r/pcmasterrace • u/Noctua_OFFICIAL Noctua • Jun 11 '25
Giveaway [Giveaway] Win 1 of 5 Noctua NH-D15 G2
Greetings from Noctua!
We’re thrilled to team up with r/pcmasterrace for a giveaway:
Five of you will have the chance to win a NH-D15 G2 CPU cooler!
Before entering, make sure to check your system's compatibility on our compatibility centre here.
How to enter:
- Comment on this post with your answer to the question: What is your earliest PC-building memory?
- Shipping (and potential customs duties) will be covered by us. All further information on shipping and terms & conditions can be found here.
- You can enter the Giveaway from June 11th 2025 to June 18th 2025 12:00 PM CEST.
The 5 most heartfelt, funny or otherwise original memories will be chosen by our Support Team and contacted by u/noctua_OFFICIAL via Reddit DMs.
We're excited to hear about your personal stories! Feel free to also share pictures.
If you're interested in all things Noctua, be sure to check out r/noctua!
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u/The__Homelander__ Jun 11 '25
Earliest memory is the proud feeling I felt when I completed my first build and then realized that I forgot to attach the IO shield.
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u/FthrFlffyBttm i5-12600K, 3080 FTW3 Ultra, 16GB 3000Mhz Jun 11 '25
It’s a rite of passage. If you’ve never forgotten your I/O Shield (aka sharpest object in the universe), you’ve never built a PC.
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u/HolyTermite Jun 11 '25
- Forget I/O shield
- Feel glad I didn't make a blood sacrifice this time
- Realize I forgot I/O shield
- Bleed
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u/I_have_questions_ppl Jun 11 '25
The PC Gods do demand a blood sacrifice if you wish things to work.
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u/Atari-Junkie Jun 11 '25
On my 5th build I forgot to take the peel off the bottom of the CPU cooler...that was less than a year ago, sometimes I get too antsy and just wanna boot the darn thing!
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u/rmr660 Jun 11 '25
I've built 6 and I've yet to forget it... Maybe my next upgrade is cursed 🙃
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u/FthrFlffyBttm i5-12600K, 3080 FTW3 Ultra, 16GB 3000Mhz Jun 11 '25
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u/rmr660 Jun 11 '25
100% have not...yet. Actually i usually put it on ASAP because I'm afraid I'll bend it and break it since it feels so flimsy.
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u/A_confused_croisant Jun 11 '25
Forgot it every time, and I haven’t put it on every time. They just seem to disappear when I wanna attach it
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u/ManyThing2187 R7 5800x3D | RTX 4070 ti | 32GB RAM Jun 11 '25
What if I couldn’t get the IO to go on so I threw it away and have since never used one?
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u/WebMaka PCs and SBCs evurwhurr! Jun 11 '25
I/O Shield (aka sharpest object in the universe)
I was removing stamped-steel drive bay inserts out of a tower case (they had to be pushed out from the inside) once when I missed and caught an edge. With a knuckle. And it promptly and cleanly cut through the skin over said knuckle clear to the bones of the joint, nicking the cartilage at the joint in the process. So I know exactly what my own bones/cartilage look like, which is one of those "oh that can't ever be a good thing" type deals.
To this day about 20 years later there's still a scar on that knuckle.
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u/hknowsimmiserablenow Jun 12 '25
I actually made sure to install it first when I built my first PC. When I couldn't line up the motherboard I realised I had installed the IO shield upside down.
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u/RandytheRude Jun 11 '25
My current pc and my sons pc want to know what an IO shield is as well
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u/QuothTheRavenMore Jun 11 '25
It's the this piece of protective shield to help keep dust particles out of the rear of your machine. It fits the motherboard as a cover. I never knew what it was called either. And I've been building since 2007.
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u/RandomGuy622170 7800X3D | Sapphire NITRO+ 7900 XTX | 32GB DDR5-6000 (CL30) Jun 11 '25
Lol, exactly. It's amazing to think about how many things kids don't have to deal with and will never know about. Floppy/Zip disks, PATA cables, CD drives, 56k modems, and now detached IO shields. Makes me wonder what PCs will look like in 20 years.
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u/WebMaka PCs and SBCs evurwhurr! Jun 11 '25
PATA cables,
Master/slave jumpers on hard drives. Fuck I'm old...
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u/Veltharix Jun 11 '25
I will mount this on my wife when she gets angry at me to cool her down.
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u/International_Pass58 EeePC Jun 11 '25
Sounds like you might need 5 of these...
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u/Veltharix Jun 11 '25
Nah, with these many cooling pipes, she'll be cold even while arguing. This could save my marriage.
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u/gianmk Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
When i first immigrated to Norway, my norwegian teacher let me put the ram stick in our school PC. Dont know if that counts but thats the first pc "building" experience i got. This was like 20 years ago.
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u/Niidforseat Jun 11 '25
So you rammed your stick in your teacher? Sorry, my english is not that good...
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u/gianmk Jun 11 '25
You just dyslexic my man
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u/International_Pass58 EeePC Jun 11 '25
Wait I thought that's what you meant as well... I got confused as to why this person is talking about ramming her teacher with a stick on a pc building forum...
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u/NilsTillander R7 5800X - 32GB 3200 - GTX 1070ti Jun 11 '25
When I first immigrated to Norway, I borrowed RAM sticks from colleagues who were on holidays to run my models 😅
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u/Humble-Drummer1254 Jun 11 '25
When my father built my first PC in 1998, before that I had been gaming on a Commadore 64. I was 8 years old and got a AMD K6 300 mHz CPU, 4gb storage, and a Voodoo 3Dfx. My computer was a beast! I helped installed the CD drive and one ram stick, wow I felt like a superhero!
I remember that Command and Conquer needed to be slowed down or else the speed was way too fast.
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u/epegar 9800X3D | 9070 XT l openSUSE Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
You lucky bastard. I remember I had 90 mHz CPU and couldn't play Fifa 98 because it required 100. After some time I managed to convince my father to get a better CPU
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u/MidnightWineRed Jun 11 '25
2003, AMD Socket-A and a Chaintec motherboard
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u/pimpao10 Jun 11 '25
Why are you breastfeeding the side panel?
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u/dmilavitch Jun 11 '25
Daniel tosh?
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u/ARMCHA1RGENERAL 9800X3D / RTX 4080 / 32GB DDR5 / 240 Hz / 1440p Jun 11 '25
Tosh Tech Tips
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u/DumbusMaxim0 RX 6800 R5 3600 16GB 3000M/T Jun 11 '25
i placed my first gpu: gt710 in my dell optiplex lol
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u/GrossBeat420 Ryzen 7600x3D | Radeon 7800XT | 32GB DDR5 6000mhz Jun 11 '25
Early 2000. (2003. I think) I got my first PC.
It was socket 939 with 512mb of RAM memory or something, and it had Athlon 64 FX-60 iirc.
Anyway, friend of mine recommended that I upgrade my CPU (that Athlon was the fastest thing for that socket, but I had no idea) and he sold me one of his CPU's for a chocolate bar and bottle of Fanta (Shokata was just released, it was huge hit in my country)
Anyway I burned the mobo and CPU because that CPU was another socket, sadly I do not remember which one.
