What were the specs of the first computer you ever built yourself?

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Dravic

Senior member
May 18, 2000
892
0
76
First major hands on tweek/rebuild

Pacard Bell 486 dx, 8mb of ram upgraded to windows 95

tweeked and upgraded many a PII 450 type system i got from a company fire sale for friends and family.


First from the ground up.. probably a

Duron 650@900mhz i picked up when i lived in San Fran and went to my first FRY's ... I haven't been quite right since....
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
8,518
8
91
PII 300 (or was it 350?) on a Intel 440BX board, and a sweet voodoo2 12MB 3D card. I recyled my older Acer Monitor for the build, but this was a sweet computer and lasted me through college until I built my first AMD-based T-Bird system in early 2001. I remember both systems fondly, and they served me very well.
 

rancherlee

Senior member
Jul 9, 2000
707
18
81
MSI K7PRO
Athlon 700 (Awesome 770mhz @ 110 fsb with a gold finger device)
Geforce 1 (yes, I used Nvidia cards at one time)
128x2 Ram
10gig WD hard drive
Yamaha 24x10x40 CD burner (I STILL use this in my current computer)

And cost me around 1000$ when I built it.
 

slashbinslashbash

Golden Member
Feb 29, 2004
1,945
8
81
ECS D6VAA dual Socket 370 motherboard
Celeron 850MHz (later replaced with dual 1.13GHz PIII's)
Dual ThermalTake Orb coolers
256MB PC133
Nvidia GeForce 2 GTS 32MB (I think the first thing I ever bought from NewEgg -- from the AT Hot Deals forum)
20GB or 40GB Maxtor or Western Digital HDD (can't remember)
cheap CD-ROM that I pulled from a junked computer at my college. Later upgraded with a Lite-On 32x CDRW.
 

v8envy

Platinum Member
Sep 7, 2002
2,720
0
0
486 66dx2, tyan motherboard, 16 megabytes of ram, vesa local bus IDE controller, recycled ISA Tseng Labs ET4000 video, 340 megabyte hard drive, both floppies, NE1000 ethernet, Supra modem.

I remember being blown away how fast it seemed compared to the 386/33 I had before and even the sparc4 I had at work. Good thing, too -- I had to do quite a few kernel compiles trying to debug the newfangled 16550 serial chip performance issues with one of the BSDs.
 

zuffy

Senior member
Feb 28, 2000
684
0
71
First computer I bought with my own money was a Gateway 486-DX2-50. Eventually, I upgraded it to the DX2-66 processor, another 4MB RAM from Micron, Diamond Viper video card. I think the first full build PC was a Pentium 200mhz MMX, Asus motherboard, Antec or Inwin case. Don't remember the rest.
 

3chordcharlie

Diamond Member
Mar 30, 2004
9,859
1
81
Kinda surprised by the 386 systems with haf a gig of ram, when ram cost $50-100/MB, and operating systems couldn't handle 64MB yet.

Must have been some serious government projects!
 

wiin

Senior member
Oct 28, 1999
937
0
76
SiperMicro MB
Windows 98
32mb ram ($175.00)
4gig Toshiba hd ($245.00)
AMD 300mhz (k6 or k62 don't remember which)

The amount of money I spent back then, you could buy two or three computers today. Nothing was intergrated. You had to buy a sound card, video card, nic, internal modem. My first computer was an ACER running Win 3.1 with a 15in monitor(14 viewable). Cost me $1,800.00 plus the cost of an internal modem (and installation).
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
Socket A Athlon, 700mhz, on an Asus A7V motherboard. I want to say 512MB of RAM, but I'm not sure about that. 50GB "deathstar" hard drive, the ones that typically failed horribly, although I apparently got lucky as mine worked fine. Some cheap PCI soundblaster 16 sound card. I used my old video card, some voodoo 3 thing with a TV tuner built in. Ran windows 98SE initially, later upgraded to windows 2000 which was such an amazing OS for it's time.
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,798
6,355
126
286(don't recall mhz, but I believe it was an Intel)
2 x 360k 5.25" FD
ATI Graphics Solution(IIRC) video(CGA on a TTL Monochrome monitor!!)
1 mb RAM Onboard
150watt PS
MFM(IIRC) Controller Card
Keyboard
12" Amber Monochrome TTL Monitor

It was actually an Upgrade from an 8088, only the Mobo/CPU/RAM and the Controller Card being new.
 

