We all started somewhere... so let's have a laugh. Year: 2006-ish Bought From: Currys online Price: £350 Branding: HP CPU: Pentium D 2.80Ghz dual core Cooler: No idea! Motherboard: No idea! GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 SE/7200 GS RAM: 1GB PSU: One that died. OS: XP Storage: HDD that was big enough Drives: DVD-RW and Floppy RGB: No. Case sexiness rating: 2/10 - The standard black rounded HP / Walmart design Miscellaneous: Why the hell did you buy it?: I was impressed by the 2.8 GHz speed and NVIDIA graphics, at such a cheap price! Did anything die or go wrong?: After a few years, I think I got a surge (my extension's surge protector started buzzing...) then my PC just turned off. There might've been a pop. So my PSU died, but it didn't take anything with it! Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: For a price, my more knowledgable friend fixed it by telling me what PSU to buy (and pointed me toward Bit-Tech Forums! See?)... by the end the only thing kept was the hard drive. Not even the case! Where is it now? I kept the old parts as 'backup' though never needed to so I'll sell or bin them. (I kept my upgraded version in case I ever needed it to play XP games but never used it, and the case and PSU is now used for a Windows 98 build.) =============================== Year: Bought From: Price: Branding: CPU: Cooler: Motherboard: GPU: RAM: PSU: OS: Storage: RGB: Case sexiness rating: Miscellaneous: Why the hell did you buy it?: Did anything die or go wrong?: Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Where is it now?:
Never had a pre-built, unless you include laptops. I built my first IBM compatible pc in the early 90s.
Now then... are we talking personal computers in general, or IBM compatibles - 'cos my answer's different depending. PC: Year: 1980-something Bought From: Second-hand. Price: No idea anymore. Branding: Sinclair. CPU: Zilog Z80A-compatible, 3.5MHz Cooler: Lolno. Well, there was a chunk of metal attached to the 5V regulator, I guess. Motherboard: Sinclair ZX Spectrum Issue 1. GPU: Lolno. RAM: 48kB. PSU: 9V linear regulator. OS: Sinclair BASIC. Storage: WH Smith's finest cassette deck. RGB: ...There's a rainbow printed on the keyboard cover, if that counts? Case sexiness rating: I love Rick Dickinson, may he rest in peace, but I'm not sure I'd call the case sexy. Miscellaneous: Dead-flesh keyboard, naturally. Why the hell did you buy it?: Why did anyone buy a home computer in the 1980s? To play games. Did anything die or go wrong?: Yeah, it died a death and was unfixable. Switched it out for a Commodore 64C, again second-hand. Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Nup. Didn't even get a Microdrive or anything. IBM Clone: Year: 1980-something-else Bought From: Snagged for free from the local college during a systems upgrade. Price: £0 Branding: Schneider. CPU: Intel 8088, 9.45Mhz. Cooler: Nope. Motherboard: Scheider Euro PC II Issue 1. GPU: CGA/Hercules. RAM: 768kB. PSU: Linear regulator, can't remember the voltage. OS: MS-DOS 3.30A Storage: Upgraded 1.44MB DSHD floppy drive (hence needing MS-DOS 3.30A, rather than stock MS-DOS 3.30), 20MB IBM-compatible sidecar via XTA. RGB: Dude, not even the monitor was in colour - it was a 9" amber CRT. Case sexiness rating: Have to admit I've always been a fan of all-in-ones. Could have saved space by aligning the floppy drive like an Amiga or Atari ST, tho'. Miscellaneous: Flamin' loved that machine. Why the hell did you buy it?: Why did anyone buy a home computer in the 1980s? To play other games. Mostly text adventures. Also, work. But mostly games. Did anything die or go wrong?: It eventually died and went to the great recycling plant in the sky. I still miss it. Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Other than the upgraded floppy drive, nope.