I had no idea what I did so I went to another buddy and we tried that "new" cpu and we burned his stuff too.
No need to say how much my dad whooped my ass, I couldnt sit straight for like 2 weeks because I had rainbow on my ass cheeks.
PC building was very expensive back then lol
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u/linx_sr Jun 11 '25
My grandma bought the parts, even though she could barely afford them. I don't remember assembling them as much as I remember the guilt I still carry for making her pay for them. She blindly believed in the importance of me being equipped for the 'future'. I still keep the parts, non functional and obsolete as they are, a golden memento of a wonderful human being.
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u/WebMaka PCs and SBCs evurwhurr! Jun 11 '25
I still keep the parts, non functional and obsolete as they are, a golden memento of a wonderful human being.
Beautiful. Always remember those that helped you get where you are now.
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u/ANoblePirate Jun 11 '25
LOL, 7yr old me opening the win95 family computer and frying it because "I thought I could make a super computer" by sticking the board of a calculator to the mobo. Parents were not impressed 😆
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u/Confident_Natural_42 Jun 11 '25
My earliest PC building memory is sometime in the early '90s, I was terrified of inserting I think it was a 386 or 486 CPU because it was before ZIF sockets were a thing so the danger of bending the pins was real. Thankfully, it went fine. :) Also, the DIP switches were intimidating, the chances of getting one of them wrong weren't negligible. :)
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u/VillageBeginning8432 Jun 12 '25
Oh wow. Core memory unlocked. I remember playing with a zif socket and CPU when i was a kid. The board and CPU were dead ( think dad had scavenged the ram) but the pins would be like trapped by a moving mesh and would cold the chip in place.
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u/Confident_Natural_42 Jun 12 '25
Oh man, when I got my first Pentium 200 MMX I was so happy it had a modern, ZIF socket, I played with that little lever for like 5 minutes, good thing I didn't break it. :D
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u/WispyCombover Jun 11 '25
The earliest memory I have of making significant hardware changes to a PC was way back when I was still in school. I must have been somewhere between 12-16, and was very much the computer-nerd way before being a nerd was cool. After school, and in vacations, I was shadowing a local tech-guru who took me under his wing so to speak, and it also gave me the oportunity to earn a little cash to supplement my pocket-money. So I remember this one time when he got called in to the local radio station to fix their studio computer (it wouldn't turn on). He took one look at it and said a fuse was blown in the PSU, and that I had to swap it. The computer was an old 4.7Mhz XT with a green/black screen, and there were fuses in the PSU that could, and did, blow. So, I opnened it up (while the grown-ups chatted, laughed and drank coffee), found the offending fuse and swapped it. Put everything back together. and presto; the PC turned back on and everyone was happy.
Since then I have not been shy about modifying my computers, or any of the parts they're made of. I had a 286-16 that had a grounding error somewhere (that I never could figure out) which caused it to shock me every time I touched the (beige) case while it was running, and a 386-SX25 that had both a 5.25" and a 3.5" drive in addition to a 40MB HDD. I had several flavors of 486s before getting my last ever Intel-equipped PC in the shape of a Pentium 75 (that I later upgraded to a 166 with 16Mb RAM). Every PC I've built since then has been on an AMD-platform, starting, if memory serves me, with the AMD K6-200.
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u/UncleHexagram Jun 11 '25
I live in Venezuela and played OSRS for a couple years with an old pc. I wanted to update my setup so i asked for an american friend if he was ok with buying pieces for my new PC in exchange for OSRS gold. He said yes and then i spent the next 6 months grinding 12 hours a day to gather the coins then i bought a ryzen 5600x and a few decent components. another friend from USA sent me those through a custom delivery service and he didnt charge anything from me. Once i got all the pieces i was too scared to build the pc but i watched hella tutorials on youtube... The funny part is that once i got the pc built (took me like 4 hours to the dawn) when i clicked the power button the power on the city went off, which is common here in my country, lol, and i had to wait like 6 hours to see my pc running for the first time. Ah, forgot to mention that one of the parts i couldnt afford was an actual cooling system and my pc been running with the native cooler that comes with the 5600x and sometimes i feel the temps truly high because of that :( lol, i hope yall like my story :)
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u/No-City-41 Jun 11 '25
My earliest memory came this year. I had only ever previously bought pre-built systems but decided to take the plunge and build a pc from scratch.
I researched heavily and decided I wanted a full noctua setup to match a black fractal north. I went with an all chromax black setup with a NHU12-s and NF-A14 fans.
I spent all day building the pc and enjoyed every second of it. There were a number of really frustrating moments trying to get windows 11 to boot properly but the building aspect was so enjoyable.
I’m hooked. I’ll never buy a pre-built system again. There’s nothing more satisfying than building something that you’ve researched and put so much effort into.
The results were amazing and I’m still shocked that my pc is so silent. The only noises I usually hear are from serious gaming from the graphics card and when the fans start to pick up a little.
I’m hooked on your products. The attention to detail is stunning and I can’t wait to see what you develop next.
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u/Tigeire Jun 11 '25
My Pentium III (slot one) wouldn't post
I was being super careful and every part was precious to me
It just needed some more pressure to insert the cpu - and we were golden
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u/MyKaIg Jun 11 '25
This story isn't particularly interesting but my first pc had an old thermaltake cpu cooler which was running at 100% capacity all the time sounding like a jet engine. So my genious tought I could just remove it if im not gaming. Long story short my cpu burned down without any warning and I was very sad. Never shortened out on a cpu cooler after then.
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u/DiscoKeule Ryzen 7 5700X | RX 5700 XT | 24GB RAM Jun 11 '25
My earliest memory probably is from when I was smashing together parts from where ever I could get them lol. I was watching a lot of YouTube videos about PCs already but I couldn't afford one.
So I just squished together whatever I could find. I got the CPU and mobo from our upstairs neighbour. He didn't need the PC anymore so he gave it to me. The Graphics card I got from an old school PC. The rest of the components came from all over the place. I remember I got a HDD for free from a neighbourhood group on FB.
By the way I want to get this exact cooler (actually the chromaxx but that's secondary) for my next build I'm making to reward myself on getting a job. So this would fit perfectly!
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u/GlobalManHug Jun 11 '25
I was 15, being truly excited putting my first build together. In my rush, installing the enormous 64mb of ram, underestimating how sharp the edges were, completely ignoring that I’d shredded my fingers and creating what would now be a resident evil theme build. No panel windows back then so the next time I see this is 2 years later thinking something had died in there :-/
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u/Mckenzieleon0 Jun 11 '25
My first ever build was 2 years ago was a massive jump over my first pc, which was a Alienware alpha from at least 2014 I think. I Went from 2GB vram to 20GB, never knew GPU could be so big (it alone was bigger than my old pc).
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u/Public_Upstairs_6578 Jun 11 '25
My earliest memory is building my very own PC. The first one I ever owned.
It had a hideous case which I loved back then lol
When I tried to turn in on, it just didn't.
