did you build or buy your pc?

i thought it would be interesting to know how everyone got there pc.
did you build it or buy from a store.
personally i bought mine i wouldn't know where to start to build one..

 

i had a friend build mine for me, all i had to do was give him the specs i wanted and give him the money and he built it for me.

 

Built it - cheaper and can customise your liking
Would've been better to make this poll public too!

 

I have only bought 2 computer my whole life. The first was in 1991 (486DX, 33MHz, 104MB, 4MB RAM), and my laptop. I have bought all my other computers (at least 5 others)

 

yea i should of made it public

 

Built it.

Got a (at the time) killer deal on a barebones system:

$400 for

Ultra Wizard Case
Asus A8N-SLI Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Ultra Infinity 550W PSU
512MB PC3200 RAM
250GB Maxtor SATA HDD
LG 16x Dual Layer DVD Burner

Sold the RAM and hard drive, and bought myself:

2GB Corsair RAM
2x 320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA II w/ 16MB cache (in RAID 0)
2x MSI GeForce 7600GT (in SLI config)
Windows XP x 64

 

I bought mine, and my next one I have planned will be purchased too. I have very loose plans to start building a PC once I have my own place.

 

Actually, what I described above is my MAIN rig.

The last computer I acquired was a cheapie OEM for me to learn Linux on.
It's a Lenovo 3000 J Series.

 

I have built all my pc's. The only bad thing is that I have never managed to be able to get a floppy drive working. I always seem to screw it up

 

I've build all mine, around 30 or so over the years, floppy and all. BM, you need to use some 5.25" too, just for laughs (really, it's funny!). I'm passing it on and teaching my boy how to do it, more or less.

Only storebought I would own is a lappy, and that's because it's not practical any other way.

 

Same here, and for the same reasons. Now I do I.T. jazz (most) of the time.

 

Built my own... I upgrade once a year...

 

I bought my first PC in 1997 - a 166mhz Cyrix with a whopping 32mb of RAM and a 2GB (or maybe a 4 - it's all fuzzy now) hard-drive. It hurts to state what I paid for it . . . sigh. I loved the thing, and tinkered with Win98 no end. Its gutted carcass still serves a usefull purpose - holding the furnace room door open in the basement when needed, and apparently providing a home for wayward spiders as well.

My next two PC's were bought for me (women buy me things, what can I say? ). Both were Emachines - and I still have both - though I've replaced the motherboard, then processor, power supply, etc. in one of 'em. I guess that makes it an x-Emachine . . . the only Emachine part left is the case.

The first PC I built was for my eldest son - we wanted to set up a LAN in the house so we could play multiplayer games, and we needed a third PC. I bought an Intel D815EEA board, 256mb of PC133 RAM, a 733MHZ PIII processor, and salvaged the 2 (or 4) GB hard-drive, optical drive, floppy, etc. from my original PC. I bought a cheapo case from the 'net - came with a 400W power supply (which later killed the board in the Emachine . . . but that's another story rolleyes . . . lesson learned - don't skimp on the power supply . . . ). The PC ran Win98SE and worked pretty well for the games that we played . . . though I made several mistakes when I built it - like putting an optical drive on the same channel as the hard-drive . . . I'm surprised it worked as well as it did. That PC survives still - I upgraded it as a gift for my pop.

I hungered for more . . . so the next PC I built was gonna be mine, and state of the art (well, as state of the art as my budget allowed). I ended up with a P4 3.0E socket 470 processor on a P4P800SE motherboard, 1gb of PC3200 RAM, and a single 80GB SATA drive. I opted for a Radeon 9800 Pro All-in-wonder (which I had to outfit with an after-market Zalman cooling system right out of the box . . . again, another story). I shelled out the extra cash for XP Pro. The hardware was not cutting edge at the time, but still viable. I've since upgraded.

I've built several since then . . . some for friends, some for myself. I have a decent video cruncher PC based on the same processor as my main PC. It's the one I tinker with as far as overclocking goes. I recently put a 250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 secondary drive in it.

I'm planning my next main PC - I sure wish I had the cash I shelled out on that old 166 Cyrix in '97 . . . I could build one hellava PC!

Now that I think about it, I could have responded to this thread with a simple "I've built my own" . . . LOL

Guess I just got all excited . . .

 

I bought first two and built this one. I will never buy a pre-built again,

 

LOL

It's hard NOT to, isn't it? I mean, this is why we're HERE, no?

 

Cheaper? Not usually. If you shop right, you will find OEM for around the same price, and when sales happen, cheaper.

 

Perhaps he means cheaper to get exactly what you want???
I've always found that when you customize an OEM, they take it as an opportunity to gouge you...you're kinda stuck with what they're offering at the time.

Perhaps I don't shop right, though...

 

that or one of those massive 8" bad boys

 

Newp.

 

I dont disagree with you. It is cheaper, to get specifically what you want, but as a general build, its not.

