So I have been feeling really nostalgic lately, I decided to make a thread documenting the history of my "gaming rigs" through history.
I will start in the mid 90's, I was 8-9 years old and my dad brought one of these home, A gateway 486, I remember getting in trouble because I was able to over clock it and run pentium class games on it. My step mom took it and I never saw it again. I played games like Silent Thunder, Time Commando and Monopoly on it. It was my first PC I got on the internet with using the dial up internet at the university. Monopoly was my first online game in 1997.
It had a 33mhz 486, 8mb ram, ISA sound blaster, CD ROM and a US robotics modem.
After that PC was taken away I didn't get another one until 1999 or so, It was a Compaq Presario from Radio shack, It was the common family PC at the time, no discrete GPU and an AMD K6-2 which ran at 300MHz, I remember upgrading the CPU to a 550MHz one later on (2002ish for my dad) It looked like this.
It was around 2000-2001 that my dad grew tired of me using his PC all the time so he bought me one for christmas, it was seriously the worst PC ever lol but I was excited to finally have my own. It had a 200mhz Cyrix MII CPU, 32mb ram, windows 95.
I spent every dime I came into in that PC, Eventually it had a Geforce PCI, 500Mhz K6-2, 128mb ram.. Eventually maxed it out totally. I don't have any pics of it but it was basically in one of those early 2000's bargain bin cases. I think it even still had an AT power switch on it.
in March of 2003 I got the chance to build a website for a church, They compensated me by letting me spend $2000 on Tigerdirect! I finally had a KING rig.. I am talking nearly maxed specs for the time. "What a time to be alive! I thought!"
AMD Athlon 2500+
512mb RAM (WHAAAT)
Geforce 3 Ti500
two Geforce 2 MX400's PCI (for additional monitors)
IDE controller card (for additional 10gb drives, I had 4)
I was able to find some pics of this machine, It was my first monster build and I was so proud of it.
This is me still using the PC in 2005 shortly before I left for Iraq, I was in the barracks in Germany. I sent this PC to my little brother who was 15 at the time and was excited to have it.
These pics are from 2003
Eventually the capacitors burned out. It had the XFX-KT400ANB motherboard and they were really known for that. I think it soldiered on until 2008ish though.
I got out of desktops for a while because I was always in Iraq or in the field doing something Army related, I paid way too much for a no name laptop *(that actually still works) But here it is. Purchased in 2005 I think it had a 1.4Ghz Pentium M, can't remember how much ram I think 1gb and Mobility radeon 9800. Ran FS2004 and things like call of duty, used it for everything and aside from a dead battery it still runs!
Really felt like living in the future having PCMCIA Verizon card with 3G capability! I mean that was amazing! Even had unlimited data.
I used this laptop until 2008 or so when I got the bug while I was living in El Paso Texas, I was still in the Army but I wasn't deploying as much so I decided to get back into desktops. I went to compUSA in El Paso which was like shopping at a tigerdirect store.
Ended up with this at the end of the day which was a Intel Q6600, Intel DP35DP motherboard, ULTRA PSU and Case (which I liked because it reminded me of the Antec dragon case I had in 2003) two 750GB HDD's (my first experience with SATA), and a MONSTER Geforce 9800GTX+
I used this PC from 2008 until about 2010 or so, got the bug to build yet another new one so I parted out that machine and ended up with an AMD Phenom 2 1090T, Dual 6970's and for the first time ever some 64GB Crucial SSD's! Talk about blazing fast! I mean **** dude windows 7 was out by then and people were panicking thinking their SSD's were gonna fail from use in 3 months LOL. Upgraded to a Corsair PSU as well. This thing was fast and ran every game on max! The Phenom 1090T was a good chip.
in 2011 I moved to Copperas Cove Texas and shortly after settling in there ended up wanting to do crazy things like run a PC in a test bench. I still have the test bench but it is no longer my main PC, I started using AIO's H70, H100's. I was an early adopter of bulldozer and I bought an 8150, TWO HD6990's, this CPU is why I wasn't really a big Ryzen supporter, the 8 core thing was way hyped even back then and I was stuck with this PC until recently in slightly different configurations. It was a good PC I guess, It had it's issued but it got me through my divorce at that time.
Sabertooth 990FX
16GB DDR Corsair
yada yada
I also briefly had a SAGER gaming laptop in 2011, It has a Sandy Bridge but I needed to raise money for my divorce so I sold it.
