There are quite a few people buying off the shelf machines (and I admit my current machine is, but only because it was cheaper in this case).

Have you built your own PC?

Apart from the very first one I was given, which was an 8086 or something (ancient) I've built every one of my computers, from my first 386-based board up to this XP3200.

Only one way to learn - do it

That was my first PC (upgraded to an EGA monitor after a year or two), and I had it for aaaaaaaages... The PC after that was a P120, so it was quite an upgrade Strangly enough, because I was so small and knew so little at the time, I found it more than enough to do everything I wanted!

It even had a Windows-esq GUI installed (from some shareware club) and could let me run apps from icons on the "desktop" and even have a basic background. All on a system with 640KB ram

my cousin built my first computer (NF7-S, XP2100, 512Mb PC2700, TI4800 128Mb) and i re-built that into a windowed case about a year ago. Last December i sold it for £450. Built my new one from scratch (see signature) and thats how i because so interested in hardware.

Since then i have built my parents (IC7-G, 2.8c, 512Mb, 9600XT), rebuilt my sisters into a new case (XP2000, 256Mb PC2100, 64Mb internal Ge Force 2 MX), Built my nans (KV7, 2600+, 256Mb PC3500, FX5200), a couple computers for mates, and yesterday i delivered the latest build (A7N8X-E Deluxe, 3200+, 1Gb PC3200, 9800 Pro) to a friend.

There ya go.

I bought me 1st one 2nd hand from and advert in me local paper. It was a Pentium 120, 16mb ram and a woping 1.5gb HD. I upgraded that abit, got it a 4gb HD (£70 back then ), 96mb ram and a Voodoo 1 graphics card. Then one day it just died on me, i didnt bother with it, just chucked it. Then from that I went to an AMD K6 500Mhz, 256mb ram, 20 gig HD, TNT2 32mb graphics card. Which was the business, when Quake 3 was out. Then after that I built my own 1.4ghz Athlon (thunderbird), 512mb ram, Geforce 2 TI, SB Live soundcard, 40 gig HD. Then I went off computers for a while, was getting expensive! Then a couple of years later I bought a Dell Dimension 4600 .

If I was to get a new computer, I think I might build again, its alot of fun when it goes right .

me and my friend built his computer 2 days before we built mine. just to say, we had no idea what we where doing!

lol

did it work?

I think I know how to build computers from scratch since this message is from the one I built. If it get through to PC Review, I must be doing something right.

Have been building since last 15 or so years.

I got a job at sainsburys yesterday and during the first day of induction we got to look round the offices at the back of the store. They have all these shiny new compaq computers in black and silver.... and in the corner they have a light brown computer with an old vdu that can only display green text ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

must be stone aged

I am gonna build my own pc next summer to take to uni, will prolly be posting here every time i melt something .

Anyone know a good site to read up on pc building, already read afew but it cant hurt to read the same information again to make it stick .

Finn