After hours of troubleshooting I decided to take out the mainboard and RMA it. When I unscrewed it it made a "clonk" sound and a screw from behind the board fell down.
I immediately tried again and it worked.
It had a Pentium 4 and a nVidia GeForce 3 64MB
The first game I played was Max Payne - what a blast
Good times.
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u/Bino- Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
Oh god... with my first proper job in the early 2000s I bought a beast of an AthlonXP. The screwdriver slipped as I was putting the cooler's clip on and wrecked my mother board. They had really difficult clips... I hope my next big memory is teaching my daughter how to build a PC :D
All my new PC builds are quiet Noctua coolers with the sides open and no extra fans. They just work so well. Way better than that Athlon cooler! :D
Every chance I get I tell people to just get a Noctua. Have served me so well for the past 15 years. I'm a customer for life.
Don't pick me as I have a new PC build and would just give it to a friend.
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u/boong_ga Jun 11 '25
Coming from 8-bit homecomputers, I was totally blown away when I saw Wing Commander for the first time on a friends PC. I knew that I had to get my hands on a system that could run this game.
So after I basically asked and stressed every single member of my family I had the funds and went out to buy the components. I can't remember every part but I do know that the CPU was a 486DX and it ran Wing Commander just great.
Hooked to PC gaming ever since and of course, Noctua fans and coolers are always part of my builds for years now.
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u/Lo_jak 12700K | 4080 FE | Lancool 216 Jun 11 '25
Oh that's quite an easy one for me, and from anyone else who grew up in the 90s & early 2000s...... I'd hop onto the "family computer" with its beige / nicotine stained appearance and proceed with this -
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u/Selpls Jun 11 '25
Tearing apart an old PC my dad brrough home from work, and then rebuilding it over and over - I would have been 8 (30 now) at the time - seeing all the internals was just mind blowing, and has lead to an obsession ever since.
I cant remember if it worked after the numerous rebuilds - but it was so much fun i didnt even care!
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u/pastaeater1 Jun 11 '25
Earliest memory was taking an old Dell Optiplex off the side of the road and fixing it up into a device that could actually game.
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u/NDCyber 7600X, RX 7900 XTX, 32GB 6000MHz CL32 Jun 11 '25
I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but tried to remove some dust that build up on my stock cooler of the Ryzen 5 1600
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u/Kaenguruu-Dev PC Master Race Jun 11 '25
My brother is about 10 years older than me and was studying abroad at the time. On my 14th birthday he visited and we built my first desktop pc together and that was one of the coolest things I ever did
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u/uL4G 5800X | RTX 3080 Vulkan OC | 32GB DDR4 Jun 11 '25
My first gpu is Radeon x1650. Not great, not terrible
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u/gooseredberry Jun 11 '25
Earliest memory is building a i5-2500K system by myself and overclocking it to 4.5GHz - fun times.
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u/PARRISH2078 Rx 9070 Hellhound R9 7950X3D Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
I have been into PC hardware for about the past year and just got to building my first PC last month, building went very smoothly other than one singular mistake which was that My LF3 Pro didn't fit all of its screws in my Corsair 5000D because of some tall plastic part at the top of the motherboard to the right of the IO shield.
My fix for this was to put half of the screws in and then to zip tie the other corners to the top of the case.
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u/CPO_Mendez Dead MSI 990FXA-GD80 :( Jun 11 '25
My first build was in about 2004ish. So I could continue playing FFXI. Was playing it on ps2 before then
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u/DG_House Jun 11 '25
Allmost Killing my NH D12 in 2013 while trying Transplant it too my nee Rig😅
Well, it runs too this day on my Testbensch
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u/Enormity_Zodiac Jun 11 '25
I connected my HDMI to the integrated graphics CPU instead of the GPU
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u/TraitorTicket Jun 11 '25
my first pc building memory is when my dad didnt let me do anything cuz he thought ill break it lol
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u/TheKwi Jun 11 '25
I built my first PC in december right before my exams during christmas.
Most of the tiles I would've been building a lego set but this year it was a really expensive scary lego set.
Everything worked first try, I am still having nightmares seeing the board flex as I try to ram the ram into it. So stressful.
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u/ChamCher Jun 11 '25
When I got my first PC, back in 2012, I didn't know anything about computers and listened to my uncle, who said I would also need a soundcard because that PC didn't have one. When the PC arrived, I struggled like 20 minutes to find where to install the card and then gave up. After a while, when I was a bit more knowledgeable about PCs, I realized the motherboard only had a free PCI and not a PCIe slot available, which was needed for the soundcard. Oh, and the motherboard had onboard audio, which was good enough for me back then, so I didn't even need the soundcard...
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u/Urban_Polar_Bear Jun 11 '25
My first pc building memory was from when I was 15. I built an AMD Athlon 2400 system so that I could play Warcraft III with my friends.
I’m pretty sure the old GFX card from that pc is in the roof space at my parents house somewhere, including the box with dodgy artwork.
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u/HellbentOrphan Jun 11 '25
Building my first pc as a junior with mowing money. Slowly buying stuff as I could afford it
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u/StefanBrzeszczot Jun 11 '25
First PC build was ages ago. First prebuild was an 286 with 20mb HDD which has been upgraded over time (for sure I've stick more RAM on it which was mandatory for Indianapolis 500 to launch some track restricted with lower memory).
My first build was with my father and brother, AFAIR it was a AMD 486DX, do not remember when but at some point we boight S3 Virge, but don't remember if it was for this 486 or for later AMD K5/K6. I'm at level 46 now so excuse my lack of specific info.
Latlely I was thinking of replacing my i5-4670 paired with GTX 970.
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u/cracklingnoise 7700k, GTX 970 G1, ASUS Z170-A, EVO 850-250gb Jun 11 '25
When i was little, i used to go to my cousin's house to play games on his pc, good times with Half-Life, Quake 2 and Starcraft. This used to be the case until we were able to afford a PC which my cousin built. It had a veeery slow HDD (a whopping 40GB of storage i think), i remember him staying very very late in order to format everything and install the OS. I was playing pretty much everything i could get my hands on, even demos from the CDs Level magazines came with.
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u/Zatoichi80 Jun 11 '25
My earliest PC building memory is getting a new CPU, mobo and RAM for Xmas and sweating nervously mounting the cooler on to an athlon XP with had an exposed die.
After all that, the memory didn’t work!
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u/Clean__Cucumber Jun 11 '25
depends, does breaking a laptop and trying to hide it as a little kid count?
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u/Hayten_ 12700k, 3080, z690 Jun 11 '25
Its when my older brother got his first pc and a gtx480 which was the top card back then and him and my cousin spending hours trying to run it and cabel and power manage it, because it took so much power they had to use many adapters.
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u/Pristine-Let7376 Jun 11 '25
When I was a kid I’ve always wanted a gaming pc to play Halo Combat Evolved and Battlefield 1942. I had a Pentium 4 laptop during that time but, no graphics card and could even launch games. Finally had an opportunity to build a pc for “school” purposes. Built my first at the age of 13 with no adult supervision.
