An Old Gaming Computer

Back when I was young and foolish I remember how eager and excited I was to build my first gaming computer. At the time, I didn't really have a clue about all the technical aspects of building a great gaming rig, I simply new (or thought) that I needed high end and expensive parts. My older bro took me to a local computer store that specialized in selling high end computer parts.

I went in as happy as a kid on Christmas morning nearly drooling over all the cool parts. I came in with about $500 (mind you at age 16 that's seems like a lot) and was expecting to build a rig that although was not the best, still a pretty solid one none the less. After looking around for a bit, the shop owner comes up and asks if he could be of any assistance. I tell him I'm looking to build a "sweet" gaming rig. He asked me right away how much I had to work with? I let him know I had about $500. He gives me a rather surprised expression and says "well I'll see what I can do."

I of course was in even more shock to find out that my hard earned $500, which I figured would be more then enough to build a nice computer tower, wasn't going to provide as much as I thought. So after about 30mins of looking at the best video cards, motherboards and processors I could afford, I ended up settling on the 4 major components I needed which came out to be a PCI-express x16 motherboard, 2.4ghz Intel core 2 duo CPU, 1 or 2gb's (don't quite remember) of ddr2 memory and a Geforce 6600 graphics card.


Now being my first rig that I actually built myself and being fascinated by the looks of these "sweet" parts, I went home with a big grin. Now once I got everything setup at home, although satisfied with my purchase, I wasn't to happy with the rest of my rig so over the next few pay checks I ended up spending $350 on a 19" flat panel monitor, $80 on a Logitech 5.1 surround sound system and $30 on a wireless keyboard/mouse, all of which were on sale.

All said and done I had (at the time) a pretty nice gaming rig capable of playing my favorite game Counter Strike Source without so much as a hiccup that only cost me about a $1000. Thinking back now though I was very naive and impatient because 5 years later and much more experienced I ended buying a rig ONLINE at a very great well known computer parts store (newegg.com) that blows my old rig (tower internals) out of the water and it only cost me about $200. So, the moral of the story, if your gonna go big, unless you don't care and have money to blow "DO YOUR RESEARCH!!".