Your first PC Gaming Rig

[Silvianoshei]

Oh jeez, I think it was an old Acer shell with a 75 mhz processor, 64 mb of RAM...and that's all I can remember. Probably had a floppy too.

My most recent machine is actually my second hand-built. Never had cash to build an enthusiast rig till I got out of med school.

ASUS Sabertooth Z77
i7-3770k @ 4.6 GHz
32 GB G.Skill @ 1866 (I use the comp for other stuff besides gaming...)
GTX 680 2 GB
Corsair Force 380 GB SSD
WD 2 TB internal HDD
TX850 Power Supply
Thermaltake Cooling of some variety.

Run both Win7 and Linux. 24 in 1080p LED monitor that cost me $121 on amazon. Sweet deal, methinks.

Adding another 680 and SSD in summer. Also will be adding a second monitor and a nice TV for my birthday in September.

I love myself.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

First one was back in 2004 for college. Honestly I really don't even remember the specs but I think it had like a GT 7000 and I used an AMD processor. Got a flat panel monitor that was 5:4 ratio and it was only until last year I got a gift of a 16:9 monitor/tv.

The one thing I do remember though that the PSU blew up on me. No reason why cause I kept it dusted so the only thing I could think of was that my dormmate who was pretty much a slob must of left something on the ground that got sucked up by the fans and just got stuck there. Didn't damage anything else though thank goodness. Still have the mid sized tower too which was more flash than substance.

Just recently my PSU blew, which I wouldn't have minded as much because I had a backup, but then I found out that my GTX 480 fried along with it. I don't have a job currently, not until this summer, so the GTX 480 was quite a bit of money that I spent only just this past September. It was at this point that I decided to put the original power supply back in (the 240W that came with it) and sell the computer for what I can get for it. I was planning on building a new PC this summer anyway, so I might as well get a head start.

 

[inklewert]

I first gaming rig was ~$1700 and had a first generation AMD64 processor AND an overly elaborate water cooling system. I was in heaven.

I used to build my own back when I was hardcore gaming. I had a beast that I originally configured in 2003 up until just a few months ago. It started getting long in the tooth but I really had very little motivation to build a new one. So I bought a prefab Alienware X51 on a black friday deal.

I don't know why they get so much hate, I only paid marginally higher then when i priced components on new egg and its got some cool little bells and whistles that while adding no actual performance value are kind of neat.

Nowadays you can get a solid rig for under a grand that will last you for quite a while before needing any upgrades, that wasn't always the case.

 

[lechat]

My first?
I built it in 1994... it was a 386 DX2 40Mhz CPU in an even older AT server case. I had to do a lot of metalwork to make the motherboard fit.

shit i almost forgot about the days when you needed an angle grinder, a dremel and a degree in metal work to fit any sort of decent modifications into the average PC tower.
these days i have to kick my cat out of the way if i ever leave my case open on the ground cause there is so much room in there the bastard just wants to curl into a ball and go to sleep inside

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

Oh man you're bringing back some memories!

I've had PC's for playing games with for a long time! I remember being very small, having a beige box with Windows 3.1 on there, installing Microprose Soccer from a floppy drive via command line!

Anyway, I'd say the first "real" rig is one I had custom made by the IT company my mum's business outsourced service to. It was a state of the art AMD Athlon dual core 2.4GHz processor with 1GB (yes, originally 1GB!) of RAM that I later upgraded to 4GB. It had a Nvidia 7950GT and a 250GB SATA 1 HDD. That thing literally beasted through the modern games of back then (circa 2007). Just under £1000

Moving on, the first rig I built myself was a year later (I got the bug, sue me). This was a quad core 2.6GHz AMD Phenom 9950 Black Edition processor with 4GB of DDR2 RAM (yeah, still DDR2, DDR3 was only just making its way in and very expensive). It had a Nvidia GTX 280 XXX edition (GPU core clocked a bit higher), a 1TB hard drive etc. Again, it was so amazing. It tore through most games, though Crysis still proved a challenge. Again, around the £1000 mark

From there I moved over to Intel with a first generation I5 at 2.6GHz, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, still rocking the GTX 280 because it still worked great. A newer, faster 1TB hard drive and a new cooler to OC my processor to 4.0GHz stable. I had also moved up to Windows 7 64 Bit, too. I had this configuration (and still have parts of it) to this day. I have since upgraded the core platform. 4GB became 8GB as games became more memory demanding, and I moved to an Ivy Bridge CPU and motherboard platform, which has given a nice performance boost. Also, I have stuck a 128GB SSD in there alongside my trusty 1TB, and am using it as the boot platform with the 1TB as storage for everything else. So this thing boots like a shot. The case also got changed from a fairly sizeable Antec 902 to a Silverstone Temjin 08 Evolution, which is much smaller. Oh and I upgraded my GTX 280 to an AMD HD 5970, which I will not need to upgrade for a long time (I played the long game with it at purchase, pay a lot for a very good card that will last me a long time). About £800 overall originally (as many parts were kept from the previous build), the 5970 was around £400, the Ivy Bridge platform was about £280, 8GB RAM upgrade about £40, the Silverstone case was about £65 (Silverstone cases are expensive, but well made). The SSD was about £70 (Samsung 830 Series 120GB).