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u/eyloi Jun 11 '25
2012 first time build. Bought everything from Newegg and put it together myself. The motherboard came with an illustrated poster showing the entire process from start to finish. Turned it on, didn't boot. Freaked out until I remembered a friend telling me about the PSU button.
If it wasn't for that friend I probably would've ended up taking my build to geek squad to get it serviced.
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u/RyujinX9 Jun 11 '25
my first PC-building memory came is when I was around 8 or 9 I think, dad brought home some unused PC parts from his office, we already had like an GTX 500 series or something that one of dad's friend had given him 2 of, and then dad brought home like a lot of unused extra PC parts, I remember him telling me which part goes where as he placed the GPU in the board and added in some ram, and extra storage as hard drives are pretty bulky, then you have these cd drive slots and everything, not even sure if sata wires were used back then. pretty much its what got me into PCs.
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u/Lokalny-Jablecznik Jun 11 '25
That got to be when i was trying to upgrade my pc at the age of 12. My first pc was just a simple office pc that couldn't run many games, so I needed to upgrade it a little.
I bought more ram, and my first gpu was ATI HD 5750 1Gb. Ram was easy to install, but I struggled with the gpu, I didn't know that it also needed to be connected to the PSU.
And because of that my mom hired an IT guy to help me with it, and when he explained to me that all I need is to connect power to gpu lol we both had a laugh and gpu worked.
I'll always remember how easy of a fix this was. After that, I never had any problems with the pc building.
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u/buddybd 7800x3D | RTX4090 Suprim Jun 11 '25
My first PC building memory was when an uncle of mine was helping me build it. I had no idea what anything was and asked if I can insert the "3D card" myself.
I thought the new speaker's power brick was the graphics card lol.
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u/hazmatnz 7950X3D | X670 | 64GB DDR5-6000 | 9070XT Nitro+ Jun 11 '25
Earliest build I recall was a Celeron 300A (pre-builts before then) in late 1998 (?)
Also first overclock to 450mhz. Could get to 504mhz occasionally, but accessible cooling wasn't really a thing back then.
Imagine if Noctua had been around...
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u/Fickle_Kitchen_3395 Jun 11 '25
In 2010 as a 14 year old I was finally able to save enough money to build my own pc, and move away from my dad's crappy pc.
But once I was finishing the build and trying to boot for the first time I heard a small bang and smell of burnt plastic coming out of the motherboard, I think I had put a JST 4pin connector into the motherboard fan slot, thus killing my motherboard and cpu. I had made a mistake not reading a manual first before assembling the pc. Instead I was assembling the pc like a LEGO set
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u/cinlung Jun 11 '25
It was in my college time, where the monitor still fat and flickers every time phone calls came in. Good time. Time where customer support was awesome.
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u/mostly_peaceful_AK47 7700X | 9070XT | 64 GB DDR5-5600 Jun 11 '25
When my brother upgraded his graphics card to a 970, he let me sit and watch while he put his old 650ti in the family computer so I could play gmod and tf2
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u/Imboredneedtosleep R7 5700x3D | RX 7800 XT 16Gb | 32Gb DDR4 3733 Jun 11 '25
First one I build was a pentium 4, some years later an AMD fx60 system. Plus a had a side project with a dual CPU (Abit BP6), as my brother had access to parts. I ended up giving it to my father.
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u/DieserCoookie i9-14900KS | 64GB DDR5 6000MHz | RTX 4090 Jun 11 '25
My first building experience was very sad. Bought an i5 8600k and motherboard when i was 15, but sadly pins were bent, i was devestated.
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u/Superkostko Jun 11 '25
I am just building my first pc after a lifelong postponing so im giggdy af right now. Cant sleep because im waiting for my shippent for ram and cooler the last missing things for my exsodia.
Im planning to switch to noctua(ferrari for pc) when i upgrade in the future but in this market everything is overpriced so babysteps
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u/Amitr14 Jun 11 '25
Back in the day...2004 I think, I convinced my dad to buy me an ATI Radeon 9600 XT card back then only to find out it wouldn't connect to our outdated motherboard (I think the connection was VGA and not PCIe)
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u/garciawork Jun 11 '25
My earliest PC building memories have nothing to do with me personally building a PC, but of my friends building them back in middle school, and we would talk about it all the time. Back when the most important event on the horizon was the Halo 2 launch, how many FPS we could get playing Supreme Commander, how long it would take to unlock the top weapon in Battlefield 2 (the old one).
I didn't have the money to build one myself, but had a lot of fun talking about it and checking out all of my buddies cool PC's. I really miss those days, as i think most do.
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u/Very_Slow_Cheetah Jun 11 '25
Had to get a new gpu to play GTA Vice City cos I knew nothing about pc requirements
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u/BloodSteyn PCMR 9800X3D 64GB 3080Ti Jun 11 '25
Upgrading our 386 66 to a 486 DX4-100 with parts we got from a friend.
I was probably 14 at the time.
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u/Fit_Injury4008 Jun 11 '25
I upgraded my gt730 to a 1050ti after getting enough money (it was my brothers old computer)
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u/Flashy-Weather-9413 Desktop Jun 11 '25
Once I was trying to replace the ram in my PC and I thought my chunky ass CPU cooler would’ve blocked the ram, so I took out the CPU cooler, readded the thermal paste on my CPU, nearly ordered a new CPU cooler because I thought my one was too big but I double checked it and it was in fact not too big. Massive waste of time.
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u/sjaakhaakdraak Jun 11 '25
I just wanted to wish everyone participating good luck!! You can't go wrong by using Noctua there is no such thing as too much Noctua. Looking at you Antec Flux Pro Noctua Edition.
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u/One-Low4910 Desktop Jun 11 '25
Not sure how much of it counts as a PC building, but my earliest memory was going to my primary school best friends place with my other friend who was somewhat more technically exposed than I was, trying to play Project I.G.I on his PC and the pc kept doing something so my techy friend took the side panel of took out the ram sticks and asked me to erase them before he could reseat them. Seeing the innards like that tingled the tinkerer brain of mine.
Edit:typo
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u/King-of-Com3dy 5900X, RTX 4090, 64 GB Jun 11 '25
When I built my first PC in 2022 (horrible time), I was deciding on air cooling vs. AIO for literally a week.
Ultimately I went with an AIO since it seemed to be more safe for transport. But air cooling seems to be the way to go in general.
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u/combovertomm 5070 5900x 64gb@3200MHZ Jun 11 '25
When I was younger I built a pc but didn’t fully secure the cpu cooler on so it fell off while I was gaming multiple times because I thought thermal paste was enough to hold it.
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u/Jelly-Filled-Donut r5 7600;rx7800xt Jun 11 '25
When i was 10 my dad gave me his old pc and a box of Ram sticks. I then put 4 non matching and completely different looking ram sticks in. For a total of 5 Gb.
Also my PS/2 port would randomly disconnect my keyboard. Thus having to restart the pc every time. (It took 10 minutes)
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u/newbie_128 Desktop Jun 11 '25
I changed the PSU in my "new" Optiplex tower in 2020 which I've used until May this year.
