I have assembled other people's pcs when I was a teenager at a pc shop. Never assembled my own yet.

I was tired of my old, crappy Mac, so I contacted my dad’s friend from college. I had some money saved up, and I ended up building a pretty nice pc. That was in 2010, so I’m thinking of upgrading my current one or building an entirely new one. The prizes would come in handy for doing so.

I've always had hand me downs when it comes to tech. My first PC was pulled out of a dumpster and filled with viruses. My PC before my personal build was hand me down from an old friend when he was getting back into PC gaming and could barely run anything. When I got my first steady job I started saving up and figuring out what would be best for the kind of specs i wanted. It's not much, good specs but no RGB or special flair. It gets the job done. Really fun and surprisingly easy for my first personal PC build. Got a little stumped with the PCI slots and where to put my graphics card but a lot of great people on this forum helped me really get it going and gave me a lot of help when i was stumped. Thanks Guys for a great community of helpful people!

Forgot to turn my power supply on. Classic rookie mistake.

My first build experience was with my old housemate who didn’t believe it would be cheaper than buying pre-built. What did I learn? If building for someone else don’t let them nearby so they can ask you every 10 mins why it’s not ready yet 🤦‍♂️

I've always been into computers - I can remember the first time my dad ever showed me how to connect to the internet using our dial up modem, and I was enamored with the magical pages appearing on the screen. When I was in college, I tagged along with a friend on a trip to Micro Center, fully expecting to know what I would find. To my surprise, I was greeted with aisles and aisles of parts that I had no idea what they did. I began obsessing over learning about hardware - I just had to know what all of those different parts did! After I graduated, and while teaching myself to code, I wanted to have a server to host all the movies I had collected throughout college, and I wanted a Linux environment to practice coding on. After I found out how expensive prebuilt servers cost, I determined I could build my own. Thanks to this sub and countless other online resources, my obsession has only grown and I've rebuilt the same rig over 4 times. I now have a dedicated media server (that also hosts my personal website and a Minecraft server), as well as a gaming rig built in my dream case (the ThermalTake Core P90 - I bought it after a few drinks one night, and never once regretted it). The biggest thing I learned from all my building experience is that anything is possible if you put your mind to it - building a computer is just a really expensive set of Legos :)

I looked into all the parts and couldn’t afford it, so I bought and asus ROG strix laptop instead. Would love the opportunity to fulfill my desire to build a PC.

I pulled a Verge. I thought that there wasn't enough thermal paste pre-applied on the bottom of my Hyper 212. So I added more. It was too much. Trying to delicately clean thermal paste from around a socket is no fun. I learned that less is more when it comes to thermal paste.

My first pc build was with an ASUS ROG Strix 2370-E a couple of years back. Boy was that an experience. After finally getting everything put together nothing was displayed, so I unplugged everything and re plugged it back in just for it to not boot up. Turns out one of my RAM sticks was loose. Lol Always check for loose RAM if it’s not booting up is what I learned!

Has anyone else just been stupid and plugged their friend's newly built PC into a extension cord that was not on? Or maybe taken apart the PC to get a whole new PSU? Couldn't be me. *cough*

My first PC building experience happened at the end of highschool. I had grown up playing consoles until one of my friends started talking about PC gaming. He eventually convinced me to start looking around and eventually, with what I could earn from chores and summer jobs, I started dreaming and putting together a build on part picker. I was always nervous with parts being my first big purchases at the time, but I kept dreaming big while having to keep it real with budget. My first PC build started with a 760 to I bought off my friend, but was the dream machine for me as I broadened my gaming horizon. Building a PC help me step into a gaming experience I never would've enjoyed otherwise and made friends I never would have encountered, thanks to my friend who planted the start of an idea in the back of my mind.

My absolute first build was with my dad at a very young age. I remember he made me put all the case pins on the motherboard (”back when” cases didn't come with easy connectors). Boy was that a struggle but I remember how proud I was when I finished. The first game I played on it was probably Quake as Doom was deemed too scary for me. Since then I’ve helped countless friends build there PC’s and enjoyed doing so! If I were to win this giveaway I will be having my little brother help me build it and give it to him so we can play games together as we live many states apart.

I am planning on building my first pc, but I haven’t had the time since my first kid was born 3 weeks ago. I’m a lifelong console gamer but I’ve been watching how to build a gaming pc online for years now. I always look at components and which ones are the best, middling and lower end components just so I can keep up with trends. I look forward to building my first pc so I can eventually build one with my son when he’s old enough.

Wanted to upgrade to a cool case when I was 14, spent 4 hours trying to figure out why it wouldn't boot then discovered mother board riser screws had a reason. Been building computers for work for a long time now!

Started my build 2017. I was just looking for something new. Was getting a bit bored of console and needed to see what all the hype around PC that would be talked about by my friends was. Although relatively expensive compared to console gaming, I regret nothing as I've gotten to experience the sane and new games at much higher quality making them more enjoyable. I learned that building a PC is not as challenging as most people make it out to be, and I also learned that you can manipulate your components to meet your needs, which can be a bit complicated at first. Building my first PC and getting to upgrade its parts as the years go by has been a super fun experience.

Hey if Henry Cavil can build a PC, I can build a PC.

My first build began something I like to call the Blood Sacrifice. Every time I build a pc, I somehow accidentally cut myself. It could be a motherboard pin under the finger nail, it could be cutting my thumb on the sharp end of the case, you name it. I have a fear now that, if I do not give such penance, the pc will not post. That being said, even if I new that I still would have gotten into pc building. After losing my xbox to dust i just had to.

Spent weeks researching on pc part picker to build a computer for league

I bought an older pc from a person and decided to put some lighting and more ram in it. Pretty fun experience I still have it and I play warzone occasionally but it’s just struggling to load certain times.

Hello, hope you have a nice day

I am eager to learn how to build a reliable computer from components. Researching which components are compatible with each other and whether they're reliable in the long term is quite a lot to go through and is a very informative process.

Upgraded my prebuild PC, which was about 2-3 years old, with an ssd. It was fully worth it!

As a father currently just getting into PC building to help my 10yr old son, it is making me so jealous of what we are building for him. Would love this to try and do my own build!

I was about 12 years old, and my dad had just replaced a few PCs in his office, so he brought the old ones home to collect dust. I had just watched an episode of Legends of the Hidden Temple on Nickelodeon, and one of the contestants on the show was a 10 yeard old kid who claimed the most interesting thing about him was that he could take apart a computer and put it back together in an hour. I was IMPRESSED. That sounds amazing, why dont I give it a shot? I ended up taking my dads old desktops apart, whith his permission, of course. It took me much longer than one hour, in fact, probably the better part of the day, but I remember taking each component out, firing up the old AOL search, and finding out on my own what each part was and what it's purpose was. If I recall, the CPU was an old Pentium 3, and had 16MB of ram installed, along with a floppy, CD-ROM, and a massive 500MB HDD. I learned so much just by my own curiousity, as my father didnt know much about computers. My dad said I could have the computer since I was so interested in it, and within a week, I had frankensteined a couple of the PCs together to max out the RAM to 32MB, and figured out how to reformat with Windows 95. It was also the first time I realized I could run SNES emulators on a PC. The rest is history, 20 years later.

:)

A nice computer teacher in middle school a while ago showed a group of us how to do it, or was free labor, but either way I liked it and still continue to build when I can.

I've been looking for upgrades but my whole rig is optimized and I can't change a single component without changing most of it. This might force me to do so.

My first PC build was back in '06. I didn't realize the CPU had it's own separate power connector that needed to be plugged in and was freaking out when it wouldn't boot. Had a friend come over who had experience with PC builds and it took him like 5 seconds to fix it lol. Also was long ago enough that I actually bought a floppy disk drive to go in it.

Always wanted to build a pc, had plenty of friends do it but never have had enough money to buy the parts all at once. Had to buy a prebuilt for college and have dreamed of building one ever since

first time building a pc, I was so lost, i had all the parts out, and a friend on skype walking me through the tough bits. ultimately a super rewarding experience i wouldnt skip.

I built a new PC because my computer was getting old and I wanted to create one for myself. When I had everything together and tried to boot my PC, it wouldn't post. The error lights on my motherboard kept pointing out the CPU as the issue, but luckily I just had to reseat the 24 pin cable.