Martimus

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2007
4,490
157
106
The first computer I built myself was built out of spare parts when I was in College, but I think it was made out of a Pentium 60MHz, with a Tseng Labs ET6000 video card. Not sure about the rest of the specs, but I think I had 8MB of RAM.

The first computer I actually bought was a Athlon 750MHz, and I bought a Voodoo 5 5500 as the video card. I bought a 19" MAG V800 monitor that I still use today. This was about 11 years ago, or so.
 

AdamK47

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
15,811
3,612
136
I still remember the specs.

Pentium 166 - non MMX CPU
Intel 430FX motherboard
24MB EDO memory
1.6GB Western Digital hard drive
TEAC 3.5" floppy drive
TEAC 6X CD-ROM
Sound Blaster AWE 32 sound card
Rendition V1000 video card
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
27,298
16,127
136
Its been so long, I can't remember. Circa 1983 and it was an 8088 based system, thats all I remember.
 

Cogman

Lifer
Sep 19, 2000
10,286
147
106
Pentium 2, 333MHz CPU, 64 MB of memory with a TNT 2 video card. (Can't remember the exact specs, I was around 12).
 

her209

No Lifer
Oct 11, 2000
56,336
11
0
Asus CUSL2
P3 866MHz (Socket 370)
256MB Mushkin RAM
Hercules 3D Prophet II Pro
Antec SX830 Case
 

Daedalus685

Golden Member
Nov 12, 2009
1,386
1
0
p4 2.8 Ghz
Asus P3E
1gig of Ram (later 2)
ATI 9800 Pro
some sort of sound blaster
Antec case (shiny black)
 

imported_NoGodForMe

Senior member
May 3, 2004
452
0
0
P2-450
Asus P2-DS (motherboard)
Diamond Fire GL (main gpu)
VooDoo II (2 of them)
Seagate 9gb SCSI
Smart and Friendly Rocket 8x CD burner (fastest at the time)
Windows 98

Machine is sitting in the corner of my room, still boots, connects to the net. When I played Q2, I was always the first into the map because of my SCSI drive.
 

iCyborg

Golden Member
Aug 8, 2008
1,356
65
91
TI99/4a was my first machine, my first built was a 386SX-16 I believe.
TI 99/4a was my first computer too, I still have it at my parent's home.
My first PC was 486-40MHz, and the first one I built myself from scratch was:
P4 2.4C
512MB RAM
GF4 Ti4200
Some MSI's MB with 865 chipset
2x80 GB HDD

I still have this PC around in case my main fails...
 

stag3

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2005
3,623
0
76
pentium 166mmx
abit px-5
16mb ram
stb lightspeed 128 video card
2 gig quantum bigfoot hd
and i believe a 4x cdrom ? (if they were that fast back then)
 

tweakboy

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2010
9,517
2
81
www.hammiestudios.com
Tandy powned. plus its upgrade to 512k of RAM so that bball game. Lakers vs Celtics would run and work.. lol

My dad was powning, this is the 80's soo Im a young chap.. now Im 32 ,funny

Descent was nice with a 486 , modem play then Descent II .. But D3 blew heee,:):eek:
386DX built buy seller. For modern years. Me, and a sexy P2B mobo and a barracuda , voodoo 3 card or a herculdes 2d and 3d in one card,, that powned could show full screen video at 30fps hehehe,,
 
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srp49ers

Senior member
Jun 2, 2001
245
0
76
AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz (Thunderbird)
Epox 8KHA+
512mb crucial ddr
Ati Radeon 32mb
Maxtor 60GB
 

s1175290

Member
Nov 5, 2009
139
0
76
First build (October 2009):

Antec 900
OCZ 700W modular PS
AMD Phenom II X4 965
Gigabyte MA-790-XT UD4P
4 X 2GB OCZ 1066 Platinum
2 X 640GB WD Caviar Black (raid 0)
XFX GTS 250
Samsung DVD-RW
OCZ Vendetta
Aerocool touchscreen LCD fan controller

All for $672 including tax/shipping :)