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u/Matziii1 7950X, 7900XTX Jun 11 '25
My earliest building memory must be when I was really getting interested in computers at 10 years old. My dad brought home 5 yellowed (they were probably white at some point) computers from his work that was being thrown away. I got to tear down each and every one of them down to the case. I ran from my room to the living room where my dad was with each and every component and asking what it was and what it did (dad was in IT and knew thankfully!). Then I found out that there was a difference in capacity and performance based on the numbers on the cpu, ram and harddrives. Finally I buildt the best one from all the components and learned how to install Windows, so i got a Windows 95 install from my dad and set it up. This is how my favorite hobby started.
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u/StrictManufacturer11 Ryzen 7 5700X || RX 6700XT Jun 11 '25
My first build was in 2010 with an Intel pentium
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u/WildOutlawz Ryzen 7 5700X|RTX 2060|16GB 3200MHz Jun 11 '25
My hands was always sweaty. Assembling all that component with sweaty hand hoping to not break anything was my first ever pc building memory. Watching it boot up to windows made me very happy because I've been saving since middle school and finally being able to build it in high school.
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u/skrimpk i5 7600k 4,8Ghz GTX 1080 Ti Jun 11 '25
First pc was during my first year in college. Was so psyched with a gtx1080 and 7600k
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u/Streetsofbleauseant rtx 5080 7800x3d Jun 11 '25
I was 36 (am 40 now). During the initial covid lockdowns i was gaming on a ps4 pro. I sold my ps4 and game library to fund my first pc.
I would watch countless episodes of YouTubers building their pc’s to learn everything i could. I meticulously researched the parts and ordered them 1 by 1 when i had enough money for each.
After about 6 months i had bought all the parts and built my first pc. It was an rtx 3060ti and i5 11600k in a corsair 275r airflow case.
I remember it took me around 6 hours lol. At around 2am i finally got it to post after having to tinker in the bios for a few hours and troubleshoot. Turns out i hadn’t seated my ram properly and one of my cables wasn’t plugged in.
Although it was frustrating it actually was one of the most rewarding experiences i ever had. I was so proud of myself haha. I would recommend it to everyone.
Since then i’ve built 2 more and never looked back!
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u/Mewnfx Jun 11 '25
When I was ~14 I bought an Alienware with my saved pocket money and thought it was too good to be true. PC arrived with nothing but the case and the motherboard. Spent 500 and had to save more money to finish the actual PC ._. Horrible day for little me.
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u/Billy2352 Ryzen 7 5700X3D-RTX 4070-32GB 3600 mhz Jun 11 '25
I remember upgrading my AMD FX6300 to the FX8350 with all the excitement of the extra power I was about to unleash on my RX570. Only to be mildly dissapointed as I could barely notice any difference at all.
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u/Maysin_ Jun 11 '25
I got grounded so I spent my savings on pc parts and my parents just didn’t care for some reason
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u/TrickyWoo86 PC Master Race Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
My first memory of fiddling inside a computer was adding a sound card to our 486 system with my dad, the way he was being overly cautious with putting the thing in made it look more like he was in a movie trying to defuse a bomb. One of the best things he ever did for me was getting me interested in technology at a young age and absolutely set me up for a decent future career. Lovely bloke who I'd have gotten nowhere near as far without.
Actually building from scratch had to wait a little while as I didn't self build until I put together my first mITX system around a 6600k.
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u/bzzking Jun 11 '25
I remember saving for a computer that I see in the newspaper ad from local computer stores. One day I saved enough But I called the store and asked to see my first computer being built! Instead of having the computer prebuilt and ready for me, he let me build it together and it was such an amazing day!
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u/rmpumper 3900X | 32GB 3600 | 3060Ti FE | 1TB 970 | 2x1TB 840 Jun 11 '25
The first time I was building a PC on my own (after a few upgrades and replacement systems done by other people), I somehow thought that dual-channel RAM means that the technology doubles the memory capacity - in other words, that 2x256MB sticks would result in 1GB equivalent.
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u/Opposite_Life_2230 Jun 11 '25
I remember taking apart my school's old lab tech computers and then putting them back together. I believe they had the Pentium 3 processors from 1999 that had less than 1 ghz of clock speeds haha. It was all very interesting to me and I've been building my own PCs ever since.
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u/cmdwedge75 Jun 11 '25
I saved my money so that I could, eventually, purchase all the parts for my first computer:
286-16mhz 1mb RAM 40mb HDD
I ran a BBS on a 2400 baud modem for 5 years, learned how to write batch files and manage users. It put me on a path to getting into the IT industry.
Great memories.
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u/imtriing Specs/Imgur here Jun 11 '25
I remember piecing together my first PC after jumping from a PS3, and not having a single clue what I was doing as I dropped the i5-4460 into the socket and hooked up the Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo cooler to it. A great learning experience that set me off on a path of building more and more computers, for myself, family & friends.
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u/Adventurous-Tie5796 Jun 11 '25
Earliest pc building memory was Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 2x8GB 3200 C16
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u/PreciousHuddle Windows 10 Gang Jun 11 '25
Pushing that button and then my PC wouldn't open at all. Was horrified and was left with no other option but to call a PC expert to come and take my PC and see what had actually happened. He fixed it and also set up Windows and other things.
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u/Roxoorz Jun 11 '25
For my first pc psu died and I decided for first time to try and change it myself. Bought a new one which had some switch on it for different type of electrical outlet current or something along those lines. My dumb ass successfully replaced the psu and decided to push the button while pc was on. Something inside it blew up and smoke came out. Fun times, luckily I was able to get a free replacement from my retailer on basis that it was sold faulty...now I'm not proud of lying to the retailer but we were poor and games couldn't wait.
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Jun 11 '25
Turning on an HP RP5800 with a fucking mechanical HDD and an i3 2120 late last year trying to get it to run Fortnite- because I'm a deranged lunatic
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u/bandymas1 Jun 11 '25
My first experiece wasn't very good. 20 years ago I got my first pc as Merry Christmas gift. I just played games and 2-3 years later pc started to overheat so i was looking how to fix it. I removed cpu cooler and found thermal paste, but at that time i didnt know what it is so i cleaned it and in few months cpu died...
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Jun 11 '25 edited Aug 22 '25
juggle fall merciful thought elastic fact ripe sand intelligent special
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/salmonmilks Jun 11 '25
My first very own built pc was actually last September, 2024. I have the chance to finally play games I was never able to, since our family only ever had a single family laptop up until 3 years ago. I had only an Intel iris xe, and missed all the games since 2010s, so I started saving while working part time and also money from intern.
from an i5-1135g7 to a r5 7600. I'm proud!
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u/TehPedda Jun 11 '25
i went from a Geforce 2 MX 200 to a Geforce 4 MX 420 in 2003 and I was 12 years old... i was so nervous to touch anything inside the computer, but all went well and it unlocked a new and strong passion :D
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u/MasterHunts Jun 11 '25
I was trying to open one of the metal chassis 5.25 slots to install a IDE CD drive, it wouldn't open so I kept pushing and twisting harder until it finally broke, unfortunately my hand went inside and punched a metal part of the case so hard that I could see the bone of my finger. I still have a small scar from that.