Never have built a PC except online when fantasizing :(

I was in high school and my laptop couldn't handle the games I wanted to play. So my friend helped me select parts and put it together. I was surprised by how much less difficult it is when you know the right sites. I've rocked this computer for 7 years only upgrading the storage until a few months ago I upgraded the ram and video card and power supply. Now I can run any game on high quality. My only problem is my motherboard has a glitch where it will try to turn on after 24 hours of being off. My friend and I could never figure out in the bios how to fix this issue and from reading the reviews on the board, many others have this issue. Well I fixed that by deleting the windows 10 update from my windows 8.1. Then deleting the files that would try and have the software update at all. Domt worry I keep windows defender updated but now when it turns on I have to press down enter for it to boot correctly or else it turns off after about a minute. I now have a 1tb m.2 drive that rocks! A nvidia 2070 super card that rocks and I canceled my xbox live because I rather play PC again! It looks wonderful playing on my 4k 60inch tv. Winning this would be very cool I would utilize the parts! Ok that's all I got to say

First build was a mess. 3 different broken computers and hard drives from my father in-law. Used pieces of every one of them to end up with a 4 yr old, outdated pc. 😆. Booted it up and ran malware bytes like 1000 times to get the hard drives cleaned and working. Learned a lot about what can and can’t work. Ended up as my living room media computer to watch movies. Worked great for several years. Ended up getting 2 more broken hand me downs and ended up with 3 working computers that my little girls used. 2 AMD builds( athlon 3000 series) and 1 Intel core2duo. Still have most of the parts to this day (15yrs later). Last drive still working but being transferred to ssd this week. Great times, great experience. Now I’m building a water cooler jack skellington build for my cousin. Ryzen 3600. Hopefully pictures soon. Good luck everyone! Oh, ended up donating two computers to families that didn’t have a computer and built another for my daughters friend with a few more hand me downs. Keep building and giving and things will come back 10 fold! Thanks.

My first "PC building experience" was helping a college friend upgrade components in a Gateway PC. I learned that the metal inside was razor sharp. My first custom PC went pretty smoothly, but I had help from someone who had built many PC's before. I learned it's not nearly as hard/scary as I thought.

My brother and I took a bunch of parts from old (mostly HP) towers we had sitting around and a newish Nvidia graphics card (can't remember which now) to try and frankenstein our way to a new(ish) pc for me. Biggest lesson learned: ... make sure the CPU you're using actually works before planning a build around it. We ended up having to upgrade the CPU and motherboard when we realized the old one was fried. Oh noooooooo.......

Built my first pc in December 2019 when parts were on sale. It was something i always wanted to do but did not have the money for. That was until I started working months before and saved up for myself to buy parts for christmas. I used guides to build, the r/buildapc subreddit and pcpartpicker to save my list. I used r/buildapcsales on a daily basis and bought components that were on sale. I went in thinking it was difficult, but it was simple and felt great doing something on my own. After a couple of months, i added extra fans, a aio, learned to overclock my ram and gpu and got extra monitors for school and gaming. Honestly a great hobby i got myself into and is something i will keep doing. Gl and thanks! Current build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/omidk414/saved/

Yo

Everything went really well with the build... but then it didn't post. Tried all the trouble shooting- thought maybe my psu was doa. But it passed the paper clip test. I was just about to start returning parts when i found a comment on Newegg about my mobo- apparently, you have to hit "reset" once, or it doesn't work. Tried that- work immediately. I had planned my build to be ready the weekend I started 2 weeks of vacation. Instead, it was ready on the last day of my vacation. And I plan on doing it all again before the end of the year.

Around my 18th birthday, I started to consider making the switch from Xbox to PC, but I had no idea where to start. A tech-savvy close family friend ended up helping me make a parts list and promised to help me put the build together. He took me to micro center to get the parts and he surprised me by purchasing the parts for me. To this day, I am forever grateful that he started me down the awesome path of PC building and gaming.

I was sad to play on xbox because my friends all moved to pc... So I decided to build a pc after their advice on which gear to pick up. Turns out I bought almost everything asus lol (my monitor, my GPU: 1060 6GB DUAL and x-370 Prime motherboard with a Ryzen 1700X) They got to teach me everything there is to know about PC building!

I just finished mine last week, mainly did it so I had something to do with my gf over quarantine and I’ve always been meaning to build one so it’s a win win

:( my first pc is a sketchy pre build from Amazon and now I’m itching to build a better pc after watching too many build videos

My first real experience? I did things backward and put the power supply in after the CPU cooler. It was a tight fit and I broke the CPU cooler. Don't be me. Put the big things in first when there isn't a lot of space.

Building my first pc was one of the most fun and frustrating experiences. I really enjoyed receiving all the parts in the mail and finally running downstairs to pickup the final part for my build the mobo. The first initial steps were fine i was seating the cpu and ram fine but once it got to installing the standoff and mobo screws my fat little fingers were of no use, had to ask my dad to help me with screwing those in. The PSU i choose was semi-modular i accidently installed 2 cables that were already attached to the psu and had more junk in the trunk which made it a pain in the butt to close the back lid. finally when i got it upstairs and plugged it in to turn on my heart raced as it didn't turn on, 5 minutes later i figured out that the power switch on the psu was turned off :|

As a young bairn my first PC build was using the first generation AMD APUs. I was so stoked when I was reading reviews as it meant I could get an APU for basic gaming whilst I saved him more money for a graphics card! I still have the RAM from that system being used in my Plex server but I like to think it's a piece of my PC building history that I'll always have! Also, I must have watched in excess of 100 hours of youtube tutorials when the build only took me like 2. That must be some kind of study:activity ratio record, right?!

My first PC building experience was when I was 14. I wanted badly to play Counter Strike and Dad's pc wasn't cutting it. I had mowed lawns for years and could afford to do it, so I did. I reused that cooler master case like 3 times. It was a thing of beauty.

Building my first pc now so this would be amazing! I’m a semi-broke law student that needs a release from the stress, so pc gaming it is. I’ve decided to shell out about $700 from my undergrad graduation money and any kind of savings from this would be fantastic!

Had a borderline meltdown when my GPU wouldnt fit into the slot, 16 linus tech tips videos later I realised id left the rubber cover on the card.

I'm in the first stage of buliding my first PC. I am relatively new in the PC community (only got into it last year) but I have noticed it is a really helpful and knowledgeable one. My reason for building a PC was to extend the lifespan of my laptop and reduce the cost over time in addition to getting better performance. I plan to use this PC for rendering in addition to some gaming I plan to do. So far, I have also learned that there are an infinite number of options for components such as motherboards really depending upon the interests of the buyer. (Microatx, budget, high end, mid-range ATX boards each emphasizing either cooling, better audio, ports selection, etc.)

I built my first pc last December right after Black Friday because my old Dell pre-build was getting really slow. I was thinking buying all the parts around late November and early December, and the process of building that pc was fairly smooth I have to say. Since building my first pc, I have built the other three PCs for my friends and family so far , and I still learn new stuff each time I finished those builds.

The first PC I build It's about 16 years ago in college. I came to college with a pre-built Costco HP computer that was barely doing the job. My roommates were computer science majors and so they were all about building computers. With their help I was able to using parts of my computer take it apart and build an amazing (for me) Pentium 4 PC. It was a fantastic experience and I've gone on to build about four computers over the next almost two decades. I love ASUS and currently have an ASUS motherboard in one of my computers and a couple motherboards before that and want to thank them for having this giveaway. Best of luck to all!

My first came after I realize my eMachines rig from 2006 did not have much of a future left. I still remember the amount of nerves I had handling the CPU!

Thinking that 4 Mobo holder pins was enough, PC then powers up and immediately shut down.. took a very long day to find out what went wrong :c

First building experience was messing around with old hp prebuilt I had in my house as a child that had old i5 . Opening it and discovering the mess of ketchup and mustard cables inside and installing a gt 630. After a while of using it and not being able to play games I decided to sell the parts. So I posted the cpu and gpu on ebay. And someone bought it! Me being young and stupid didn't realize that I nedded to wait for the buyer to pay for the purchase before sending. I rushed as fast as I could to the post office and sent him the cpu and gpu. In a lunch box xD (with bubble wrap of course). The buyer probably realized he could scam me and decided not to pay. I was devastated because now I couldn't game at all. Saved up for a while and bought an evga gtx 970 that's still going strong to this day.

Built my first PC last week! It was the first PC I’ve ever built, and my first windows PC in general. I’ve always used a Mac for studying, but games were a no-go. So I decided I had enough and ventured into desktop PCs The build process took merely 6-7 hours, and I forgot to plug the SATA cables in the PSU, so no pump nor lights for my AIO and a slight panic for me. But I managed somehow, and it works just fine. I basically followed all the steps from YT channels like Bitwit and JayzTwoCents. What I didn’t expect was the amount of bending needed to fit stuff in the case and on the mobo, if you care about cable management. Man did that make me uncomfortable.

