My main PC over the years
My main PC over the years evolved slowly but surly :)
It all started back in 1994 when i got my first PC. At the time 486 were very wide spread but a new super power came into existence and i got the following system as a present from my parents
The specs were
CPU: Pentium 75 MHZ ( see the cpu details )
RAM: 16 MB ( the guy who sold the PC said get 16MB of RAM you’ll be able to run all the games, dont buy only 8MB :) )
HDD: 610 MB
GPU: not really sure what it was
Some Sound card
CD DRIVE: 4X speed read only
Monitor: 14 Inch
Modem: external 14,4K dial up
For a 11 year old kid this was a dream come true, and many games were played like Doom, Prince of Persia, incredible machines, stunts, basically all you can now play in a web browser :) Bellow are a few pictures ( not my pictures) of how all of this looked
During the next years some upgrades were made, now im not sure if the motherboard was changed to accept a faster CPU or it could handle that
The UPGRADE
CPU: Pentium 166 MHZ
GPU: ATI RAGE 1MB and eventually 3D accelerated cards came out and i got a VooDoo 1, a killer 4MB GPU, that had to be interconnected to the ATI RAGE in order to work. I loved this card so much you cant imagine what Z-buffer did for us then. Bye bye pixels and hello smooth textures and so much improved game play. Also the iconic 3D fx logo, it is a shame that the company went bust in the next years as it was really a awesome at the time
The next upgrade was a bit bigger and i was stuck with this configuration for a good number of years, till it came to the point that games became totally unplayable and i had to take out the sound card that the CPU would not even consider generation sound and only focus on graphics. That did raise a few FPS
CPU: Intel Pentium II 266 MHZ
RAM: 48 MB
CD DRIVE: 8X
GPU: ATI RATE II 2MB and still the Voodoo 1
2DN New main PC
So it was about the year 2000 and my main PC had to be changed over the years. So i picked out a system that was rather good for that time. At this time AMD kinda passed over Intel in the CPU game and ATI was also strong on the GPU front over Nvidia. Those 2 companies really went after one another in those times:
the build was
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ ( that actually ran at a lover clock 1833MHZ but the 2500 in the name was a mark on how it compared to a 2500 MHZ Intel CPU)
GPU: not really sure but it was a ATI card with maybe 32 or 64 MB of space
RAM: 64 MB
Screen: 17 inch
HDD: about 10 GB
modem: 28.6K external
UPGRADES TO my main PC over the years was:
CPU: AMD ATHLON 3200+
RAM: 265 MB
GPU: swapped to a Nvidia card but again not sure what model it was
Modem: finally a internal 56K modem
3RD main PC
It was 2008 when the old AMD could not cut it any more, looking at games and also no being able to play HD videos it was time for a change. I luckily manged to sell thePC for a decent amount and that helped with the new PC
CPU: Intel Q6600
Mother board: ASUS P5KC with support for DDR2 and DDR3 RAM
RAM:2GB of DDR2
HDD: 300 GB
GPU: Nvidia 8800GT
PSU: 750 LC Power
Monitor: 21 Inch LCD
This ran pretty good over the next 4 years the only thing i changes was the GPU as the 8800GT died and i swapped it out with a used
GPU: ATI 4850 vapor x 1 GB that also gave a performance boost to My main PC over the years
and
RAM: 4GB of DDR3 as the board luckily supported it
4TH main PC
in 2012 it was kinda time for the Q6600 to say good bye as new technology started to roll out, like USB 3.0, SATA 3, SSD’s , PCI-E 3.0. And all of those thing required a motherboard change and along with that also a CPU change. The other stuff like the RAM, HDD, GPU, PSU i could keep and transfer to the new platform and also a transfer to a new case
So i managed to sell the Mobo, CPU and cooler quick and for a nice price and got
CPU: i7 3770K
Mother board: GA-Z77X-UP4 TH
case: Antec P280
So i took it slow with the upgrade and manged to sell of the 4850 and the 4 GB of DDR3 got a
GPU: AMD 7970 Vapor-X
RAM: 8GB Corsair Dominator 1600MHZ CL 9
after a month or two got one
SSD: Intel 330 128 GB and
and the next month another Intel 330 SSD and put them in RAID 0 :D
After about a year i got very interested in PC modding and made my first set of custom sleeved cables and also made my first mod the S7 desk
After i finished up the S7 desk i wanted to get more into the see what My main PC over the years can really do. So i got on the used market and got another
GPU: 7970 Vapor -X
and also upgraded my monitor setup to
3 x 21 inch screens in eyefinity setup
In that time AMD came up with a ingenious idea to make crossfire over the PCI-E slot and not needing a bridge like Nvidia still dose. This was introduced in their R9 290 series. That gave me very good inspiration to start to design my new desk the S7 desk 2015
And to see how this new feature works I manged to sell off my 2 x 7970 for a good price and manged to score a used R9 290X and a R9 290 for a very very good price. With that I also had to replace the LC Power 750W CPU as the R9 290X and the R9 290 are very power hungry and went for a used
PSU: Corsair RM 1000W
and also i managed to find used the exact same Dominator RAM and i got 4GB more to be totaled at 12GB. At the time no game could not be played on full details on a 3 screen eyefinity setup at 5040 x 1050
Here you can see the test of the cards running in cross fire over PCI-E raiser cables, that was the basis of my new S7 desk design
5th main PC
it was 2016 and again new technologies started to crap out , Z170 chipset, Nvme drives more powerful GPU’s that had lower power consumption.
since 2014 and 2016 i was well in PC modding you can check out my award wining Raised from the dead mod
Sadly the new S7 Desk never came to be as at the time no sponsors were able to cooperate with me on the project, so that is still open. If any SPONSORS are interested you can contact me on info@s7design.si and maybe we can make it a reality
As i also got very interested in 3D design and renders and the new S7 desk was not going anywhere i decided to sell the R9 290X and R9 290 and sell them off i did and quite fast. At that time there was only one card to go for and that was the
GPU: TITAN X 12GB
Also bought that used but with 2 year warranty :)
After a month or so i felt the need to replace the older Z77 platform with the new Z170
CPU: Intel i7 6700K
Mother board: Z 170 Asus ROG HERO
RAM: DDR4 FURY 16 GB
SSD: Samsung NVMe 950 PRO 512 GB
i left the PSU and the Antech 280 case and the CPU cooler from the Z77 system
Who knows what the 6Th my main PC over the years will bring in hopefully 2020 and what ill manage to sell of and what parts ill be able to buy used.
the re-selling of the parts and buying used part, did save me a lot of money and gave me the options to but better parts then i could afford if i bought them new.
I manly buy new:
CPU’s
Motherboards
SSD’s and Drives that i need to work perfectly. ( for modding projects i buy also used)
RAM – if you just turn the generation and not much new RAM is avaliable
Used you can go wtih
GPU’s ( even better if they have any warranty left)
RAM – for older generations DDR2 and DDR3, now also DDR4 are comming to the used market
PSU – if they are still in warranty
So hope you enjoyed the read and hope to update this list soon :D