easymode

NGL but I miss this build, which I had for a few years (about 2011-2015). Heavily inspired by the early tek syndicate years. Very inexperienced and awkward setup. An approximate, but not exact reproduction. I can't even remember what's happened to it.

CPU: AMD FX-4350 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($78.02 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler ($25.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 PLUS ATX AM3+ Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1333 CL9 Memory ($39.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: *TEAMGROUP CX2 256 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($46.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: *Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($71.06 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GV-N65TOC-2GI REV2.0 GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2 GB Video Card
Case: Corsair Graphite Series 760T ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply
Monitor: Acer K242HL Bbid 24.0" 1920 x 1080 60 Hz Monitor
Keyboard: Zowie CELERITAS Wired Standard Keyboard
Mouse: Zowie EC1-eVo Wired Optical Mouse

Unfortunately I no longer have the receipts for the first desktop PC I ever built around 2015, but I do remember this,

CPU: i5-4690
GPU: XFX R9 390X
Mobo: Some ASUS Mini-ITX thing
Memory: 8 GB DDR3

Having a Mini-ITX build was very cute but I don't think it's worth it for gaming. The air flow was very bad inside of such a tiny case.

Only way a Mini ITX build worked (in my own mind) was if it was built into a traditional tower case, and I think that defeated the whole purpose of MiniITX for me

My first PC build was cobbled together Dells from the 90s my Dad got for free from the work junk pile. There was nothing super special about them but I was able to play SCK2 and RCT on them. It was a lot of fun to smash stuff together and hope it was better than what I started with.


The first proper box I built was during college. It was nothing special from what I can recall, it was a cheap Pentium dual core with 4GBs of RAM (this was during the sandy bridge days) and the college made me pay over 1k for this lovely junk box.

Disappointed with what college provided me I started to work more overtime to get some extra cash to build a proper gaming desktop. The receipts are lost to time but I still have most of the PC today.

CPU: i5-2500k
GPU: nVidia 550TI (Later to be SLI 550TIs)
Mobo: Intel Pro ATX board
Memory: 8GB DDR3

It served many years as a gaming and learning box. Then it got used as a server, then a router. Now it just hangs around as something I play with. I probably should get it recycled but I like having it around.

I had:

FX-8150
Nvidia 660Ti
8GB RAM (later upgraded to 16GB)

from 2012 - 2019, that was my first PC build with my own money and being an idiot teenager I thought that more cores = faster, although during university the extra cores and virtualization features actually made me glad I'd gotten it over the 2500k that always seemed to run games better.

I also snagged an RX580 for cheap when the crypto market crashed in late(?) 2017 and all the miners were dumping them. I still have the parts, maybe if I start getting nostalgic for Windows 7 I'll rebuild it.

my first proper build is going to be newer than most of the folks here, as I used hand me down computers until the last couple years of high school ( i had a pentium 4 late until late 2012, lol), and i didnt build a fully custom rig until college.

so, from late 2012 to early 2017, I had an office PC with a sandy bridge pentium and low profile gpu. finally, in 2017, I built my first proper rig:

i3 6100
8 GB DDR4 (eventually upgraded to 16)
ASUS mATX motherboard...think it was an h110m-e
1 TB HDD (later got a 256 GB SSD)
EVGA GTX 1050 Ti
EVGA 500 watt bronze PSU
DeepCool Tesseract (I miss this case, regret giving it to my step brother....same with the 1050 Ti...)
this rig lasted me until covid. I've been on a ship of theseus'd AM4 build since then.

I upgraded my PC from 2012 to be more of a Sleeper Build for a LAN party:

CPU: AMD FX-6120
GPU: RX 580
Ram: 16 GB DDR3
1TB SSD
Motherboard: Pegatron IPMTB-TK
Upgraded Power Supply to handle the GPU.

It games pretty well I've been using it as a guest desktop for some LAN parties and it runs games like Counter Strike 2 just fine! Also comes with Beats Audio from back in the day.

Unfortunately it looks like I don't have any photos from the first PC I built, but it didn't last long in it's original form lol. This was put together in early 2013
AMD FX 6300
Enermax ETS-T40 Cooler
Asus M5A97 R.20 AM3+ mobo
2x4GB Skill Sniper RAM
HIS IceQ Radeon HD 7950
Antec 620w PSU
NZXT Source 220 Case

Like I said, this version didn't last very long because at the time I was playing a lot of Skyrim and even with the CPU and GPU overclocked it never ran very well and the weak single thread performance was most likely the cause. So I ended up ordering a new cpu and mobo and a few other things in early 2014
Intel i5 4670K
Enermax ETS-T40 Cooler
Asus z87 Plus
2x4GB Skill Sniper RAM
HIS IceQ Radeon HD 7950
Antec 620w PSU
Fractal Design Define R4 A friend gave me a GTX 980 in late 2016/early 2017 and I added an additional 8GB of ram and used this PC until the end of 2021

Casey wrote: Feb 22nd, '26, 16:51 i3 6100
8 GB DDR4 (eventually upgraded to 16)
ASUS mATX motherboard...think it was an h110m-e
1 TB HDD (later got a 256 GB SSD)
EVGA GTX 1050 Ti
EVGA 500 watt bronze PSU
DeepCool Tesseract (I miss this case, regret giving it to my step brother....same with the 1050 Ti...)
this rig lasted me until covid. I've been on a ship of theseus'd AM4 build since then.

found an old pic of this setup, if anyone was curious.

I was looking through some old photos trying to find one of my original build, and I came across this PC that I built for my cousin. I remember it had 4770k and GTX 770 but that's it. The NZXT Phantom cases were so cool and I'm a little sad they don't make them anymore.