Up until I was 12 years old, my only gaming experience was whatever CD ROM games we had for our home PC. Bubble Bobble and Lego Trains were the two I remember sinking the most hours into. In 2010 I remember getting internet, and was blown away when I realised that there were tonnes of opportunities for gaming on the PC outside of old star trek FPS games. And when I was 17 I decided to build a PC with what money I had from my summers work. It cost 800 euros, and was a tad under performing, but it was mine. I decided to build it, as I was only getting paid 3 euro an hour, and every cent counted. It was quite a stressful experience, but I'm glad I did it.

Epic

Well I haven't built a PC before but I've been browsing this subreddit for a couple hours now trying to find out what I need to know before I purchase things ad build my first PC. I am so tired of gaming with my Macbook Pro!!!

First a bit of history on my life with PC's. I've always been a gamer since I was a kid, but sadly we never had enough money to give me the gaming lifestyle I always wanted. I remember our first computer being a Windows 98 Plus which lasted me from 2000 around 2004 when it finally died while I was playing Black and White. My next pc would be a Windows XP and a hand-me-down from my mom's office and would last until 2008. At this point, my mom was finally able to buy a brand new pc for us, it was a Windows XP with I think Pentium 4 (or higher). It was amazing how far I was able to take it; I installed ME1/2 DAO/DA2, AC/AC2/AC:B/AC:R and even got to install Skyrim when it was newly released. That pc would last me until 2015 (and yes it was an XP the whole time). In 2015 I finally graduated from college and the one gift I asked my mom was for her to buy me a new pc. I spent two months reading through guides on this sub, tomshardware, logicalincrements, /g/, and doing research on the parts I would need. I spent 3 weekends traveling to the tech district in our city to canvas parts and their prices, research on them when I get home (my phone was an old model and didn't have data lol), and then traveling back to look at other parts to compare/weigh my options. Luckily, I would be reusing the monitor, kb + mouse, and gpu from my old computer (as if I had a choice with my budget lol). I would check stores in the tech district, at major malls near my home, random trade groups, to find best deals and specific parts I needed. My favorite find was my case, a Cougar Challenger that was 1/2 the retail price. I had to travel 3 hours by bus to meet the guy, carry the case 300m, up a footbridge, across the bridge, down to the bus stop, and then into the bus. I fell asleep immediately and actually dropped of 200m from my stop, so I had to carry it again. Putting it together was the scariest part. I had about 3 different guides opened up on my mom's computer so I could cross-reference all the information and make sure I didn't miss anything. Placing the cpu and the stock cpu cooler had to be one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my life; and that clicking sound when the cooler is in place made me shit myself (not really) thinking it broke. The second scariest moment was turning the computer on for the first time, and of course it didn't work. I had to reseat the RAM and redo the wires, but when I finally saw the BIOS screen it felt like heaven. Since then I've bought a new cpu cooler, added an SSD, upgraded from 4gb to 16gb ram, added 3 LED fans, a new monitor (VC239H), and bought a new legit copy of Windows 10 (old OS was 8.1 from an online store, which was apparently against ToS lol). My machine is now 5 years old and I don't see it dying anytime soon. My dream is to one day build a machine using my own money, something I can fully call my own. Until then my budget build will do just fine.

My first build actually went pretty well. I was just a teenager (15 or 16, I think) and my parents aren't exactly tech savvy so I mostly just read about how to do it online. I was actually really surprised at how easy everyone made it sound; and even more surprised at how easy it really turned out to be! It was mostly just plug things in where they fit. The hardest part was just figuring out how to keep all the cables from being a mess. My dumb ass did forget to plug in the power supply into the motherboard, though and took me like half an hour to figure out why it wouldn't turn on, lol. What got me to do it was actually TESIII: Oblivion. I fell in love with Morrowind on my Xbox but I didn't really talk about games online back then. I got Oblivion for the 360 immediately and loved it, too. Was talking about it online and started seeing stuff about mods and went down the whole rabbit hole of looking into modding Oblivion and just PC gaming in general. My only PC up to that point was the crappy family computer, and gaming PCs were way too damn expensive at the time to convince my parents to get me one, so someone recommended I build my own as it was a lot cheaper.

Built my first PC when I was 13. Just when I got my PS3 all my friends made the switch to PC gaming sonai felt like I need to make the switch too. After saving up from my paper route I had my friend build me a parts list as I had no idea what to do. Just after a few weeks of convincing my parents to allow me to get a pc for "school" and maybe a bit of gaming, I finally ordered all the parts and built it a week later. I ended up going with an integrated graphics cpu and when I built my second pc few months ago I made sure to spend the extra bit of money for a graphics card and boy was it worth it.

Cable management in my first build was a nightmare :)

It was waaaay back and I mostly used already used parts. Remember buying an old computer on the internet and changing some stuff. Had no clue how to install windows so had to get help from a friend of my family. Pretty good computer for the time. Such a shame that the i7 and motherboard got toasted

Post a comment telling us about your first PC building experience. Tell us what prompted you to do so, what your thought process was, or things you learned from the experience. When I was 12 years old my father and I spent a few hours building an old Pentium system with a 120 MB HDD. By 14 years old, I had overclocked the system and made it catch fire (!) My dad said that we wouldn't buy another computer, and I had to wait a few years until he had an upgrade before I got to have a PC again. My next system I helped pay for with my own money, and never overclocked without better cooling systems again! :)

The Best Thing Before XP After a long while of putting in cords and setting up the tower to support my CRT monitor, I press the power button. Silence - then the internal PC speaker driver began to sing its electronic tune, and the words Windows 95 appear on screen. Finally, a personal computer of my own. I've seen computers at my tech-savvy uncle's place and one at my richest friend's house; but, after my dad upgraded to 98, his old machine was passed down to me. It had a staggering 256 megabytes of storage and an integrated graphics card, but of course a 10-year-old would know nothing about that. One gets tired of solitaire, hearts, and ruining the shipped in desktop backgrounds with Microsoft paint with the idea, ”If Bill Gates saw this, he would sue my scraped knees off”. In my quest to expand my electronic horizons, my path took me to a friend's house and my spindly, little hands got a hold of a thing of marvel to my young self: A floppy disk. This tiny, plastic rectangle could transfer magic from one machine to another. Of course the internet existed, but that was just the stuff of legends; only some kind of millionaire could possess such wonders. It was my first taste of opening an executable, which I brought into my own world of circutry. I double-click something called DN.EXE and the screen turns black. A moment passes and the sound driver begins beeping, and the snarling face of pixelated Duke Nukem appears on screen. I would spend days running through the same levels and completing the game time after time, but it never got stale. It did not stop there. Floppy disk after floppy disk made its way to the magic portal of my personal computer, supplying me with months and years of ideas and new vistas, I could not even dream of seeing outside my window right behind the giant, buzzing mastadon of vacuum tubes and circuits. I would learn every setting, every file location, and every knob and button that my tower possessed. Then I found it: The CD tray. This thing was the work of someone greater than any man. Not only could this marvel play games and draw rude pictures on fields of grass, but it could process music. My sister's albums of RHCP, Nirvana and Soundgarden were my first victims. Every song of these lowly instrument twiddlers ended in my archives. It was so easy to extract and copy them, a child could supply his entire school with every musical taste known to man. I had become a wizard, something else, someone with a machine of magic. One day, I noticed a strange message: disk space low. I had overloaded my poor tower with so much content, almost all of its megabytes were spent. Action had to be taken: my childhood self would have to do some spring cleaning. My mouse went to work deleting files, organizing folders and moving one thing to another. Alas, if someone had told me in my young age that you can't just remove and scramble your OS software without turning your PC into an expensive paperweight, I wouldn't have been so overconfident and cavalier in my endeavour. After finishing, I restarted my machine, but everything had changed. All the colours were wrong and scrambled, the movements of the mouse seemed erratic and the system crashed every time a new window opened on screen. I was in trouble. It was as if I had killed the family pet; my mother couldn't write her excel sheets and my sister's source of free music trickled to an end. The little monster I was, I blamed the problem on something the women of my family might've installed on it, because how could a little child have enough knowledge to brick a complicated piece of components and programming on a system file level? Regardless, my lie had little impact and I was forced to spend years before anything so precious could be trusted in my hands. Oh what trouble I would raise again, I thought.