Fast forward to 2014 (from 2011) and I upgraded that PC with two HD7990's, a Corsair carbide 500R and some other goodies here and there. By the end of 2014 it was looking like this and that test bench was actually being used for testing lol
from 2013-2016 I was working on offshore oil rigs so I did not have a lot of time for PC gaming, I didn't upgrade all that much and I was waiting until I was actually going to be home before I went all out on a totally fresh build. Which leads me to the final part of this, in April 2017, GTA 5 crashed for the final time, I was going through a big breakup so I rage/sad ordered the PC I am typing this on.
AS you can see I went all out, I did reuse my sony Surround sound from 2004 though! Sounds great anyway Look through the pics closely it makes several appearances! I have been using it since 2004!
60" Vizio TV 144hz
3x 27" Dell G-sync monitors
Asus Maximus iX hero
2x 250gb NVME SSD in Raid 0
4x Corsair LE in Raid 0
Two GTX 1080TI in SLI
HX1000I PSU
H115i AIO
Corsair 750D
7700k @ 5Ghz
all kinds of cool ****.
Update: October, 26th 2017. Upgrade to Maximus X HERO and delidded 8700k in progress.
hopefully I can keep this thread updated! Check out my other rigs though, I have them in my sig. Retro gaming rigs, Servers. ETC.
Update October, 30th 2017, received CPU from Silicon Lottery.
upgrade to Z370 Maximus X Hero and 8700k successful. Also upgraded the AIO to a Fractal S36.
OH yeah I forgot I have this inspiron 7559 as well now too, for school and stuff when I travel. Upgraded to 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR, a Corsair LE 480 and a Corsair m.2 NVME MP500. (THIS IS SOLD)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
update for 2018!
Update for 2018! Lot's happening!
First and foremost is this new Plex server! Ryzen 1800x and 53TB!
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90721&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90729&thumb=1
Second is that I upgraded my main PC to a 8700k @ 5GHz!
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90745&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90737&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90785&thumb=1
Also got an Alienware 17
I7 7820HQ
32GB DDR4 2400 Mhz
950 Pro M.2 512mb
850pro SATA 512mb
GTX 1080
1440p G sync monitor
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90753&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90761&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90769&thumb=1
upgraded the SSD's before I even turned it on!
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90777&thumb=1
I will start in the mid 90's, I was 8-9 years old and my dad brought one of these home, A gateway 486, I remember getting in trouble because I was able to over clock it and run pentium class games on it. My step mom took it and I never saw it again. I played games like Silent Thunder, Time Commando and Monopoly on it. It was my first PC I got on the internet with using the dial up internet at the university. Monopoly was my first online game in 1997.
It had a 33mhz 486, 8mb ram, ISA sound blaster, CD ROM and a US robotics modem.
After that PC was taken away I didn't get another one until 1999 or so, It was a Compaq Presario from Radio shack, It was the common family PC at the time, no discrete GPU and an AMD K6-2 which ran at 300MHz, I remember upgrading the CPU to a 550MHz one later on (2002ish for my dad) It looked like this.
It was around 2000-2001 that my dad grew tired of me using his PC all the time so he bought me one for christmas, it was seriously the worst PC ever lol but I was excited to finally have my own. It had a 200mhz Cyrix MII CPU, 32mb ram, windows 95.
I spent every dime I came into in that PC, Eventually it had a Geforce PCI, 500Mhz K6-2, 128mb ram.. Eventually maxed it out totally. I don't have any pics of it but it was basically in one of those early 2000's bargain bin cases. I think it even still had an AT power switch on it.
in March of 2003 I got the chance to build a website for a church, They compensated me by letting me spend $2000 on Tigerdirect! I finally had a KING rig.. I am talking nearly maxed specs for the time. "What a time to be alive! I thought!"
AMD Athlon 2500+
512mb RAM (WHAAAT)
Geforce 3 Ti500
two Geforce 2 MX400's PCI (for additional monitors)
IDE controller card (for additional 10gb drives, I had 4)
I was able to find some pics of this machine, It was my first monster build and I was so proud of it.
This is me still using the PC in 2005 shortly before I left for Iraq, I was in the barracks in Germany. I sent this PC to my little brother who was 15 at the time and was excited to have it.
These pics are from 2003
Eventually the capacitors burned out. It had the XFX-KT400ANB motherboard and they were really known for that. I think it soldiered on until 2008ish though.