Does that make more sense?

 

I call mine "Frankenstein" for obvious reasons = it's made of leftovertures and scraps - BTW, that's the Young Frankenstein pronunciation - with the Euro "A".
The case has been with me for many years, the innards are bargain basement junk. P4 Prescott @3.0ghz, pcchips mb, old geforce 4400 vidcard, 1 gig generic RAM, noname CD and DVD drives, 2 used hard drives @ 120 gig and 250 gig.
It's a miracle it works and it has strengthened my faith by working!
I say it runs by Grace of God and Major help from Major Geeks.
Blessings All,
Port-O-San

 

if all you want is a box to browse the Internet and get email, go to dell.

if you want a machine for a particular use, ie. gaming or code work, build it

 

If you want a machine for gaming, get a damn Xbox
Its cheaper.

If you need something for coding, you could still go a mixture of OEM and DIY and be better off.

 

Definitely is for us UK folk - Dell and other big companies still continue to rip you off. I can pick up parts and have a cheaper build. Also I can claim VAT back

 

Can get one up and going in 20 mins.

 

Built it...I think I'm on my fourth incarnation. How long it takes depends on what mood I'm in and if there's anyone else in the house.

I wish I could build laptops, but alas, I have to just spec them and get what I want that way for a LOT more money.

 

I'm going to assume that mcadam means hardware only. Installation and patching of the OS, drivers and applications makes it quite a bit longer, unless you have an image to simply push onto it.

 

For sure, because I recall it taking me 30 min. or longer just to unpack from box and hook up peripherals, and boot it up the first time.

 

I built this one, and my next one. (#2 doesn't run yet.)

I put the second one together in the course of an afternoon. About two hours. (Way more holes for spacers than I needed and It's hard to tell which goes where. Not to mention the joys of avoiding damage.)

The one I'm on now I can take apart and reassemble in fifteen minutes, so I can clean it.

And I built my computer for just under four hundred dollars, sans Windows and Video Card.

What's wrong with that?

 

A lot. But being this isn't a technical thread, I'll just leave it at your devices on an IDE chain run as fast as the slowest device.

 

bought.

Dont have the know-how to build my own-yet.

 

First one I built was 333 Mhz AMD K6-2, remember putting a voodoo banshee in that bad boy, current system is a AMD 6000+ with 2 gigs corsair and a 7800GT Nvidia card. Never bought one from a store, I like to know the system and pick and choose the parts after reading reviews. This is about my 8th box, more recently I put together a Micro ATX system with a celeron and 2 gigs as a Linux File, samba, media, MySQL server

 

Building a PC these days isn't any harder than wiring your TV,DVD and cable up,finding out why it wont turn on can often be quite a bit harder

 

Oddly enough, the information and the equipment are easy enough to get. The know-how you have to sweat for.

Myself, I have only read one manual, and do not have the gear yet. Reading manuals is the easiest part. The sweating is the part I have to do in some months time. Both to get materials, then to actually build it.

 

One of the reasons I like to build my own is it really is educational. I have grasp of hardware over the years I wouldn't have otherwise. My last build is still ongoing, as I've had a lot of technical issues. No one ever said learning was cheap.

The older hardware, as in the days of XTs, was a lot harder than new stuff. Basically everything had switches, and if you didn't have a manual you just went through the combinations and hoped for the best. 8 switches meant 256 combinations, and only one worked, and it wasn't unusual for there to be more. Sometime it worked, sometimes it didn't. Nowdays the new stuff talks to the motherboard and configures itself.

I started off with a TRS 80 in the late 70's, and have been hooked ever since. This accounts for the large numbers I've built. Still have a back room full of older parts, the curse of the packrat.

 

My first build was this August, it was also the first desktop of my own.

Stats
Amd 64x2 6000+
3 Gb DDR2 800 Ram
Nvida 8600GT Video Card
320Gb WD harddrive

I'm already planning my next build, but unfortunately my budget isn't agreeing with it. I'll never buy a computer again with the exception of a laptop. (for reasons stated by others)

 

Bought.
I'm only 20!
Currently gathering know-how and reviews for upgrade, and then onto my first build =)

 

Installation of Windows et all necessary software - I allow 2 hours for.

I've been building since I was 16 - your point?!?!?!

 

True that!

 

Hehehe, me to! I've built four rigs for myself over the course of four years and two others for family friends. I'm 20 now, and I'm about to start on another rig. The only computer I've ever bought was my laptop since its not very practical to build those. :drink

 

Bought 7 for family since 1996 (4 desktops & 3 laptops). Never one for myself brand new. I get the hand me downs and have to take care of them.:mad
I want to build one so bad I can taste it. Maybe this year finally. Quad core:drool

 

wow you guys realy know your stuff. i seriously would not know where to start it would be like setting all the parts on the floor in front of a chimp & saying! there you go put it togatherroflmao