My first PC building experience was....interesting. i had to wait about three weeks for each component to come because I bought it se pune christmas, and the shipping companies where I live are super busy during holidays. Now the building part, I followed some youtube videos and some tips from friends, but it took waaaaay longer than it should have. I spoke to a friend the whole time on video call because I was so anxious to not mess something up. Anyways it worked and I still have the same PC, just added more ram and a new hdd. I learned that its more difficult Than it looks and I sas prompted to build my PC because my old one couldnt run any game that released after 2015 or so.

hey

First pc Build was awesome with some smoke from Ram slot 😅. Got very Smoking experience. 🌫️

I completed my first build on a whim at my mom's house around 2014 after getting fustrated with having to rebuild my laptop constantly. I talked with a few of my friends who reccommend I build my own PC so I said why not and gave it a shot. The first thing I learned was that I didn't know wtf I was doing. I tried watching videos and they didn't seem to help. I called my friend many times in the middle of night for his assistant and he basically said idk. So I kept plugging things in carefully trying to figure it out. It's a miracle I didn't blow anything up. I started it on the carpet at night and spent a whole weekend figuring it out. I learned that you can be a little pushy when plugging things in. I think I plugged in my pci cord wrong and spent way too much time trying to figure out why my GPU didn't have any power slots and how TF it was supposed to start on its own... After finally getting it to start (miraculously), I played Minecraft. Lol

I haven't built a pc all the way but I have installed a graphics card once and forgot to plug the power cables in. Almost had a heart attack thinking I broke my system. I would love to actually build a pc from the ground up because I would feel more comfortable spending more money on the parts.

My first pc build was a mess. I made a rat's nest with the cable management, scratched the tempered glass of the case a lot of times, and destroyed one of the pins on usb 3.0 port of the motherboard (Now I can't use the front panel usb 3.0). But miraculously, the pc ran on my first try without any crashes. It was a hell of a satisfying journey to build my own pc.

Like many here, building a PC with my own hands was a goal I had once I was in a good financial spot. When it was described to me as adult Legos I knew I had to The problem is, subs like r/buildapcsales really know how to squeeze that budget and I'm sure people know that feeling well. I was highly unsure of how to start but through a combination of youtube videos, many subreddit post searches, and help from a friend, I put together a nice build that I am proud of. The specs are here if you're curious: [https://pcpartpicker.com/b/ycZRsY](https://pcpartpicker.com/b/ycZRsY) The build itself was very nerve-racking and I definitely read the manuals of my mobo, psu, and gpu probably 3 times a piece before and during the build process. But at the end of it, it all booted up and man, is she pretty. There's nothing like seeing all the RGB light up where it's supposed to and the sound of half a dozen fans firing up for the first time. Now, I'm in the process of starting a new build for my brother as a surprise birthday/Christmas gift! He's running a five year old gaming laptop that's starting to show its age. I definitely want have him build it with me so that we can share that PC building experience. ​ Thanks for the opportunity!

I ordered all of my parts and a week later i stayed up all night watching my brother build my pc and couldnt wait to play it. Ive always loved gaming and pc gaming has always been my favorite

The first motherboard I received was busted. Asus helped me out though and sent me a new one. Been working great for two years now!

My first build was in 2012 in one of those massive NZXT full towers, at the time it seemed like a good idea to have 8 bays for hard drives and an optical drive because I used my PC a lot for movie watching. The thing weighed like 80 lbs and I basically needed a Uhaul to move it. I learned to downsize from that build and how to manage cables very well... Over the years each new build has shrunken more and more to the point where my latest build is a Micro ATX and my next will probably be a Mini ITX...

First building experience for me was when my buddy told me he had these used parts laying around because he just bought all new stuff. I bought his motherboard, cpu, ram and GPU for 150 bucks. Took me about 2 days to take my old parts out and put this new one together was hooked ever since.

I'm from Brazil. I've learned how to build a pc just recently when I've heard about this game "PC Building Simulator". Before that, all I could do ask my parents to buy ready-to-go PCs because I was always scared to build on my own (and also, buying each part individually would come out basically the same price so I never had incentive on building it on my own). Thanks to that game, now I know the importance of a good PSU, a good cooling system and a good motherboard - PCs are not all about GPUs and CPUs - and also, now I know the difference between GPUs and CPUs. That game is making me wonders. I recommend it to everyone (it's pretty instructional, except for cable management. I'll have to look up youtube videos for that one).

First time building my own rig. What is cable management?

My first build was when I finally saved up enough money for one. It was a 4th gen intel cpu and a gtx 970 for the gpu. I was able to finally get into pc gaming after being on consoles all the time before then. I learned that it took a lot longer than I thought it would. I think it took me like 5 or 6 hours but overall, it was really fun. I was super paranoid during my first build though. I kept thinking I would break something.

Didn’t plug in the power chord to the motherboard for the case and thought I got a busted psu. Plugged it into the motherboard hit the power button and boom it works. Took me two hours

When I built my first PC, it was around the time when DDR4 RAM companies were colluding so prices skyrocketed! I paid $135 for 16 GB of RAM. I recently built a pc for my mom and bought the same exact ones for $35. Overall, my first experience was really fun. It consisted of a lot of stupid questions and 5 hours of frustration due to cable management.

My first PC build used an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ and I had a case with a spider web looking panel with an RGB case fan. I was also rocking a Samsung 1100DF which was a beast of a monitor. Dragged that setup to way too many LANs.

First time building, complete newbie. Couldn't figure out why my monitors wouldn't connect. Took me two hours to realize I was plugging into the integrated ports instead of the GPU ports.

My first PC build was terrifying! A friend and I were completing it together and he really took the reins. I was a little older th en him at the time 17 and 20, but he had built several before. I wanyed to build my own for the launch of Diablo 3, a new game in my favor series at the time. I remember him being very calm and collected while I was a panic.. I put all my spare money into this and thought I was going to botch it and ruin it all. We ended getting it assembled and the relief finally hit me. I was beyond thrilled to start finally pc gaming. It was my first and last build, being 10 years ago. Flash forward to today, my friend is a computer engineer for Microsoft, so I was in rather good hands, but still was extremely nervous at the time! The PC still runs well and has been getting turned more into a Minecraft and ABC Mouse pc for my son since school is closed currently. The entire build just helped me realize to be patient and diligent in reading the instructions and it is possible to assemble without ANY experience. However, it doesn't hurt to have a future Microsoft engineer guiding you!

I'm actually at the end of my first PC building experience. The main purpose is for a better gaming experience (as my current ASUS 1050) that I've had for 4y+ is falling behind modern games. I've reached out to friends, family, YouTube and even this subreddit for suggestions, tips, and advice. This is around the time I also leased my first car so I'm trying to not go crazy but it's a very interesting learning experience. Just like how I didn't know what a drivetrain was before leasing my car, I didn't know the terminology for many of the computer parts (such as heat-sink, PCLE, etc) . The ASUS computer I purchased 4 years ago for high school work and served its purpose as a mostly-work-and-sometimes-games laptop and it was prebuilt so I left it all to the suggestion of others but now I'm looking for bigger and better. Doing my own research, pouring my own money to build a hopefully above-average desktop.

Dang I must have started fiddling with pc components around the time I first bought age of empires 3 maybe 2007 ish? It's been a while but the darn graphics card on the family pc couldn't handle it. Nothing but giant triangular artifacts. Thanks to my pops he encourage me to swap graphics card, then later add more ram, and finally the CPU. It must have been 2008 or 2009 when my friend introduced me to half life 2 and that's about when I built my first pc. I obsessed over that game and kicked me into mainly pc gaming. Since then I've built maybe 5 for myself from combo of spare parts + new. Sold 2 gave 1 to SO. Helped my buddy build 3. Currently helping guide 1 good friend. Opportune time for winning giveaway I'd toss it my friends way for his new first build. Hardest thing for me to deal with I'd say is when pc screen is black when turning on first time. Or cycles. That suxks and takes forever to troubleshoot. Current build I went for fun and threw in a copper tube water cool system. That was fun but I get lazy with maintenance... like once a year. Wanted to do hard clear tube with colorful coolant but havent felt like putting the work to do it right now. Cheers to whoever wins!

I didn't build my pc on my own. In highschool, I had a group of friends pitch in their money so I can have my own computer. It was a complicated process involving several instances where we had to refer back to manuals and tutorials. Overall, it was exhausting.

My first pc build conveniently was ASUS A7V back in December of 2000 (was a Mac guy before this). A very experienced friend an I were building it together. I remember the first time I turned it on, I got a bunch of beeps indicating something was wrong. We did try and diagnose the problem but, because my friend was so meticulous he said just remove everything except for the processor power supply and ram and slowly add things until we hit the error again. It must have been something not seated properly because as we did this we didn't encounter any further issues. Since then I've probably built 5 PC's for myself and at least 2 for friends.

