Any old school computer builders here?

Our first family PC was an IBM desktop in the mid-90's. 486 66 MHz, I think it was, and a 80 MB harddrive. Don't remember much of the specs., but I do remember we had it upgraded from 4 to 8 MB RAM, and from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95. We still have the PC, just for fun. It still works too.

Been building my own PC's since around 2007, and I don't touch prebuilds with a 10-foot pole. I'm very particular about my PC components, and I can never get the exact ones I want with any prebuilt.

Current PC (to keep it short) is an Asus Z490 XII Hero, Intel i9 10900K 5,0 GHz all-core overlocked and undervolted, Gigabyte RTX 3080 Aorus Xtreme, Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200 MHz 64 GB, Corsair HX1200 PSU...and an Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card. Current case is a Be Quiet 802, with glass panels on both sides (yes, I also cable manage the back).

5 TB of SSD storage, 6 TB of HDD storage. Plus another 82 TB of HDD storage in my home server. And another 11 TB of external HDD storage. Got a 10 Gbit in-house LAN (TP-Link TL-SX1008, 2x Asus XG-C100C), and a separate UPS on both machines, plus a third UPS on the main network gear.

I enjoy watching movies (hence all the storage space), so I got a 1100 Watt 2.1 speaker setup, with a 250 Watt active subwoofer, a Yamaha R-S700 amp and a Sony Bravia XR-55X90 TV.

LuxLuthor said:

Remember Winamp?

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Of course! That's what I still use on my current PC. Along with Easy CD/DA Extractor and Media Player Classic.

No need to replace something that works. <3

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Desk is custom. Designed and made it myself. 3x 30mm birch kitchen tops side by side, measuring a total of 195x165 cm of desk space.
Frame is all 2"x4", with 4"x4" legs. I can walk on top of it, and it doesn't even creak.

Apple 2E, with optional duo disk drive was my first PC in 1984. I didn't have to swap the Op system disk drive in and out to save data or start programs. WOW, that was a big deal. IBM Model 50 next with a whopping 640 x 480 VGA display. I ran early AutoCAD on it. In the 90's and up to present, I build my own machines and yes, Fry's was great. I buy starter to mid level Dell PC's for the wife.

MatthewMurdock said:

The family's first computer was a commodore 64. I remember going to computer shows and they were like the wild west. Everybody was trying to get into the business and stake their claim. The first cpu I bought with my own money was a Cyrix 486. Way cheaper than the Intel version. Fun times

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I started out with a C64 also. I still remember that spongy keyboard.

I started with IBM PC using single, large floppy disc, running command line DOS commands. It was huge when the two floppy drives came out. 2400 bps modem to 4800 to 9600 to 14400 to a dual phone line modem that merged lines together into a single blazing 28000 speed for Doom & Heretic gaming

I had 2 DSL phone lines bonded for 115K if I remember correctly. Upon startup, I could see line 1 on the U.S. Robotics modem blinking and then line two would begin blinking in-sync.

I got so into Half-Life gaming, I actually paid an exorbitant amount to install a T-1 line.

raggie33 said:

I miss them days building them then heading over to futuremark and 3d mark to bench test are latest builds any of you all. Ever used to build? First build specs?

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Been building computers since the 1990's. I used to piece together parts I got from State surplus and make working machines out of them. Brought many dead ones back from the grave even. I've always built my own computers out of parts and pieces. I've never purchased a pre-built machine, except for a laptop once I needed to use for several months while out of State. Then I sold it when I got back home.

Our son just purchased the individual components and then assembled them into this.




He's very pleased with the results.

Chauncey Gardiner said:

Our son just purchased the individual components and then assembled them into this.


View attachment 56947

He's very pleased with the results.

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cool has he benchmarked it. i use 3dmark or online becnhmarks plus tell him about over clocking

raggie33 said:

cool has he benchmarked it. i use 3dmark or online becnhmarks plus tell him about over clocking

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He was explaining a lot of its capabilities yesterday ... but unfortunately, it was in a foreign language. 🤔

i see it has a rtx thats a good card depending on which rtx it has i have the mobile 4090 in my laptop but all rtx are good ..matter fact id bet better then any monitor can even display

He has almost 10k followers of his YouTube channel. That's what he mainly uses the computer for.

i just game and do video editing . crazy i recall when it would take like a entire day to edit video and you would be so scared the computer would crash now i can do it in a hour or less sure ya son knows how to do it a course and uses the nvidia encorder for youtube

Chauncey Gardiner said:

Our son just purchased the individual components and then assembled them into this.

He's very pleased with the results.

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With good reason! That is very impressive cable management!
Getting it that clean takes time, I know. Please convey my kudos to your son.