I'll assume you mean pre-built PC, Prior to PC I did everything on an Atari ST Year: 199x (don't recall year it would be early half) Bought From: Radio Rentals Price: I don't even know, we probably paid over the odds as we rented it first because that's what poor people did Branding: Olivetti CPU: 486SX25 Cooler: stock Motherboard: stock GPU: I didn't even know what a GPU was at this point but think it was a Matrox. RAM: A few Mb, perhaps 8Mb, pure guess might not have been that much, PSU: ... OS: Windows 3 Storage: a few hundred Mb and a floppy drive. RGB: did not exist Case sexiness rating: 0 Miscellaneous: might not have done more than 640x480 :O Why the hell did you buy it?: Needed something x86 compatible for college work Did anything die or go wrong?: nope really good. Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Popped in a dx4 chip, this gave it higher clock speeds I think 99Mhz and a maths co-processor, I also added a Soundcard AWE32 so I could run a CD drive and a 28.8bps Modem for the porns....umm bbs Gaming wise I added a Voodoo here for 3d goodness. don't recall if it was for that system, memory fails me, but the system was quite limited so I finally researched building my own and that sent me down a slippery slope starting with a Cyrix chip..
Year: 1999 Bought From: Gateway (showroom in Bristol) Price: Just under ₤1000 inc monitor, joystick and printer Branding: Gateway CPU: Pentium 3 450MHz Cooler: yes Motherboard: yes GPU: can't remember but, was rubbish RAM: 128MB PSU: yes OS: Windows 98 Storage: 6.7GB (I think) RGB: Who? Case sexiness rating: -27 Why the hell did you buy it?: Late to the party at 35. Had been working for a laptop servicing firm for a few years and decided it was time get my own pc. Did anything die or go wrong?: No Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Doubled up the ram to 256MB and fitted a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 16MB. Where is it now: Sold it to a friend, don't know what he did with it but I kept the printer until it lost intetest in printing.
Year: 1993? Bought From: Local small PC store, long since out of business Price: Not a clue (I was 14) Branding: Unbranded beige goodness - built to order CPU: 486 DX-2 66 Cooler: I don't think it had one, when CPUs were that slow? If anything, heatsink only though, no fan. Motherboard: Not a clue! GPU: Unknown VGA display card. RAM: 4MB - yes, megabytes. I later added another 4MB for the princely sum of £300. PSU: Not a clue OS: DOS 6.22 Win 3.11 - Many, many floppy disks Storage: 540MB ish? I remember it being an odd number. RGB: Really great beige? Yes. Case sexiness rating: A retro 3. It was more useful as somewhere to sit the CRT monitor on top of. Miscellaneous: I had a Turbo button, which was actually a Nerf button to reduce CPU clock to 25MHz for older software. Why the hell did you buy it?: My first venture into PCs and still here nearly 30 years later. Also, original Doom and Theme Park were on non-stop, later followed by LucasArts point and click adventures, Monkey Island and Simon the Sorcerer. Did anything die or go wrong?: Nope! Worked flawlessly until I went to Uni and blew all my student grant on a P133 and Voodoo 2 Card. Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Just the RAM upgrade. Where is it now?: Paperclips and fishtank sand!
Year: 1993-ish Bought From: Memax (Chesterfield) Price: Can't remember but it was for Xmas and I sold my Mega Drive and Mega CD to contribute Branding: n/a CPU: AMD 486DX266 Cooler: No idea Motherboard: Can't remember GPU: Cirrus Logic 5428 VL-Bus (I think) RAM: 4MB PSU: No idea OS: DOS 6.22 & Windows 3.11 for Workgroups Storage: 420MB (I think) RGB: lol Case sexiness rating: Beige beauty! Miscellaneous: Sound card was an optional extra. Think I might have got a SoundBlaster 16. Why the hell did you buy it?: To play games (Doom) but tried hard to convince my Dad it would be great for school and he could use it for his business Did anything die or go wrong?: Plugged in, turned on, saw black screen with "C:\" and had no clue what to do. Asked the only other kid in the school with a PC the next day and he said type "win." That's where my journey started. Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Upgraded to 8 then 12MB. And added a CD ROM drive. By the time I went to Uni I'd chopped and changed a few bits until I ended up with a K6-2 333 and 3D Blaster Voodoo 2 for some Half-Life action. Still had the same monitor and keyboard and case probably a few internal bits too. Where is it now?: Long gone
Oh cripes. What are the rules? Literally the first one I bought with my own money, the first one my (extremely kind) parents bought me for school, or the first family owned one?