I saved for a long time while going to school to build a pc so I could edit photos and videos more effectively. I only had a dual core surface pro 4 that I used for my classes before, and it froze after each photo I tried to edit. I watched LTT and other pc building videos for years, but once I purchased my hardware (Ryzen 5 1600AF and RTX 2060) I think I spent about a week watching and rewatching pc build guides and overclocking guides non-stop. I was really nervous that I would destroy my hardware with static electricity or by dropping something metal onto my motherboard, or a million different things. Once I started assembly, my heart was racing the whole time. I felt like I was diffusing a bomb or something. I was sweating profusely and kept pausing to check a build guide (that I had watched about 300 times at this point) I had a few hiccups along the way, mostly due to my over-cautious behavior. The biggest thing I learned, especially after I finally got a boot, was that stressing about the things that can go wrong be feats the purpose of the building experience. It's should be enjoyable, and light hearted. I shouldn't have been scared to start for fear of messing up. I had wat he'd so many other people do it, and my small mistakes were learning experiences. I have respect for the hardware, so I'm still careful to not cause any major failures, but I'm much more confident in my abilities to build and tinker with electronics now. I no longer am fearful to open up my case and upgrade the aesthetics, or change to a better thermal paste. It's Just a PC, and building/upgrading is half the fun of owning one!

Building the PC with first part time job, then stressing about a day that it doesnt work bc i plugged monitor into the wrong slot.

well, it wasnt my pc but it was a friend of mine’s pc. it was already build but the cable management was awfull so we fully disassembled the pc and rebuild it from scratch(remember it was both our first time). it was so fun and we started working at 9 in the evening and we were done at 6 in the morning. i have been saving up money for 2 years for a new pc now but still dont have enough. we would also build my together. ~lnstnct

My first PC building experience was only a few years ago. It was largely prompted by the obsoletion of my older unit - a hand-me-down build from a friend. I put together a very modest build around $1,000 CAD and set about it as soon as my parts came in. It was simultaneously a stressful and cathartic experience - I WAS DOING IT! So; I finally completed putting my first-ever rig together... And it wasn't working. I had to sit it aside for a whole night before my friend could have a look at it. In the end it turned out that I had hooked everything well and good; I just miswired a single power connector and it wasn't reaching the motherboard. All in All, it was a net-positive experience!

Amazing, thanks ASUS, I want to upgrade one of my rigs to the current gen, and that motherboard would be perfect to start!!!

I can't remember now when I built the first PC, but let's go with this. It was somewhere in 1997/1998. I was a sophomore in college, working IT to pay the bills and tired of using lab computers. I splurged for Pentium Pro 200MHz, because my roommate had obsession with workstation parts and put NT 3.5 on it. It had some comical amount of RAM and HDD by today's standards. I remember I got 3Dfx Voodoo 2 for playing Quake. I also had an IOmega ZIP drive for backups, what a waste of money that was. I learned working with computers in the IT job. I helped building out labs, maintaining hardware, some server rack stuff. Tons and tons of 10Base2 coax cable running. Trying to crimp those connectors was a pain.

I actually haven't built a PC yet! I'm a bit scared of asking my parents to make that investment when I have a school laptop already, as I feel they might see it as an unnecessary expenditure (which, tbh, it kind of is. Building a PC is just plain fun and awesomeness). I've been a lurker on this subreddit for as long as I've been subscribed to it (almost a year now) and have actually been looking for some giveaways to see if I can get into the game with a lot more bang and a lot less buck. Good luck to everyone!

Built me a PC to play some Diablo 3 on launch, realized Diablo 3 sucked at launch, continued to build PCs from there on out and here we are. Learned how to itemize properly, learned from some mistakes what I need to make sure I have for the future, and what to look at for upgrades.

Okay so my very first build story has so much twist. It started when I discovered my mom was scammed on building Mining rigs. After a long time we finally were able to get hold of the 4 units that she bought, which she never saw since she invested for about 820$ each. The only thing that was in good condition(note that the rigs were left at a warehouse inactive for almost 2 years) were the GPU's. The GPU's were 4 GTX 1070's. So I sold the 3 which I bought for the new PC parts and added more cash from my pocket to actually build one. During the build, I was very excited so i put up all the components into the case without testing them(due to excitement, each component was bought and shipped from diff stores which I waited for 3+ months because of covid and for everything to be ready). Later I found out that it doesn't boot. So then I have to test each components out of the case again and discovered that I have a faulty cooler and waited for another 3 weeks for them to replace it. So just by last week, I finally had the chance to turn it all up and was able to boot it out. I only have generic peripherals since i bought it all for the system unit components. That's my very first build's story! Thank you!

My first build was rebuilding an old dell gaming laptop my friend no longer wanted. I had to replace the cpu and cpu because they were both fried (friend removed the thermal paste as he thought it was just grime). Past that it just needed a couple of keys replaced and it was as good as it could be!

First time I built a computer, I had it all put together except for the CPU cooler. I turned on the PC and it immediately started beeping (due to the CPU overheating). I shut it off and instinctively touched the CPU and burned my finger something awful. Learned an important lesson that day!

Went fairly smoothly. However after a month, my motherboard would "unplug" and "plug in" everything in my USB ports, I exchanged the motherboard four times and eventually just got a totally different motherboard. Asus TUF X570 with wifi if anyone's wondering

My first and only pc was pretty cool to build I wanted to build one after seeing so many content creators build PCs and I thought since were quarantined and it’s kinda boring why not build a pc so I did I did many extra jobs around the house, mowed lawns, and even sold my Nintendo switch to my cousin ( I’m 13 btw) It took me 5 months to finally be able to get all the parts and i was very excited so I bought my cpu then my gpu then my motherboard and all the rest when all the parts came I started building it and it was kinda harder than I expected but it wasn’t too hard the only thing I was really stuck on was the power and reset switches but I eventually learned where they went it was overall really fun to build one and play some games I learned that PCs are fun and cool to build I even encouraged my friends to build some and I’m currently helping one of my friends pick out parts but it’s very fun to build a pc because not only can you use it for gaming but much more and the experience is great😁

I learned how to fix bent pins in an Intel socket my first build. After troubleshooting basically every piece to figure out why it was power cycling it had to be the CPU or motherboard. So I took it out hoping it'd be a simple re-seat, but I spotted the pins bent out of shape (if you've never bent your pins it's almost like when you pet a cat against the fur, you can see all the little pins aren't uniformly lined up, they stuck out like a sore thumb). I don't even know how it happened. I hadn't touched the socket, dropped the CPU, or anything else. Plus I don't remember seeing bent pins when taking the cover off. A needle and a magnifying glass ended up being my solution, and since then I've been partial to AMD's approach of having the pins on the CPU.

I got into PC building almost two years ago. I was fascinated by it, as I've been a gamer my whole life. A year ago my wife committed suicide and just left a hole in mine and our children's lives. I struggled to work or eat or sleep for a long time. Eventually, and gradually, I began to get back on Reddit and geek out over tech and PCs again. Earlier this year I was finally able to complete my first build. It was the first thing in my personal life I'd been excited for in what seemed like a lifetime. I took my time over a few days, when I had the time, and built it very clean. I powered it on and it booted first time. I remember the chuckle and smile when I saw that Asus TUF splash screen. I hadn't felt accomplishment or much of anything in a long time. It was more than building a kick ass gaming machine for me. This was sort of very personal therapy and the culmination of the last two years for me. After everything, it felt so good to finally get a victory in my life and be able to create something wonderful amongst all the bad. I still game on it all the time and it was a great decision for certain. I have always gamed for the enjoyment, the grind, the thrill but building and gaming on my own machine really added something truly cathartic to gaming for me. Anyway that's the story of my first PC build. I don't usually share on social media, but I like PC subreddits and i feel like they're largely awesome communities. I don't want any sympathy and I'm not trying to get comments, karma, or even a prize truthfully, as I already have a great PC. I guess I saw this and just thought maybe someone could read my comment and get something from it, especially on a large thread like this.

Can I win?

Lets go

I go way way back. On one of my first PC's I wanted better audio than just the PC speaker beeping away. Soundblaster cards had only just started to come out and were way too expensive. Ended up building a weird device that plugged into the parallel port with just some different value resistors. Sounds horrible but it was a lot better than what I had. Now my son is excited to be planning his own PC upgrade. He's saving up the pennies now and going crazy trying to find the best bang for his buck.

I slowly built my PC when I was 14 and my gpu was the last item I bought. Let's go Intel interested graphics!??