...Now show us the other side of the case!
That's where the rat nest usually ends up. xD

I spent around 5 hours on cable managing my current case before I even got any hardware into it, just re-running or removing cables attached in the case that I didn't need, and installing case fans.
Then another 5 hours getting everything inside and arranged. No RGB for me, only 2x top-mounted PWM-controlled white LED-strips, connected to a motherboard fan connector and controlled in the BIOS. The hotter the CPU get, the brighter the LEDs get.

No way to get it perfect, not with 3x 8-pin for the GPU, and 3x SATA-drives, each requiring both power and data cables. Sadly no way to have all the storage as NVMe. Already have 2x NVMe drives (OS and Games), and my motherboard doesn't support shifting (bifurcating) the PCIe-lanes as I need them

I had to arrange the cables as best as I could, because I've become addicted to having glass side panels on both sides. Had to get the second panel directly from the case manufacturer in Germany, as "the internet" for some reason only offered the black sidepanel for sale.

Please don't ask me to show pics of my server though. I cable managed that after the "IDGAF" principle. ^^
...You can ask next week - I plan to do some work in it this weekend.

@PaladinNO, WOW! That is beautiful! L@@Ks like something from a sci-fi movie. Well done, Sir. Well done, indeed! 👍 👍

Rat's nest -

Yep, been building my own since the 90's. A lot of times with spare parts, especially back then.

Chauncey Gardiner said:

WOW! That is beautiful! L@@Ks like something from a sci-fi movie. Well done, Sir. Well done, indeed! 👍 👍

Rat's nest -
[snip]

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Thank you very much! <3

And yeah, there's the rat's nest! ^^
Top tip for your son: LOTS of black zip ties and a good cutting plier will sort most of those cables.
I would also have zip tied the fan wires inside the case to the available fan screw mounting holes.

While I am very pleased with my current build (built 2020), it wasn't a true project of passion - it was more of a "throw money at it until it performed as I wanted." I already had a true passion project build just a year before, in 2019, spending weeks researching components and getting every detail "just so".

However, the 9700K that I bought to replace my 3770K, which on paper should perform twice as good...did in many cases perform WORSE. And I could not for the life of me fathom why. And I also did not understand how I utilized that 9700K to 100 % almost on a daily basis...doing what to me was not even heavy usage.

So while the Intel i7 3770K I had between 2013 and 2019 served me very well, and still performed like a champ when I sold that build, the Intel i7 9700K I bought late 2019 I didn't even have a year before I sold it again, after the performance felt like a disappointment almost every day.
Luckily, it went to a good home. A friend of mine was very eager to buy it from me, after his, and I quote "laptop caught fire".

So I got rid of almost everything, and then I started over. And bought an i9 10900K in 2020 - and that CPU...that does the job! But at that point, I was so baffled I just bought the best parts I could (within reason), just to get a PC that was usable for my needs. But it wasn't a project of love anymore.

I couldn't even use the computer case (Fractal Design R6 White) I had bought for the 2019 build, which I had modified with custom stickers and professional foil wrapping...because the new GPU, the one in the picture above, did not fit properly in it. So almost everything from my inital 2019 build, that I spent so much time and money on, is now either sold or in a storage box.

who recall cable managment back durerig when we had ide cables lol. man it sucked lol

raggie33 said:

who recall cable managment back durerig when we had ide cables lol. man it sucked lol

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I don't think the word "cable management" was invented yet at that time. ^^
Even the more fancy sleeved IDE-cables was so thick and unmanageable, there was little point in even trying.

Personally, I actually preferred the flat ones. Found them easier to trace along the corners of the case. Not to mention gently zip tying them together as a pancake every time there was more than one IDE-cable involved. That was much better for airflow - at least until the inevitable 90° turn between the HDD and motherboard.

The PC I built last year (err…2022). It's not much to look at, because it's 100% passively cooled with no moving parts, and since it has no graphics card, using only the integrated GPU, it's no gaming monster.

But it is efficient and 0 dBA dead silent.

Seen here without the front glass panel, it sits behind the 50" 4K TV at the foot of my bed, and makes no sound. It draws about 100 W at full power, but the CPU cooler doesn't even get hot enough to burn your hand under sustained loads.

No liquid cooling, no RGB blinky lights. I'll be adding a 1 TB NVMe SSD, soon, for extra storage.

Thermaltake Core P3 open frame chassis
Gigabyte Z690 UD AX mobo
Intel Core i5-12600K CPU
Intel UHD 770 GPU
2x16 GB DDR5-4800 RAM
Samsung 980PRO 500 GB NVMe SSD
Seasonic Prime TX-500 fanless PSU
Noctua NH-P1 fanless CPU cooler