Year: 1995-ish Bought From: Dixons Price: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Branding: Packard Bell I think it was one of these - http://web.archive.org/web/19961113...dbell.com/gfx/products/focus/models/mc75.html CPU: Intel Pentium, 100MHz Cooler: Coolers hadn't been invented. Motherboard: OEM Jobbo GPU: They hadn't been invented either. [Some generic 2D SVGA arrangement, probably Cirrus Logic] RAM: 4MB [the spec sheet said/says 8 but I'm sure it was only 4] PSU: Yes, it had a PSU. OS: Windows 95/Packard Bell Navigator [all the skeuomorphism!] Storage: 1GB RGB: Ruddy great box? Case sexiness rating: It wasn't totally beige, parts of it were grey. Miscellaneous: Sound card, CD-ROM drive. Why the hell did you buy it?: Technically, I didn't... Parents did. Did anything die or go wrong?: Yes. Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: over its lifetime it acquired 128MB RAM, a 10GB [iirc] HDD, Windows 98 and eventually 98SE. Where is it now?: Silicon heaven, it's where the calculators go.
It's... the first pre-built you bought. The one where you decided you wanted a PC to play games and look at slowly-loading bikini pictures of Carmen Electra and Lita, so you looked it up and bought one, preferably a bad one that you presumed would be beefy because you didn't know about PCs.
Here it is in 1999 actually. Some upgraded internals and new speakers but the monitor/keyb/mouse are the originals. 1999_computer by veato posted 18 Sep 2020 at 13:43
I've never personally bought a pre-build, unless you count an HP Z1 in 2013. Which I don't. There is a particular family pre-build that sticks in my mind though. We had a 486 33Mhz that had been nursed along for the longest time and was well overdue for repalcement, and my dad decided that it would be appropriate to make up for it by picking the shiniest PC Dell did and ticking all the boxes in the configurator. It was heaven for 13yo me. Year: 1996 Bought From: Dell Price: ~£4000 (Irish) IIRC, or approximately £7500 in today money Branding: Dell CPU: Pentium Pro 200 Cooler: ? Motherboard: ? GPU: Nvidia Riva 128 + PowerVR Apocalypse 3Dx RAM: 64MB (adjusted for tech inflation, this is like 256GB in today money, gratuitous overkill) PSU: ? OS: Windows 95 Storage: 8GB HDD RGB: Ha Case sexiness rating: Beige/10 Miscellaneous: 21" CRT in the days of 14", Sound Blaster AWE 32, 2.1 Sound system, DVD-ROM, CD-R, 14.4 modem - all epic things at the time Why the hell did you buy it?: Compensate for years of a jank PC Did anything die or go wrong?: Nope Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Never did Where is it now?: Eating dirt undoubtedly
And now we call this a cyberpunk aesthetic. Good to see the PS5 taking inspiration from 1990s Windows.