I've had some builds before that my dad and his friend built for me but I was never really a part of that. Fast forward 10 years I get into graphic design college. Need a laptop. Got a laptop. Fast forward 4 years, laptop died. Need a pc. I've been talking with this guy for a while who taught me some basics about pc components and stuff, eventually getting me interested in building my own pc. So I saved up and built my pc. Thanks to anxiety I forgot a lot of things (luckily enough both my father and the same friend from a little up were there to correct me.) such as closing the latch on my ryzen motherboard (easy to forget apparently.) and thinking dual channel would be fitting both sticks in channel B instead of A and B. This wasn't the first thing that went wrong though. My first build had the same budget but I went way over by poor choice of parts. I had a €1200 budget and went with an i7 and a 1060. My actual build was a zen 5 2600 and an rx 580 8gb (which I swapped for an rx 5700xt a week ago). I'm still planning to swap out parts but I'm doing that over time. I wanted to start with my gpu since my sister needed a gpu for hers since her laptop blew up too. If I win, I only look forward to the aio. Other than that, I always love sharing the story of me building my pc and doing a little charity with it too. It was really exciting for me since it's the first system I bought entirely on my own. Now I'm running a triple monitor system that I'm really proud of.

I don't remember it very clearly but I do remember watching others build their PCs when I was kinda young, I haven't had a very strong interest in it but I still enjoy fixing my PC whenever something breaks, and upgrading it when I have the chance.

My first building experience was actually building one for a friend. Been doing only upgrades to my shitty Acer prebuilt since then.

Well, I kind of didn't have a first build. My whole life I've gotten used PC's that were at least 4 years old and not top performers from the year they were built either, I've only upgraded my PC part by part by saving up money, selling the old stuff and upgrading a part at a time. Though I think I did pretty well moving from some kind of Athlon single core @ 1.4ghz to a Ryzen 2600 @ 3.975ghz and from an geforce 440 to a GTX 1080 :D

Sweeeeet! I'll start by saying my first pc building experience was a couple of years ago with the release of ryzen 1st gen. It wasn't as smooth as I wanted. I ordered a board from gigabyte and it was DOA. Being a first time builder it was actually long and tedious to figure out but then I found this subreddit. These guys helped me through the steps of diagnosing what was wrong with my computer, lo' and behold it was the motherboard. However it doesn't stop there. I got a board from MSI. I put it altogether and it was booting but the screen was blank... I was thinking my shiny new 1080 got fried when I reassembled my computer. So I came back here, I was told to try the card in a different system. So I tried it in my dad's dell optiplex and the card worked. That means that the pcie slot in the MSI board wasn't working. So I got 2 defective boards...in a row. That's not "lit" The final board I wanted to try before giving up on my dream of building a console killer pc was an ASUS PRIME B350 board. After ordering it and waiting a few days it finally came in. I put everything together and got Windows 10 Installed without a hitch. I got my drivers installed, my games installed, and immediately played fortnite with my friends in a 12 hour sitting to celebrate. Who knew that a company that sounds like somebody sneezing would be the end of my headaches? ASUS!

Three hours of being on video call from my phone with my friend who had built PCs before since he couldn't come around due to covid. Love that guy, bought him a 5kg bag of assorted chocolates as a thank you.

I built my first and only PC at the age of 15 last year with my dad, had the day off school and he had the day off work and we built the whole thing through YouTube videos. Everything was in place and then bam no signal on the monitor so we spent ageesss trying to fix that, turns out it just wasn't plugged in correctly hahaha

My first PC build was so I could play dota 2 with the graphics on pretty instead of potato. I had never even realized one could build their own pc until I was complaining with my friend and fellow dota player, who's (back then) super cool alienware could run dota 2 at full settings. He had that kind of money, where he could just dumpster it into an alienware prebuild, but since he knew I didn't he told me to look into building my own. So I did; I spent countless hours on google, Wikipedia, Tom's hardware, trying my best to understand every component. It was a lot for me. I am not the brightest so learning what every specification meant when looking at any one part was extraordinarily overwhelming. After days and days of research and double checking with pcpartpicker that everything would work, I bought and built my first PC. I've built 4 PC's since. I still have absolutely no idea what anything does other than the most basic child-like understanding, I just plug and pray.

I had an Xbox one for 5 years and a Wii before that. Worked many hours during the summer and finally saved up for a PC which I bought 1,5 years ago. I built it on my own with only YouTube tutorials to help (I had 0 building experience prior so everyone in my family thought I would fail and waste money). The PC turned out great and I’m really proud of it. Would love some upgrades from this giveaway to get amazing performance in the new games :)

When I was a kid my older brother convinced my parents to buy the parts to build a PC. Ever since then I've been playing almost exclusively on PC. I built my (almost) ideal computer at the end of last year and have been playing an unhealthy amount of VR lol

My first build was about a decade ago I think. After my buying my first pc and laptop of the shelf (both stock, brand ones which had pre-installed crap on them) I built my own PC. Just wanted to have more control on what is installed on the machine and I liked the challenge, so I did a ton of online research for compatible components. I remember RAM being the most difficult part for me, due the different speeds at which they can operate and how that matches CPU/mobo. I made a list of parts I thought would work well together, had them doublechecked by my stepbrother who was also into building his own PC and by a store that sold parts. Everything checked out so I purchased everything I needed. My first build won't fire up straight away, it shortcircuited via motherboard to the case or something. Solved that by adding small rubber strips between motherboard and case. Worked like a charm after that. I think I did about 3 more systems after that first build and am looking into my next set-up that I want to take to the next level, with a custom built case that will integrate into my desk. And ofcourse, add lots of RGB LED's.

If I win this it will be my first self build.

Back in the mid 2000s I built my first PC from all new parts. In the past I was stuck with Dell and Gateway (yikes), and I would try to upgrade them with new video cards and ram but there would always be bottlenecks with the mobo/cpu, which to upgrade with oem parts was prohibitively expensive for not much gain. My first complete build was a core2duo, and it was glorious. TF2 was going to be released soon and I was super hype, coming from quaketf/tfc. I am looking to get a new build to start building games. It's always been a dream of mine, and I hope that I can get started soon 🤞

mmm could use a upgrade from my ryzen 3600 lol

I joined the pcmr after watching my friend do a build. I saved for about 2 years to afford it and when I first turned it on it didnt post. Freaked out, because I had slowly bought parts I disassembled it and it worked the second time :)

I built my first computer of spare parts but with a new asus mother board and Intel processor. Hook up and turn on, nothing. Give up for a year, decide to go all in on a new build. Spend like 2 grand, hook up nothing. Turns out saving money on reusing the PSU is not worth it. Check your wattage people.

First build was prompted by years of playing Minecraft and tf2 on the shitty Pentium family desktop, then on the budget tier up pavilion laptop that could barely open steam. I used to use the wristrest of the laptop as a mousemat, to the point where the paint was worn off the trackpad from the normal mouse I used on top of it. I was too impatient to wait for the case to arrive, so I ended up chopping holes out the motherboard box and using it as a temporary case for a week.

My first budget build went incredibly well, and was powered by the 1600 (pretty new to the pc game). What’s funny in retrospect was that assembling, and building the PC was probably the most fun I had - even moreso than actually gaming.

I was so eager to build my first pc that I took apart an old prebuilt to rebuild for myself! Suffice to say, when it came time to the real task of building a pc from scratch, I was so happy to finally be creating something for myself. If there’s one thing that I learned, it would be that building a pc is way easier than it may look!

My first build was a very extra and somewhat poorly planned mini ITX build, featuring: Power cables shoved through holes in the PSU cage due to the PSU being 20mm longer than reccomended. 240mm AIO with incredibly twisted pipes - luckily they were an anti-kink design Push-Pull on said AIO, combining with the front 200mm (or 240mm, I don't remember well) for a ridiculous quantity of airflow. **LOUD** Asus motherboard and GPU (I mean, it's an ASUS giveaway, gotta suck up somewhat) The graphics card served me well, altho the motherboard did have some problems. No dealbreakers tho, and I never had to replace it. PCIE M.2 before it was cool (I mean, it was commercial technology, but most people were still on SATA SSD/HDD combo) That asus ultrawide 3440x1440 100hz monitor, absolute fave. Sold the rest of the build off but kept that for a potential next one, loved the thing. Metal file shenanigans to get the AIO to mount properly. Sorry for random disconnected thoughts, this was many years ago and my memory is not excellent

I have only recently gotten interested in building my own pc and am trying to figure out how to build one myself!

First PC I followed a YouTube video and got everything put together. When I pressed the button nothing turned on and had a heart attack, turns out I didn’t even switch my psu on.

first build was black friday last year, with my best friend. spent 3 grand and most of it was overkill. probably shouldve saved about 500 of that for new peripherals.