I love PC building, and I'm always willing to give advice to anyone with questions. My gaming is primarily PC, though I do have some PS3 titles, too. Though with the ability to stick in a Xbox controller in there, I am finding myself buying titles, that would normally be more conducive to a console & joypad, on the PC.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

For everyone talking oldschool, I got you all beat: a TRS-80.

 

[Atlys]

For a little over a year now I have been using an acer aspire m3470g to play on my games and they will play as long as you have it on low to medium settings. The graphical capabilities are pretty good for integrated. I've never, ever added parts to a machine that I bought pre-built, let alone built myself a computer. That is, until yesterday.

I spent about 4 hours putting this beast together yesterday and what a struggle. I'm lucky I had someone to coach me through it, even though they were 600 miles away.

CPU AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-core processor
CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Motherboard ASRock 990FX Extreme 3 ATX
Memory 2x4GB DDR3-1600
Storage 1TB 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive & Samsung 840 Pro 256 SSD
Video XFX Radeon HD 7950 3GB
Power 750W 80 PLUS Modular

But the bad thing is I have no idea if this thing works because I'm missing a DVI cable of all things. I have to pick one up today but until then this big black box is Schrödinger's PC
EDIT: It works!

 

[Andrew_C]

Never owned a PC that wasn't capable of playing games (apart from that Cyrix POS), but haven't owned a specific gaming rig.

 

[Master Kuja]

My first machine that I actually played games on was some intel pentium 4, 512mb RAM, integrated chipset sort of thing. It did the job, even if it didn't do it particularly brilliantly, then my next foray into PC gaming came some years later with a laptop that my dear step-father bought for me which did the job brilliantly for several years, even managing to run BF3 to an acceptable level.

Then I finally got round to putting together my own PC for some £700 about a year ago now and it's what I'm using currently. i5 2500k, 1TB HDD, 8gb DDR3 RAM and a GTX 570. I dare say I'll be playing around with it in the time to come.

 

[A_Parked_Car]

I can't remember what year I built it in, but it cost me around $900-1000ish if my memory serves me correctly.

-Intel 2.33 GHz dual core (I think? It was a few years ago now)
-Nvidia 8600GTS 768MB VRAM (This card was so great I kept it until it burned out.)
-4GB DDR2 RAM (Actually, it may have been only 2GBs when I first got it. I can't remember for sure though.)
-256GB HDD (This is still my primary hard drive, though I have added a second one for storing my games.)
-19" Samsung Widescreen monitor
-Logitech 5.1 surround sound system of some kind. I still use them on my newest rig.
-Generic Logitech keyboard and mouse. I still have the same keyboard, but I now have a Logitech G5 gaming mouse.

I have no idea what my motherboard or PSU was. This rig served me quite well and could run Crysis on a mixture of high and medium settings. It also ran Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War quite well.

 

[tangoprime]

Cant remember the CPU exactly, but I'm sure it was an intel 486 , had a whopping 32 MB(!) of RAM, a 200MB hard drive, two floppy disc drives (one for 5.1/4 and the other for 3.5 inch) and used Windows 3.11

Them gorillas tossing explodey bananas in Qbasic were a riot.

Holy crap I though I was the only one that remembered that game.

Pretty close, mine was a 486dx2 @ 66mhz, 32mb RAM, CD-ROM, 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives, and an ATI Rage 3D graphics card. Ran Win 3.11 and I built it to play Star Wars: TIE Fighter and the 1994 CD version of Sim City from Interplay. Originally had a 200mb HD, then a couple years later I swapped the ATI card for a Voodoo and dropped in a 500mb HD.

 

[tangoprime]

I first gaming rig was ~$1700 and had a first generation AMD64 processor AND an overly elaborate water cooling system. I was in heaven.

I used to build my own back when I was hardcore gaming. I had a beast that I originally configured in 2003 up until just a few months ago. It started getting long in the tooth but I really had very little motivation to build a new one. So I bought a prefab Alienware X51 on a black friday deal.

I don't know why they get so much hate, I only paid marginally higher then when i priced components on new egg and its got some cool little bells and whistles that while adding no actual performance value are kind of neat.

Nowadays you can get a solid rig for under a grand that will last you for quite a while before needing any upgrades, that wasn't always the case.

