. So I decided to build one for myself.

I built the first Althlon system around. It had a Slot A Athlon 550, an Abit KX-133 board, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB HDD and a Geforce 256 vidcard. It went through several upgrades and mods, it retired as a Slot A athlon overclocked to 1.2 Ghz with 256 MB of RAM, a Geforce III Ti 500 and RAID-0 Array.

My next rig was a Socket A athlon, it started out as an athlon thunderbird 1.2 Ghz, 256 MB of RAM, and Geforce III on a VIA KT-133 board. I had several boards go through that one, a KT-266 board when I wanted DDR, a KT-600 board when the 266 board fried, and finally, an Nforce II board when I wanted better sound. It retired as an AthlonXP 3200 Barton, 512 MB DDR, ATI 9800XT, and 80 GB.
It is running at my Dads office as his main workstation.

My next rig is my current one. It started out as an Athlon64 3200 with 512 MB of DDR and the ATI 9800XT on an Nforce 3 mobo. I upgraded the motherboard and vidcard to Nforce 4 SLI and Geforce 7900GT (with a pitstop at 7800GT love EVGA stepup). I upgraded the memory to 2 GB of Corsair DDR with the LEDs and the CPU is now an Opteron single core 2.2 that I run at 2.4

Computers never look finished to me. This one could use a CPU or graphics upgrade, but it is still playing all my games at max details on my monitors native resolution so I will hold of for a bit