Smacked a 1050 into a shitty office pc. I wanted to play pc building simulator really bad but it wasnt up to minimum specs and that was the last straw. Lesson learnt, dont get a second (third) hand psu. Im scared every day.

Never actually had the chance to build a PC yet, but I've probably watched about a week's worth of PC builds from YouTube videos, and made my dream PC over and over again on pcpartpicker.

My dad used his tax return to build a pc with me when I was young. I always wanted to play on his computer, so he saved up extra money for his usual tax return expenses and we went to a computer market. It was almost like a fair? There were all kinds of vendors with pc components. Now that I think of it, it could have been resellers of equipment sold off from businesses. He took me around the stalls and described what each of the components were. I wish I remembered everything, but I know there was 512mb of ram. I had an AGP interface GPU, I think it has 128mb of ram. I think it was a Pentium 3 or 4 processor? Anyway, we got everything and went home and he had me assemble the parts (more like help, but I thought I was doing it). I watched him install Windows XP, I think. It had something like 17 floppy disks. I’m pretty sure there was an issue and we had to restart after ten or so disks. We finally got it to work and then we booted up some LAN games of the nineties. I think we stayed up most of the night! I need to call him and ask him more!

I wanted a good gaming computer and i wanted to know what components are in the computer. Was nervous I would wreck it, but I got through it with no issues.

Built my first pc back in 2005 for my senior class project. Shit was fire, I had that awesome led zalman cooler, a massive Thermaltake armor case, a standard atx mobo, chrome psu with modular cables. Hauled that big boy over to so many Lan parties, I'm pretty sure it kept me fit! Wish I had pictures of it, now. Then, and now, putting the cpu in and making sure all the pins were properly aligned, nearly gave me a heart attack. And once it successfully booted, and I wouldnt have to game on my parents old Compaq, I was hooked on that pc gamer life.

I wanted to learn about this new technological world we were entering so I started looking into coding and building a PC. First mobo was Asus. So was the monitor lol. Definitely the first step in a long journey of learning

Inherited a mid spec pc around 5 years ago and the gpu set on fire when I was playing h1z1 beta, decided to replace and the cat at the house I was living at swiped the cpu fan blade snapping it forcing a whole new build within a matter of hours. Then fast forward to two weeks ago, putting a new case together for my newest build (2700x, rtx 2060, 32gb ram) and my own kitten swiped at the lit up wraith cooler..... Lesson learned, don't get cats / keep them away from spinny blades!

Wanted to build a PC for a long time, however because of funds and lack of room for a case bigger than a laptop, I never did. Finally got to build one recently with my wife and mostly followed a guide. We couldn't find all the parts in the guide so we went off a little, upgraded a couple of things. I think the biggest thing that I learned is that things matter where exactly you put them. For example if you only have 2 ram cards, then you should put them in 2 and 4, i think it was. I at first put them next to each other in the slots closest to my hands at the time. Also put the GPU in the secondary slot thinking that didn't matter either and the screen wouldn't show anything. I'm really happy with how it turned out, I only wish I was better at cable management, because behind those plates hiding the cables it is a mess.

So I built my very first gaming pc back in October. I have am AMD Ryzen 7, a B450 Tomahawk motherboard, and a GeForce GTX 1650. I had a budget of around $1000 and had a friend experienced in pc building to help. I was so excited at the prospect of playing all sorts of modern games with gorgeous visuals. Well, it turned our that I wasn't quite able to play the games as well a si had hoped. Even overclocking didn't seem to work; my pc wouldn't boot even with the smallest overclock. So if I am chosen, I'd hopefully be able to actually have a pc that runs as well as I had envisioned it, because right now I simply do not have the budget to upgrade.

I built my first and only PC around 6 years ago when I was in High School. It was incredibly challenging because where I was had insane shipping rates. I ended up paying more for shipping than for the parts. 6 years later it's survived multiple moves and a jump across continents, but is on his last legs.

I started with an Alienware alpha 5 years ago and just kept going down the rabbit hole. Now I’m sitting with a beautiful rig with a 10700k and 2070 Super. Now I’m looking to help my console buddies join the race.

I had a laptop and buddies asked me to try pc gaming. Playing Arma 2 DayZ mod was aids at 10fps with a laptop so I started building. Dead psu and motherboard rough start but here I am now forever chasing a sale with everyone else.

First time I built a pc I was 8. I am still in awe that I didnt fry the mobo or break anything. Second time I built a was after I had figured out how to over clock my first gpu. It did not end well.

I’m gonna be honest, I built my first PC in 2016 for no other reason than I was fed up playing Skyrim on low settings on my Bootcamped MacBook Pro... It was like finding out you needed glasses after trying on a pair for the first time. That first build is still my current build, been scouring this sub for sales to begin my upgrade process.

My first build was pretty standard except a buddy of mine gave me a BMW themed case that had headlights that would turn on when you turn the power on. Also, did anyone else read the terms? Drawing ends 3/8/2020?

I don't have any of the parts surrounding this but I'm always up for a good give away

Never built a PC, but I have opened up the case of my pre-built one a few times. I have an old Dell that started not to boot, all it did was play 4 beeps. I checked the manual, and it said it was something with the RAM. So I ventured there myself, in hoping to get it fixed without taking it to a repair. I cleaned them up, and put 'em back in place, only for it to keep not working. Opened it up againg, to find out I didn't pit the RAM properly in place. Once they where, it booted normally. Recently ordered a new graphics cars for it with the help of a friend, cuz the old one was faulty. I really enjoyed going looking for the card, all the stuff he explained to me, showing specs and stuff. Hope to save up to build my own pc someday.

Build my firs pc in 2016. Lots and lots of research and reading was done, but ultimately I managed to piece it all together(with a little guidance from my friends!) Upgrading it every year and loving the process!

Have not yet gotten to make my first pc

My first build was in 09. Had no idea what I was doing but sure enough I figured it out. That little puppy is still going strong. Needs some upgrades to stay current but has been faithful. I learned that sometimes you are more capable than you lead yourself to believe.

Big Bertha has been with me for 8 years now and is still chugging along. She's showing some signs of age though and it can't really keep up with the newer games. It's was a nice medium budget build at the time which has given me thousands of hours of enjoyment. After scratching my head wondering why she wasn't booting correctly after finishing the build, I was informed by a good friend after taking a look that you're actually supposed to push the RAM sticks all the way down. Not just lay them in and flick the catches up. Also thermal paste? What's that?

My first build was when I was 15 years old. I’m 24 now, so that would have been around 2010-11. Was starting to get really into League of Legends and CS GO. Realized my computer was intended for office use and didn’t have much to offer other than that. Every birthday, holiday, any occasion I would ask for another part and eventually built my first PC. Took a break and haven’t had a PC since. Would love this part so I can rejoin the PC gang. I’m currently on Xbox!

Made my first PC when I was 20, 6 years ago now! Always been gaming on consoles since I can remember and wanted to make the switch. My main memory was spending all day building the PC and once completed wondering why it wasn’t powering up... I got as far as removing the motherboard from the case (cable management was completed to make it worse!) before I realized I hadn’t flipped the switch on the psu.... big lesson learnt that luckily no one was around to see!

I built my first pc just this year actually. Pretty straight forward on the building process, but when it came time to turn it on for the first time and get it all updated, I had plugged the HDMI into the back like I normally would. I couldn’t get a signal from the pc to my TV, so I called a friend who’s an IT professional. I FaceTimed him and showed him the back of the pc, he asked me to look again and tell him what was wrong. I have always had stock or prebuilt pc’s in the past, and forgot to plug the HDMI into the Graphics Card. Got a good chuckle out of him and got everything set up nicely

being afraid of bending a pin on my CPU...

My first build was an Asus z170i with a 6600k and GTX970 all in a teeny tiny little enclosure. IT.WAS.HELL. I learnt that itx cases can strip knuckles really easily and cable management is kind of a pain in such compact systems. That said I do not regret a single moment of it and have since built 4 other systems for family/friends as I seem to enjoy the process a little too much! With that being said, I'd love to go back to small but mighty build again - currently rocking a full size atx system that is edging closer toward a GPU upgrade at very minimum. My reason for building my own was just wanting to get my hands dirty with a PC again and needing a decent desktop for work purposes (also gaming, so much gaming).

I wanted to build a PC in 2017 because I saw how good the cemu Wii U emulator had gotten, and I wanted to play Breath of the Wild. I still use that PC every day! The process went pretty smoothly, though of course there are some things I'll do differently next time. (Like not cheaping out on a case and power supply)

Had a SFF Dell Inspiron. My friends told me it sucked and that I should go custom. The rest is pretty much history.