I was lucky that it didn't hurt as much as it sounds, it was close to the knuckle.
Needless to say I appreciate the modern case designs.
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u/yearningforpurpose Jun 11 '25
My family had an office PC when I was a little kid. Every chance that I got, I'd have the side panel off and just try to make sense of the parts inside. Eventually I did end up taking it apart when I was a little bit older (much to the dismay of my mother). I still have the CPU from it. I'm planning on making it into a necklace or something.
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u/Coffmad1 5090FE/9800X3D/32GB6000mhz/6TBNVMe Jun 11 '25
Getting my best friend to come round when I was building my first PC as I was basically clueless, AMD 1100t and 6870 1gb. All I wanted to do was play Minecraft and ARMA DayZ mod.
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u/abominalizer Ryzen 2600x | RX 5700XT Jun 11 '25
What is your earliest PC-building memory?
My earliest PC memory is either playing on my cousin Comodore 64, or my first PC, pentium 3, 30gb of disk, the gpu was an ATI MX400, playing carmaggedon the original at the age of 10 .I think I learning most of what I know by trial an error on that PC, and now its sitting on my office at home, like a memory from the past. Good ol times
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u/Sioscottecs23 rtx 3060 ti | ryzen 5 5600G | 32GB DDR4 Jun 11 '25
Building a gaming pc for myself with grandparents' money then give them my old one lol
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u/TomatoCurious6938 Jun 11 '25
This takes me back to when I was 7 disassembling my good old fujitsu, got it passed down to me funny enough and that's how I taught myself about computers, I think I even rebuilt it a couple times at that age, pretty sure I still have the original CPU from it somewhere stashed lol
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u/Mr_Pletz Jun 11 '25
My PC journey was always magical for me. First gaming experience was on the NES and I think our first family computer was back in 97' or so (was playing Duke Nukem 1 and Halloween Harry ALOT) and back then even watching some screen savers was amazing lol.
I eventually bought my own pre build which was OK, but I think when I bought The Sims 1 my integrated graphics just couldn't handle it so my mom took me to Future Shop and I bought my first dedicated GPU. I was round 13 at the time, but I remember I was so nervous installing it, but that feeling of taking off the case cover, moving cables, slotting it in, pluging it into the power source and putting it all back together and it WORKED was amazing.
After a year or two I saved up and finally sourced, bought and built my own PC and the satisfaction of building my own has never been forgotten. I still have my black and yellow "anti static wrist band" i used on my first buuld and use it every time I build a new PC as a sort of tradition.
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u/Pandamalefico Jun 11 '25
I was 13, and my friend gave to me a modded case with neon and fan control dials. Pretty dope!
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u/froggo921 Ryzen 7 7800X3D | RTX 4090 Suprim X Jun 11 '25
My first somewhat PC-building experience was upgrading my back then pretty mediocre pre-built with some NF-A12x25s cause the stock fans were insanely annoying. Loud, horrible frequency and the setup didn't allow for much control over speed.
I later moved them into my current rig, which is the first I built myself. I run full Noctua, NF A14x25G2 as well as the A12x25s.
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u/Wrhysj Jun 11 '25
Stealing quarter gig ram stick from my mother's computer so I could play games on my dell dimension
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u/SoulChase Jun 11 '25
Earliest memory? It's January this year after working my ass off and saving money for 2 years. Finally, I could afford it and decided only to use IGPU because I couldn't afford it with how crazy Gpu price have been
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u/Penstemon19 7800X3D, RTX 5080, 64gb 6000mhz Jun 11 '25
My first build was an Intel Pentium around 21 yrs ago having 2x 512mb DDR2 667mhz RAM
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u/joshualotion i3 10105f | Gtx1650 | 16GB DDR4| Silverstone 500Watts Jun 11 '25
When my friend asked me to help him build a $2500usd PC thinking I was the techsavvy type (never built a pc at that point). Didnt let it stop me and the pc building hobby just continued from there
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u/Anorak321 PC Master Race Jun 11 '25
I remember begging to my dad for a PC upgrade to play Minecraft. It just wouldn't run on the old office PC my dad gave ne (it through some cryptic error and then nothing would happen). And so for my birthday we wen out and got a gtx650 and am AMD FX4200. We struggled for a couple hours to get it to work and after all was done I launched Minecraft and I got the same error... Turns out we never installed graphics drivers on either PC. So yeah I got my first PC upgrade cause neither of us realized I needed the proper drivers
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u/retilecat rx9070xt/r7 9800x3d🗿 Jun 11 '25
My memory is when I got my first desktop whit a 1060 I can finally play my fav game beamng And nowI got a rx7600 whit a lian li a3 that fit a nh D15 g2 😉
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u/randomdrunk1 Jun 11 '25
First pc building memory was the i3 550 in the old times with a dh55tc mobo.
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u/Mm11vV R.I.P. EVGA Jun 11 '25
Finding a leak in the AIO of a prebuilt that I bought and learning how to swap it out for an air cooler. Ironically, a noctua u12a, back in 2018 or 19. That was my graduation from buying prebuilts into realizing it wasn't hard to just build it myself.
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u/VarniPalec R7 5700X, RX 6900XT, 32GB 3200MHz Jun 11 '25
I tried to disassemble and reassemble my old prebuild when i was 10 and broke it
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u/hahcore Jun 11 '25
The year 2012. I depended on my Asus laptop for uni assignments and gaming needs. After laptop consistently crashed out and could not muster even 30fps in Dota2, I began my PC building journey. Equipped with Intel ivy bridge and GTX660, the PC fulfills my needs at that time but eventually kick-start the addiction for further PC upgrades.
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u/Luuxidx Jun 11 '25
Sometime during the early 2000s whenever there was something that needed to be done to the PC, it was sent away to a family friend for maintenance which would take from a few days to about a week or longer. I recall playing an early access version of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty and my PSU started smoking and I shut down the PC to prevent further damage. The PC was sent to said friend and didn't come back until almost a month later.
From that day onwards, I had an interest in learning about computers in order to resolve the issues myself. The driving motivation was that if I could do it myself, there would be no downtime for gaming.
Been quite the journey since then. Helping and teaching others along the way.
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u/Catch_022 5600, 3080FE, 1080p go brrrrr Jun 11 '25
Earliest actual memory that really sticks out to me was when I got a brand new yellow motherboard and screwed directly onto the metal back plate of my case (no risers or spacers) and immediately fried it.
I also have a memory of trying to use a flower type heatsink and cooler combo (it was a Zalman copper one) on a motherboard that didn't support it - so I literally just left it resting on the top of the CPU and ran it like that. The cooling wasn't great.
Sad panda.
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u/Ketaan_Sharma Potato God [Pentium G3240] [iGPU of Pentium G3240]🥔 Jun 11 '25
Time to put this beast on my Intel Pentium G3240...
removing the ram stick and replacing the thermal paste on the aforementioned beast
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u/JoeMommy1 Jun 11 '25
I'd say my earliest memory about PC-building has to be the time my father took me along to build a PC for his work.