I got out of desktops for a while because I was always in Iraq or in the field doing something Army related, I paid way too much for a no name laptop *(that actually still works) But here it is. Purchased in 2005 I think it had a 1.4Ghz Pentium M, can't remember how much ram I think 1gb and Mobility radeon 9800. Ran FS2004 and things like call of duty, used it for everything and aside from a dead battery it still runs!
Really felt like living in the future having PCMCIA Verizon card with 3G capability! I mean that was amazing! Even had unlimited data.
I used this laptop until 2008 or so when I got the bug while I was living in El Paso Texas, I was still in the Army but I wasn't deploying as much so I decided to get back into desktops. I went to compUSA in El Paso which was like shopping at a tigerdirect store.
Ended up with this at the end of the day which was a Intel Q6600, Intel DP35DP motherboard, ULTRA PSU and Case (which I liked because it reminded me of the Antec dragon case I had in 2003) two 750GB HDD's (my first experience with SATA), and a MONSTER Geforce 9800GTX+
I used this PC from 2008 until about 2010 or so, got the bug to build yet another new one so I parted out that machine and ended up with an AMD Phenom 2 1090T, Dual 6970's and for the first time ever some 64GB Crucial SSD's! Talk about blazing fast! I mean **** dude windows 7 was out by then and people were panicking thinking their SSD's were gonna fail from use in 3 months LOL. Upgraded to a Corsair PSU as well. This thing was fast and ran every game on max! The Phenom 1090T was a good chip.
in 2011 I moved to Copperas Cove Texas and shortly after settling in there ended up wanting to do crazy things like run a PC in a test bench. I still have the test bench but it is no longer my main PC, I started using AIO's H70, H100's. I was an early adopter of bulldozer and I bought an 8150, TWO HD6990's, this CPU is why I wasn't really a big Ryzen supporter, the 8 core thing was way hyped even back then and I was stuck with this PC until recently in slightly different configurations. It was a good PC I guess, It had it's issued but it got me through my divorce at that time.
Sabertooth 990FX
16GB DDR Corsair
yada yada
I also briefly had a SAGER gaming laptop in 2011, It has a Sandy Bridge but I needed to raise money for my divorce so I sold it.
Fast forward to 2014 (from 2011) and I upgraded that PC with two HD7990's, a Corsair carbide 500R and some other goodies here and there. By the end of 2014 it was looking like this and that test bench was actually being used for testing lol
from 2013-2016 I was working on offshore oil rigs so I did not have a lot of time for PC gaming, I didn't upgrade all that much and I was waiting until I was actually going to be home before I went all out on a totally fresh build. Which leads me to the final part of this, in April 2017, GTA 5 crashed for the final time, I was going through a big breakup so I rage/sad ordered the PC I am typing this on.
AS you can see I went all out, I did reuse my sony Surround sound from 2004 though! Sounds great anyway Look through the pics closely it makes several appearances! I have been using it since 2004!
60" Vizio TV 144hz
3x 27" Dell G-sync monitors
Asus Maximus iX hero
2x 250gb NVME SSD in Raid 0
4x Corsair LE in Raid 0
Two GTX 1080TI in SLI
HX1000I PSU
H115i AIO
Corsair 750D
7700k @ 5Ghz
all kinds of cool ****.
Update: October, 26th 2017. Upgrade to Maximus X HERO and delidded 8700k in progress.
hopefully I can keep this thread updated! Check out my other rigs though, I have them in my sig. Retro gaming rigs, Servers. ETC.
Update October, 30th 2017, received CPU from Silicon Lottery.
upgrade to Z370 Maximus X Hero and 8700k successful. Also upgraded the AIO to a Fractal S36.
OH yeah I forgot I have this inspiron 7559 as well now too, for school and stuff when I travel. Upgraded to 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR, a Corsair LE 480 and a Corsair m.2 NVME MP500. (THIS IS SOLD)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
update for 2018!
Update for 2018! Lot's happening!
First and foremost is this new Plex server! Ryzen 1800x and 53TB!
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90721&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90729&thumb=1
Second is that I upgraded my main PC to a 8700k @ 5GHz!
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90745&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90737&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90785&thumb=1
Also got an Alienware 17
I7 7820HQ
32GB DDR4 2400 Mhz
950 Pro M.2 512mb
850pro SATA 512mb
GTX 1080
1440p G sync monitor
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90753&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90761&thumb=1
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90769&thumb=1
upgraded the SSD's before I even turned it on!
http://www.overclock.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=90777&thumb=1