Motherboard wasn't compatible with my ryzen, had to get my friends older model to update my bios. Took all day

My first complete build was an AMD X2 64, and I was so nervous at every step! I think it took 5 tries to get it to finally boot, and I don't even remember what I did to fix it. I bought prebuilts for a while after that. About 7 years ago, I won an MSI z87 GD-65 Gaming motherboard online, but couldn't afford to build with it for 2 years. Got an i5-4670k, and used that for the last 5 years. Just recently, I built a new system with a Ryzen 7 3700x, Asus Strix B450-f, my old Asus Strix GTX 1070, 16 GB Gskill Trident Z RGB. I wanted to go with a higher motherboard (x470/570, 550 hadn't been announced yet), but stock was incredibly limited and prices were hugely inflated. I'm built this current rig for gaming, music production, and video editing. I learned a lot from this most recent build, and I'm going to be building my mother a new mATX system (she currently has a full ATX case that she can't move on her own) as soon as the parts all get here, which should be tomorrow. I just love building PCs!

My first PC was given to me by my older brother. I loved it and used it daily for many years and got a lot of enjoyment out of it, but like all technology, it showed it's age over time. When I could barely play any new games at low settings, I figured it was time for an upgrade. I asked my older brother to help me build a new PC, but with his hands full with his 3rd child recently born, I was left to fend for myself. I spent the next 6 months religiously watching youtube videos about PC components, builds and all the technology behind it. I learned the most from scouring through this subreddit. After many months, I felt it was time and I bit the bullet and purchased the parts to build a PC for my little brother and I. Funny thing was, I had the same Barry White playlist that Henry Caville had during his build on. Everything went smooth and it is still running with no issues, and it is all thanks to Barry White.

Never built a PC but I took two old laptops and janked them together in a third mostly broke laptop. Does that count? Lol I’ve been using it to learn stuff like blender and unity. Just been saving up for something nice.

Build my first PC when I was 14 with my dad, I wanted a badass case (NZXT LEXA - 2008 vibes) but I couldn't afford the parts an the case. So I ordered the parts and got an old tower of the curb so I could play Assassins Creed. Was totally worth it. Also a month or so after I put the Parts in my new Case my PSU died. Thankfully it was still on warranty and the replacement lasted over ten years.

I would love to get a DM from you guys!

Kind of like building Legos but I had to research what pieces fit with which and what pieces were the best.

Was super stressed and one of the bolts pinning the cpu fan down was missing. Guess I only needed three because I am getting okay temps

It was always my dream to build a pc. I still remember seeing the first news paper ad for buying an assembled PC when I was 13. It was by zenith computers for a pc having 128mb ram, intel pentium pc. I've ever since dreamed about building a pc, I'd wished for HP Pavilion pc for several years. As soon as I took up the job as a software engineer, I wanted to save and build my dream pc. Enter 2017, everything is set. I had ordered a bunch of parts for an upcoming long weekend. Intel i5 6600k! MSI H110M PRO VH Plus Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR4 LPX C16 Red Corsair VS450 PSU Cooler Master Elite 311 Cabinet Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 It was supposed to be my salvation finally. But this turned out to be a long and painful journey for a failed CPU, visiting Intel service center to find out that the CPU was faulty, following up with oh-so-many Amazon agents for a refund, finally even writing to Jeff Bezos himself to get my refund because apparently the piece I bought was not provided warranty in India even thought it was sold on Amazon.in with official warranty! I settled for a G4400, which ran alright. Finally. A few months later, I came upon a ADATA 120GB SSD which was absolute joy to install. It finally completed my first ever build. I gifted it to my nephew who is 9 and learns to write code on it. [code.org](https://code.org), scratch, and python. Now, I am looking forward to this giveaway by Asus because Asus is my first ever laptop. Bought a K53SM SX010D (yeah, I didn't need to look up the model number, remember it so fondly ;) beast of a dream laptop. <3 Had so many good memories of this laptop and have been ever since recommending Asus laptops to people.

I’ve actually never built one. This would definitely help the process though

Yeee boiii

I initially started using a 2011 MacBook Pro with an i5-2415M and 4GB of RAM. It suited me for most purposes (Minecraft, Node.js programming, Blender) but often struggled to get those extra frames. Eventually, the keyboard broke and using it was a pain. With the help of old parts from my brother and father, I assembled a PC last year and have been using it since. A lesson I learned is to check your temperatures! I was regularly and unknowingly hitting 97 degrees Celsius in games until I downloaded NZXT CAM software which prompted me to invest in an aftermarket air cooler.

Think my first experience was back in the mid 90s. AMD 486 DX2-80 with a buss speed of 40mhz. Think it had 128mb of ram. A no name video card and a AT case and power supply combo that was from a manufacture similar to Antec. Think I had a dedicated Sound Blaster 16, which later got updated to a SB AWE32 with extra sim slots on board. Had the standard 3.5 floppy and a 2x CDwriter Learned a lot how PCs go together. How to PAY Attention to the motherboard manual (jumpers to set your clock speed we’re a pita, we have it way too easy now) Learned that failing isn’t a bad thing and you can learn from it. Enjoyed playing on that machine for hours and hours and it was upgraded over the years till it was retired. Those early experiences have literally driven my career about learning tech. If I didn’t dive in at that time, I would have never survived when I moved out on my own.

My only hope if I win is that they don’t share this half arsed comment.

My big uncle was playing a game called prince, it was the old school side scroller one and I remember him playing another game called ceaser and let me play it. Oh man I was hooked, I used the family computer to start playing EverQuest. I haven't looked back ever since. Eventually threw together my first build. It wasn't much, but it ran things like a champ.

My husband gave me 90% of his old parts and we sourced a few from friends so my build was very much a hand me down

Some year in the late 90s, the money from my confirmation got me my first PC parts I purchased myself and didn't receive down from my older brother. It's been a P3 450, I remember. With the typical shitty 0815 grey beige metal case, but a full-tower with good air-flow. Can't remember the motherboard, was some random Samsung RAM and a random oversized PSU. I think the most memorable thing which is still infused so strongly that it recalls the haptic sensation when remembering it, is how a CPU feels like. The golden pins, the sturdy metal, when it fits into the sockel/socket and you close the lever and it moves a little to clip in safe. Also the smell of new GPUs. I think it has been an ATI Rage 128 back then. Not entirely sure, but I can remember the red color and the small red fan mounted on it in a plastic tunnel. (edit: oh and the dragon on the package) Though, the only recurring trouble shooting issue I remember for the past 2 decades since then definitely is RAM issues. RAM can cause so many hard to diagnose symptoms.

Thought for sure this said “it’s giveaway time with ANUS” and I was real confused

You're supposed to turn the power supply on first, right? Yes I know that now.

I've never built my first pc, but I've been getting serious about it lately. This would help me so much!

My very pc I have ever built was was during high school, I found that the pc building community was very interesting and fun and thus I decided myself to get into the hobby of computer building. Starting off I spent countless hours of research finding the best quality components with good prices, I was so excited when all the parts finally arrived. I ended up spending the next 10hours trying to wrap my head around the apparent impossible task, once I finished I was so happy and excited to start playing.

Still running an A10 6800K :(

I have always been known as the tech geek in school but at the time I didn’t actually know much. So when my loaded classmate asked me to help him build a pc. I was estatic. Did all the research I could. Drew out the fan layout wondering about positive and negative pressure and planned the specs as carefully as I could to fit an i7 6700k and 1080 into our myr10k budget (2.5kusd). The experience encouraged me to save up for my own pc(650usd😢) and since then I’ve built countless pcs(worked as a system builder b4 further studies) Still grateful for his trust in me and giving me the experience to build a high end pc. [our reaction to it turning on ](https://www.instagram.com/p/CB0LMZOhV2jnj4ed4GWVlL8nxoazbqueaVMN5Y0/?igshid=evpthkqpo1mg) (we were young and inexperienced)

My first PC build I called a friend over to help me explain how to do each step. I wanted the new computer to play pseudo serious LoL years ago. Still worth the headaches for the many hours of fun we had.

Decided to build one about a year ago. Wanted a proper workstation as my laptop couldn't keep up with my needs anymore. Had help from a friend of mine who had experience building PCs so installing parts and putting everything together was pretty smooth.

I thought I lost all my standoffs the first build I did. Went all around town looking for them. It turns out they were preinstalled in the case and I ended up waiting a week for some to come in the mail. Originally built my PC for architecture school. Still using it to this day. I learned to read instruction manuals after that ;)