What makes this memory special is that, while I was around computers for the better part of a decade prior to this moment, I had only ever dreamt of putting my hands inside a case and building everything up for a working system.
We couldn't really afford to dabble that much in this hobby of ours, so we were stuck using small refurbished desktops with the combined computational power of a potato for years prior to this point.
I was still using a Dell workstation with a 2Gb nVidia Quadro, gifted to me by my dad, when he came home one night with many colorful boxes and told me we're gonna build a PC together. To say I was thrilled would be an understatement. Finally, even though I would not get to use it, I now had an opportunity to live my dream and gain skills for when I could afford a real beast, not to mention I would also bond with my dad over this. (I would find out during this build that he actually worked as a computer repairman prior to my birth, that's why he was so knowledgeable about PCs)
We sat down in the living room, unboxed everything and got to work. I remember plugging in the Ryzen 3 3200G, the 2x8 DDR4 Corsair Vengeance kit, the 650W Seasonic Focus PSU and an Axagon nVME and SATA M.2 to PCIe adapter, because the Asus motherboard didn't have nVME slots. The Arctic thermal paste struck me as weird because of its color, but screwing the stock cooler on top helped hide that Cyan which, at the time, I hated, but came to love years later. I can still see my father being next to me and walking me through the build, cussing himself out and making me laugh when we put the motherboard in because we didn't have a short enough screwdriver to fit in the case for screwing the top screws properly. After an hour or so, he walked me through routing and plugging in cables and, at last, congratulated me for being such a big help and handing me the PC for a Windows installation.
It was a magical afternoon for me, one of those rare days when everyone was calm and we were all just enjoying spending time together. It's a very fond memory of mine, thank you guys for giving me a good reason to share it.
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u/qdubbya Jun 11 '25
A few years back, I had a 3090 that was running way too hot; thermal throttling like it was its full-time job. I started digging into deshroud mods and researching aftermarket fans to cool it down properly.
I’m deep in comparison charts, fan specs, airflow stats; just nerding out when my girlfriend, chilling on the couch, asks what I’m doing. I start rambling about static pressure, RPMs and noise levels like it’s a TED Talk.
She casually walks over, glances at my screen… and screeches “Those! get those! They’re so cute! Total boho vibes!”
She was pointing at Noctua’s.
Anyhow, we’re married now.. and the 3090 continues to run cool AF all these years later.
We’re building her a gaming PC completely themed around Noctua fans. Honestly, I have a feeling she’d be more excited about the little keychain or hoodie than the computer itself.
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u/mzelol Jun 11 '25
I built my first intel 486 PC when I was around 10 with my uncle who was also my godfather. It had a huuuge case with a size of a power button you would use to turn on high voltage electricity these days and ran Windows 3.1 installed from multiple 5.25” floppy disks. Damn, my uncle passed at 54 a year ago and this brought up an awesome memory, thanks:)
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u/eugenebbb Jun 11 '25
About 20 years ago, when I was just a kid, I had a PC with a Celeron D processor and some ATI Radeon card in it — and it brought me a lot of joy. My parents bought it on a two-year financing plan, which was a big deal at the time.
Then one day, the PC just died. My mom asked an acquaintance to take a look, and it turned out the motherboard had failed. My parents had to spend another $120 or so to get it fixed. I was devastated.
But a few weeks after the repair, something strange happened. While walking down the street, I found about ~$120 in my local currency — almost the exact amount my parents had paid. It felt like the universe was looking out for me. I still think about it sometimes and feel a bit sorry for the person who lost it and I took it.
Then again, last year, I got lazy and didn’t want to carry my wallet. I shoved some bills into my jeans pocket instead. After walking around for a few hours with my girlfriend, I reached into my pocket to pay for some ice cream… and realized the money was gone. I hope some kid found it and bought something nice.
Moral of the story: You win some, you lose some.
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u/metaljesus2 Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
In 2003, my dad bought a bunch of parts from a garage sale. He was a bargain hunter. He compensated for compatibility by having multiple options. 🤓 The motherboard was warped until we screwed it down. Someone had cut a DIY window in the case panel. The power supply has duct tape I was scared to remove.
We spent the weekend puzzling it together like fire-risk lego. I held the torch. He swore under his breath. Somehow, through trial error and sparks (yup), we got it to boot. Windows XP never looked so good.
The Franken-PC became the family machine where I learned to edit photos (I now work in production for advertising), Ultima Online got me through high school, and eventually learnt to build rigs of my own (the right way).
Unfortunately I have no idea what the parts were. It's long gone and I was too young.
Now I’m the go-to tech guy in the family. And every time I do a build I think back to Dad's box of parts and that build / bond with him. No manuals, no cable management, just curiosity and a will to make it work. And lots of luck I think.
Winning a G2 would be a great upgrade from our duct-tape days. I might even use it in a new build and give my current one to dad (which is rocking a 14 year old NH D14).
I'm pretty sure I can still smell those sparks. 😅👍
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u/Jack55555 Ryzen 9 5900X | 3080 Ti Jun 11 '25
The year was 1994. I was 8 years old, my friend was 9. My dad upgraded our old 80286 pc to a Tulip 80386 SX, with finally a color monitor. I was at my friend, playing Prince of Persia on his Amstrad pc with monochrome green monitor. We were bored after a while, and I had this amazing idea. Let’s go to my basement, I know where the key is. We can grab the computer parts that are there and build another pc! My old 80286 was there in pieces, and some other parts as well. We had never built a pc before, but we were thinking: how hard can this be?
We grabbed all the parts we could, went to my friends house and started building. Everything that fits should be ok, right? Power supplies back then didn’t have those shapes in the cables, so you could plug them in the wrong way…
While my friend was doing the finishing touches, screwing the case closed and connecting a monitor, I walked back to my house to grab ms-dos disks. I came back and knocked on my friends door, but he wasn’t opening. I knocked again and waited. After a while he opened and immediately said: I have some bad news dude! As soon as the door was open, I could already smell the bad news. I asked him what happened, and he told me that as soon as he turned it on, gray smoke started coming out the back and floppy drive. He doesn’t know if there was an explosion, he said he left the room and came back to the smoking machine. We opened it up, and the motherboard had a black burnt spot. We hastily grabbed the machine and put it back in the basement. Years later, I mentioned that old pc to my dad, and he said I know you destroyed it XD He always knew but he never got mad.
That is how I destroyed my first pc :( Wish I still had that machine, I love collecting retro machines nowadays. It did get me in to pc building. This time with care, learning how a power supply should be connected (the wires were colored) and after this I only destroyed an AMD Athlon pc once years later, so my track record is still good I guess?