Year: 1994 (I think) Bought From: Evesham Micro Price: £1300 Branding: Evesham Micro CPU: Pentium II 350MMX Cooler: u wot M8 Motherboard: Chaintech thing GPU: ATI Rage Pro2 RAM: 64Mb SDRAM PSU: Yes it had one OS: WIn98 Storage: 8Gb rust spinner RGB: Green power LED and Yellow disk activity LED Case sexiness rating: 2/10 face for radio Miscellaneous: 56k modem PCI card, 3.5" floppy drive 32X CDROM 17" Ilyama display Why the hell did you buy it?: For school work Did anything die or go wrong?: Out paced by a Pentium 3 1Ghz Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Never did Where is it now?: Landfill probably
Carmen Electra? What's a Carmen Electra? I definitely didn't have a poster on my wall of her as a teenage lad Year: 2007ish Bought From: Dell (Before Alienware was a thing IIRC) Price: ~£3000 Branding: Dell CPU: Core2Quad QX6600 running at ~3.6GHz IIRC Cooler: Dell AIO water cooler Motherboard: Dell GPU: SLI 8800GTX (later replaced by one GTX 285) RAM: 4GB IIRC PSU: Yes OS: Windows Vista 32bit eyebrow Storage: RAID0 2x500GB 7200RPM thingies RGB: Blue front lighting Case sexiness rating: 10/10 Miscellaneous: AGEIA PhysX baby! Also bought a Dell 3007WFP-HC and headphones to go with it. Why the hell did you buy it?: I wanted to get back into gaming after 4 years of being at uni without any semblance of a gaming PC. And I definitely 'needed' it for my PhD (no, I really didn't). Did anything die or go wrong?: Back in those days, SLI didn't activate by default. I spent a long time without SLI enabled. Still annoys me to this day. Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: See GPU Where is it now?: Dunno. Sold it to someone for ~1/3 of the price about a couple of years later. Ouch. After that, I built my own PCs. Really angry I spent so much money on it, when if I had known it was so easy to build your own PC, I could've built it for far cheaper. Still, I got to play many, many good games on it. It would be years before I managed to play Crysis at 60FPS on the 30 inch screen though...
Year: 2002 Bought From: "One home One Computer" program Price: ~€800 Branding: - CPU: Pentium 4 1.8GHz, overclocked to 2.4GHz Cooler: Stock, upgraded to Thermalright XP-90c Motherboard: Asus something or another, it was brown (though I think this motherboard was an upgrade) GPU: On-board, upgraded to Nvidia GeForce 4 SE 128MB AGP RAM: 256MB, upgraded to 768MB PSU: ? OS: Windows 98, then XP Storage: 40GB HDD RGB: Red cathodes! Case sexiness rating: Cut side panel, glued on acrylic engraved with my then IRC / game username (and forum username before name change) Miscellaneous: 15" CRT replaced with a 5:4 TF screen, CD-RW (paid for itself selling bootlegs in school, thanks Nero) Why the hell did you buy it?: First ever PC Did anything die or go wrong?: PSU due to power surge Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: Read above Where is it now?: @DXR_13KE's house
That I bought? Oof. There was a prebuilt in my house in the mid-late ninties, some Compaq thing, but I didn't buy it. The only prebuilt PC I've ever bought, I bought two of; Year: Far too late to be buying a 486. Bought From: My school! Price: £5 each Branding: RM CPU: ??? I wish I could remember. It was a school sale, and it was old. I'm quite confident the model of PC was PC-486, so.. an Intel 80486 is a safe bet. Cooler: Stock. Deffo. Motherboard: ??? I don't remember any branding on the board. GPU: Huehuehue. GPU. It was an ex-school PC. RAM: Oof. I think maybe 128 tops. Probably down as low as 32. PSU: If there was a brand, I'll be damned if I can remember. OS: Windaz 95 Storage: Measured in MB, I'm sure. I know I "Upgraded" with a 1.2gb drive. RGB: If you squinted? The front LED's were red, green, and yellow. Case sexiness rating: Beige/10 Miscellaneous: Why the hell did you buy it?: They were a fiver. A fiver. Did anything die or go wrong?: Ex school machine, not much was right to start with. Did you (and how did you) upgrade it into respectability?: I put a 1.2gb drive in it! It was not worth the effort. Where is it now?: In hell. Hopefully.
