How old were you when you first built your PC?

fiveub · 12 May 2016 at 11:25

https://www.facebook.com/Overclocke...84001713348/10154140012823349/?type=3&theater

Tommy got some PC parts for his 10th Birthday. I think that is amazing, what a champion!

How old were you when you first started building?

For me, it was 16, a lot later than Tommy!

something daft already!! · 12 May 2016 at 11:27

My first PC, I was 24, my first computer was when I was 10. It was a Sinclair ZX80 in kit form from the news paper. I had to solder chips and resistors onto a PCB. However, some of the parts were faulty and it never booted so I had to send it back to Cambridge Research for testing. They sent it back working and with replacement resistors.

Randomface74 · 12 May 2016 at 11:28

I only got my first PC at about 16. I installed hard drives and memory upgrades, but we didn't have any money so it was basically stuff other people gave away.

Did my first proper build at uni - about 20.

Freefaller · 12 May 2016 at 11:32

I was around 13-14 I think early to mid 1990's. So well over 20 years ago

Terminal_Boy · 12 May 2016 at 11:32

Mid 30s (in the late 1990s).

Had laptops before this and purchased our first family PC from Tiny Computers (yes, i'm fully aware of how badly I was ripped off).

When this started to slow down after a couple of years and being an electronics technician myself, I thought "How hard can this be?" and had a go.

Built 2 more since and upgrade something every year once the laggiest item has a replacement with good VFM.

scrivz69 · 12 May 2016 at 11:35

As above, in my mid 30's. Nowt quite like pressing the power button on something you have built and it fires up.

HecFam · 12 May 2016 at 11:36

I dabbled in upgrading PCs from 14-15 maybe, Frankensteining a load of OEM computers together, but my first build from Retail components was around 16.

Spacedeck · 12 May 2016 at 11:37

First PC I built is the one I currently have. Built in 2015 when I was 24.

fobose · 12 May 2016 at 11:48

Shortly after I first started work so 16-17. It was when the Pentium 4 Northwood's were out. I think I had 512MB of SD RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4400.

Glanza · 12 May 2016 at 11:50

12 - 13 after going to the old computer fairs that used to be full of all sorts of bits.

pastymuncher · 12 May 2016 at 11:58

2004 was my first self build so I was 37 at the time. Had a couple of pre-built pc's before that and it was only after the last one that I had failed after 1 year and a couple of days and the retailer didn't want to know (they have gone bust since then so karma kicked in) that I started looking into building my own.

TechMinerUK · 12 May 2016 at 12:01

I remember building a PC at 8 years old using old parts from computers my dad had repaired/owned, started learning about PCs at a very young age

snips86x · 12 May 2016 at 12:05

8/9 years old I believe, had an old 386 which had been dismantled.

cmd1989 · 12 May 2016 at 13:08

Saved up enough money to buy 2nd hand parts for my 15th birthday. Put it all together but it kept tripping out after 2 seconds. After a couple of days of racking my brain, my dad paid his mate £50 to have a look at it for me.

Turns out the case/mobo spacers ARE needed. Never made that mistake again!

Adam-r · 12 May 2016 at 13:14

I saved up and build my own at 16. Before that I upgraded the PC in the living room but it wasn't private enough to, erm, watch football videos on, so I build one in my room

StonedPenguin · 12 May 2016 at 13:15

11-12

eazyrider · 12 May 2016 at 13:16

I never have, I watch other people do it for me.

Jamesyboyjim · 12 May 2016 at 13:23

First PC I built on my own, I was 16 or 17, almost all the parts were purchased from forums, I funded the whole thing from my part time job I had while at college, buying a few components each month. I'll never forget when I agreed a good price to buy a 9700 pro

As for tinkering with computers though, since as far as I can remember I was in charge of fixing the family PC

recommending to my dad we get another stick of 64mb ram so windows 98 would run faster

(I'm 31 this month)

GinG · 12 May 2016 at 13:26

Think it was around 17 - 18 years for a full PC build.

Prior to that my first proper gaming PC was a £1.5k top of the range Advent PC

Started tinkering by swapping in new memory, gfx etc until the Athlon couldn't take it anymore and then went to the dark side of C2D until backing AMD again a couple of years ago.

Probabally in the last 11 years or so I have only had 3 PC's. The only one I ever upgraded was the Advent. Not too bad!

strumpusplunket · 12 May 2016 at 13:26

29. Had a mate build me one a year or so earlier which I kind of helped with, but it wasn't really much of a joint effort. First one I sourced and put together completely myself was an AMD Clawhammer/6800GT rig.

I was incredibly nervous as I had very little money at the time and couldn't afford to replace any parts if I messed up. I remember not really feeling sure what I was doing, finding it all a bit fiddly and sweating profusely throughout the whole build.