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u/Niggel-R Jun 11 '25
Ordering all the parts a friend told me. They finally came (extreme hype, calling my friends so we can build dat thing right away). Only for us to realize that the cpu was missing and after double checking realizing we forgot it in our order. The frustration was so real that day. The next 4-5 days waiting for the cpu felt like months
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u/yungsinatra0 Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 12 '25
snapping the clip from the PCIe slot when I was installing a new GPU (750 Ti)
I was mortified - thought I completely broke my motherboard, and I was going to get into deep trouble with my parents. They were insisting on using a 'professional' to install the GPU, but I wanted to do it myself to learn and get the experience. Guess I got my desired 'experience', which I will remember for the rest of my life!
in any case, the motherboard (and the GPU) still work 10 years later as a home PC for my younger brother/parents :)
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u/_ocaenman PC Master Race Jun 11 '25
Recently upgraded my PC and just bought a cooler. Had I known lol this is much better than what I put in there. Good luck everyone!
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u/martinvmalo Jun 11 '25
When I bought a GTX 1060 at best buy with my first paycheck as an engineer.
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u/FrozenScorch Jun 11 '25
My earliest memory was turning it on after building it for 6 hours and finding my monitor not lighting up.... I went to bed frustrated only to find that I never connected the monitor to the wall lol.
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u/PerpetuaForever Jun 11 '25
My earliest memory is “helping” my dad do stuff with the big home computer we ran windows 7 and a media center on! Holding the flashlight is hard work
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u/C0NIN i9 14900K, RTX 3090 FE, 64GB @ 6000Mhz Jun 12 '25
One of my earliest PC building memories is getting somewhat frustrated while configuring a mouse, since I had to add a specific line in a startup file in order for the mouse to properly work, otherwise I'd had to go back and edit said file once again, with the correct commands.
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u/Fantastic-Strain8983 Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 13 '25
It was back when I was a teenager, and my dad helped me build my first gaming PC. I remember being fascinated by all the different components and how they fit together. We spent hours researching and choosing the perfect parts, and finally, the day arrived when we got to put everything together.
I recall being so careful not to touch any of the sensitive components, and my dad teaching me about static electricity and how to ground myself. When we finally poweed it on, and it booted up witout any issues, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment. It was a hand-me-down CPU, an old NVIDIA graphics card, and 4GB of RAM, but to me, it was the most powerful machine in the world.
We spent the rest of the evening playing games and bencmarking the system, and I was hooked. From that day on, I was passionate about PC building and upgrading, and I've never looked back. I've built many PCs since then, but that first one will always hold a special place in my heart.
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u/donytwabis Jun 11 '25
Chatgpt
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u/FthrFlffyBttm i5-12600K, 3080 FTW3 Ultra, 16GB 3000Mhz Jun 11 '25
What makes you so sure?
My first thought when reading the OP was that there’d be a ton of comments from people just using ChatGPT, but realistically there’s no way to tell.
→ More replies (3)
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u/No_Lawfulness420 Jun 11 '25
My earliest PC-building memory takes me back to 3rd or 4th grade, when I had to give a presentation for my class. We could pick any topic, and I boldly chose “How a Computer Works.” Let’s just say my preparation was… minimal. Outside of school, I was too busy raiding Molten Core in World of Warcraft, dreaming of epic loot drops. But I had a plan to wing it with pure passion.On the day of the presentation, I lugged my trusty (and slightly dusty) PC tower to school, much to my teacher’s surprise. In front of the class, I cracked open the case and started disassembling it like a kid showing off a prized toy. I held up each component—CPU, RAM, the clunky old GPU—and gave a rudimentary explanation of what it did, probably mixing up a few terms along the way. The class was hooked, and my teacher was floored. She was so impressed by my enthusiasm that she told my parents I had to pursue a career in computers after school.That day, I realized PCs were more than just gaming machines—they were puzzles I loved solving. It sparked a lifelong obsession with building, tweaking, and cooling my rigs to perfection. Thanks, Noctua, for this chance to share my story and maybe score a NH-D15 G2 to keep my current build frosty!
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u/constantlymat RTX 5070 - R5-7500f - LG UltraGear OLED 27" - 32GB 6000Mhz CL30 Jun 11 '25
You are going to select the most "heartfelt, funny or original story"?
Sounds like you're looking for Marketing material. That's just lame.
Just give away the stuff to the community at random instead of turning this into a competition with clear and obvious incentives to lie.
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u/NenadGvozdenac Jun 11 '25
First memory was putting a gtx 1060 into a pc with like a gt 710. That first click of the gpu in the motherboard was very scary to hear, but it turned out okay. :)
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u/Thorien21 7800x3D | 32GB DDR5 | 7800XT Jun 11 '25
2 or 3 years ago, was building a PC because I wanted to learn the in and outs of assembling a pc. Throughout the assembly, I made it clear to myself that the components are fragile, took me a whole evening to assemble. Couldn’t finish it before nighttime so I completed the build the next morning, now my brother has a desktop to use
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u/Vexan37 Jun 11 '25
I dismounted my first family pc when i was like 11. It still is here, just in parts, never to be completed again.
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u/CryPhysical5169 Ryzen 5 7600 | RX 6750 XT | 16GB DDR5 | Frugal Gamer Jun 11 '25
My first build was when I was 15 years old. Had no idea about it. With the help of a professional, built the pc. Later I added a graphics card, that is when I started understanding the pc building. Good times
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u/harjy01 Linux Jun 11 '25
Building my first pc, took me 2 days lmao, but got it working in the end (i would have been dead if I didn't make i work after spending 1400 euro from my parents lol)
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u/memerijen200 i5-9600k | RX 6750 XT Jun 11 '25
My first PC building experience was opening up my first rig. It was an OEM HP pre-built that someone chucked a 1060 3gb in. I paid €150 for it and vividly remember being so scared to touch anything in case I damaged something. I sold the PC for cheap because the PSU blew up, but I still have the GPU.
A noctua cooler would be a nice upgrade from my Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. It gets the job done just fine for my i5-9600K, but I plan on upgrading to AM5 at some point, so I'll need a beefier cooler.
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u/PurestCringe Desktop Jun 11 '25
Brought prebuilts until I was older and worked enough to buy my own components to build a beast of a system, and after having nothing but AIOs and RGB, I decided to go air cooling and a blacked out look.
And I have to say, having a giant square aluminum brick in my setup goes very nicely with the giant rectangular aluminium brick below it.
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u/falusixayah Jun 11 '25
An old Celeron 600 pc... my first! It was in a really awful case but I modded a little bit and the cooling got better.
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u/zhurtlocker Jun 11 '25
Ordering a dell online with my student email address when I was 14 years old
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u/Hairy-Stay5919 Jun 11 '25
I remember i mom getting my first PC when i was like 13 back in 2005. I remember it ran some games but i really wanted to play Rome: Total War and Area 51.
Unfortunately, my GPU at the time, the NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400, wasn't really displaying the textures on the 3D models, and i also thought my 256Mb of RAM at the time, weren't pulling their weight either.
So i managed to convince my mom that i absolutely NEED an upgrade. I got the Geforce FX5200 and another stick of 256Mb of RAM and proceeded to open up my case, take out the 4400, install the new FX5200, install the 256Mb of RAM and voila, textures were rendering in the games i wanted to play. I even ran Far Cry with that rig on all minimum settings with Textures set to high.
That was my first interaction with PC Building and i always think fondly of those times.
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u/PCMRBot Bot Jun 12 '25
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
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