Thank you. As you can see my post above, I've been building my own for a while. Last time that it was time for an upgrade, about 2 years ago, I just didn't feel like it, got an awesome discount from Dell thanks to my job, and got an Alienware Aurora R3 for just about the price the components would've cost from newegg anyway. Build quality is excellent, it's got a warranty, absolutely none of the typical bloatware you'd find on OTS computers, and hey, bonus, it looks nice. The people that hate on Alienware owners are the same people who would hate on someone's Ferrari because they built a Mazda that will go just as fast

 

[SquidVicious]

All of my previous PC's have been regular PC's that happen to be able to play all the games I was into at the time. I did just buy my first official gaming pc last week with my tax return (I say official because I bought it for the express purpose of playing games).

Anyways here's the specs

Intel i5-2320 GHz processor
2 TB hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce GT620 video card
12 GB RAM

Not bad for $499 and will play everything I want to play for the next year or two.

 

[razer17]

My first and so far only gaming PC is still slightly incomplete. I only built it a month ago, and I don't have a graphics card yet.

It's an i5 3570k, on a Gigabyte Mobo, 8GB of Corsair Vengeance memory at 1600Mhz, a budget case, a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid (for great boot times). I will at some point add an AMD HD 7850, which seems to be the sweet spot for price/performance at the minute.

It's a decent set up, and I reckon it's right near the best price/performance ratio you can get. There's more powerful builds, and there's cheaper builds, but I reckon this is pretty good.

 

[devotedsniper]

Well my first gaming rig was the first machine i built, it contained;

Spoiler: First Rig

Intel Core 2 Duo 3GHz (OC'd)
4GB DDR2
1 * 500GB SATA2
NVIDIA 9500 1GB (OC'd)
1440*900 Monitor

For a that only cost 300 (pounds...the pound sign keeps messing up on this message) rig it ran most modern games at the time on high, and being my first self built i did what most do and go for the shiny lights...

This was probably my best performance rig for the cash... provided you don't count the constant upgrading which saw it completely different with only the hard drive and CD drive surviving till last year.

As for my best rig that would be my current one despite it having issues (Bluescreens)which i'm still trying to track down;

Spoiler: Current

CPU: AMD FX8120 3.4GHz (4.1GHz Turbo)
GPU: KFA2 NVIDIA 660TI 3GB GDDR5 OC Edition(was originally a 460 which came from my old rig (the frankenstein of my first rig))
RAM: Corsair 4 * 4GB (16) DDR3 1600MHz
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair V (hate this thing, pretty sure it's the cause of all my woes)
Storage: 1 128GB SSD (OS), 2* 500GB + 2* 1.5TB + 1TB SATAII HDD's
Cooling: 8 Fans, CPU Watercooled
PSU: 1000Watt CoolerMaster Silent Pro (from old rig)
1680*1050 Samsung 3D Monitor
1440*900 HANNspree (old rig)

As much as it annoys me sometimes i love this rig it runs any and anything on a minimum of High, pics below;

I'm about to start buying up the parts for my first rig next week...

Really stuck on the GPU though. Can't decide between a GTX 660 Ti or an HD 7950.

oh life ...y u so difficult?

So far I can't complain about the 660TI, it runs everything at a solid rate and so far i haven't really seen it drop. Hell my one runs the new crysis at a solid 90FPS, and skyrim at a solid 60 with mods and the high res texture pack.

 

[Idlemessiah]

My first is my current from about 6 months ago. I used laptops before then.

Asus MoBo: cannot remember specs but it does USB 3.0, SATA3 and DDR3, and supports Z77 chips.
CPU: Intel i5 3550 3.3 GHz Quadcore.
RAM: 2x 4GB Kingston
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB
HDD: 1TB with 32GB SSD cache.

With wireless lan, extra ports, fans, monster heat sink, 23inch 1080p monitor, mouse and keyboard, that came to just under £1300. It was also built for me. I just spec'd it.

As for performance, after 6 months it still boots to desktop in under 14 seconds and programs will open pretty much straight away. I can play ever game in my steam library on full whack, including DE:HR and Empire total war. It also copes very well with Fallout 3 considering the mods I use are actually larger than the game files.

 

[FFP2]

Does it count if it's just an off the shelf product and a laptop? I don't consider it a "gaming rig" but it runs pretty much any game (with 3 exceptions) I've thrown at it smoothly.

 

[Denamic]

A 486 66MHz beast. I was a hardcore Commander Keen player. I later upgraded to a P2 200MHz monster with a bitching Voodoo 2 card. It had MMX. I had no idea what that shit was, but it was cool. Played Quake 1 online with a 56.6Kbit modem and 500-ish ms lag. Ah, good old days.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

Does it count if it's just an off the shelf product and a laptop? I don't consider it a "gaming rig" but it runs pretty much any game (with 3 exceptions) I've thrown at it smoothly.

I wouldn't really call it "Gaming Rig" at that point, since I usually classify a "rig" as something you built in some way, but I suppose if it's the first PC that you've gamed on it counts.