When you were able to afford buying your own PC?

[kyuzkyuz]

First of all, hi! I'm new here at Overclock3D forums
My native language is not english but I do my best to say what I have in mind haha.

Direct to the point:
How old were you since you could have a good job, enough money and time to use it in all this tech-thing?
I don't have a work yet, I'm a student. I DREAM to have enough money to buy my own rig and mess with it a little and all. I really enjoy this stuff, but well... I'm poor haha.

I'm 23 at the time and college takes almost all of my free time u.u, so I wanna have an idea of when I might be able to afford everything haha.

PD. Sorry for the bad english haha

 

[PingPangBV]

Well first of all your english isn't bad at all, and welcome to c3d: mate =)

And well yes, when I was able to afford building my own computer was after I had started working as an Electricians Apprentice which was a year ago. So yeah I was 18 years old.

After a few paychecks I decided to step up from my pretty shitty laptop to a decent desktop looking something like this:

Cooler Master CM690 Advanced
MSI P67 GD65
I5 2500K
Corsair TX 750
Corsair Venegance 2X4GB
Gainward GTX 560ti Phantom
Seagate Barracouda 1TB
Corsair Force 3 60GB

Until then I had only been gaming on half-decent laptops and always had to turn down graphics settings to the lowest to get playable framerates. Then I got my desktop and that changed my gaming experience to a new level.

Eventually I gave that desktop to my sister and now a year later I'm rocking a 2600K with two GTX 670's and all watercooled by a custom loop. At this point money's not a problem anymore, it's just annoying to wait for those hardware releases =/

 

[kyuzkyuz]

Thanks man! I love you already <3 haha.
And nice! My PC is not even the half of what you described there! You should have given that PC to me! hahaha, I'm joking of course :B.

But you live with your parents, right? I mean, that's a very good thing if you can, but in my situation that's not possible. I have to pay my rent, my food, transportation, school, bla bla bla. It's the problem of studying far away from home. My parents help me, sure, but they have their own issues with money, so sadly I really can't ask for more cash for this kind of things.
Sometimes I don't even have enough to eat properly haha. Lucky me, I have some friends that can give me a hand when I can't handle things on my own.

But leaving that aside, how much money (approx) do you guys think it takes to have a decent (or not thaat decent) apartment, enough food and be able to afford all the hardware? What do you do for a living? I really really really wanna have my own experiences customizing a desktop :lol:, liquid cooling, overclocking and everything. Is it that expensive? Because of my lack of experience, I might even damage some components in the beggining... haha

EDIT!
PD: I forgot to say that I envy you, PingPangBV hahaha. Have a nice day

 

[PingPangBV]

Thanks man! I love you already <3 haha.
And nice! My PC is not even the half of what you described there! You should have given that PC to me! hahaha, I'm joking of course :B.

But you live with your parents, right? I mean, that's a very good thing if you can, but in my situation that's not possible. I have to pay my rent, my food, transportation, school, bla bla bla. It's the problem of studying far away from home. My parents help me, sure, but they have their own issues with money, so sadly I really can't ask for more cash for this kind of things.
Sometimes I don't even have enough to eat properly haha. Lucky me, I have some friends that can give me a hand when I can't handle things on my own.

But leaving that aside, how much money (approx) do you guys think it takes to have a decent (or not thaat decent) apartment, enough food and be able to afford all the hardware? What do you do for a living? I really really really wanna have my own experiences customizing a desktop :lol:, liquid cooling, overclocking and everything. Is it that expensive? Because of my lack of experience, I might even damage some components in the beggining... haha

Well thanks for complementing my rig =)

And no I don't live with my parents, I'm renting a bedsit (is that even the correct word? I used google translate for that ). Well pretty much a mini apartment for one person. And how can I afford that? well I'm in a lucky position where I'm tecnically a student but I'm employed aswell-an Electrician Apprentice.

When you do get money eventually you might want to hold the custom watercooling off for a bit, it's really really expensive and can ruin expensive equipment really easily.

But yeah I'd love to chat for hours but I've got a plane to catch in a couple of hours, traveling back to Norway from a vacation in Thailand =) I'l be lokking on the forums late Sunday so I'l check in then =)

 

[MrKambo]

welcome to the club

ive been working since the day i turned 15, started of as Sundays only then as time went on i started working more and more, ive been to university, college all that jazz, but always stayed close to home, so living on campus wasn't an issue.

im 24 now and still live at home, ive been paying for my own stuff since i was working, you know you get that first big responsibility stick! started of with my push bike, back then cost me about £700, but it was all aluminum disc brakes the lot! took months of saving! was only earning about £170 a month.

Then it got to cars, pc, holidays etc etc. i currently work in pharmaceuticals have done for the last 3 years, money isnt exactly what the industry hypes it up to be, still live at home with my parents, but i chip in with the mortgage, i do my own food shopping, i also cover the sky/internet bills, all the tv, blu ray techy stuff in my house was purchased by me.

im a firm believer of hard work pays off, i work ridiculous hours every week, and i dont have much of a social life, odd beer and party here and there nothing worth 'stopping the press' all the techy stuff is a way of rewarding myself, makes the long work days worth it

Everyone's circumstances always change, before this job i was out of work for a year, having the qualifications i did have was hard to find work, just need to find the balance between 'living to work' and 'working to live'

my advice, save a little amount of money a month, and soon it'll grow, cant expect it to happen overnight, the money im spending on a new rig, took me 11 months to save, to some people that's a long time to others short time, but at the end of day, what we do is a luxury not a necessity

 

[kyuzkyuz]

I have been trying to save money since 2010, but everytime I gather enough, that money saves my ass in something else. But it's ok! Everything would have been worse if I didn't have it haha. Gotta still saving :B

Thanks for sharing all your experiences and advices <3

 

[crispy345]

I was 12-13 when I really bought my own computer. My dad gave it to me as a gift, and pain 1/5 of it, while the rest went from my own pocket. It was a pre-built PC, but not those of the HP/Dell kind. It was using some quality parts, and if I don't remember right it sported

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
Kingston 4GB DDR2 2x2GB PC2-5300
XFX HD4770
Chieftec Smart Series 550W
Cooler Master Elite 310 case
WD Green 1TB
ASUS P5QPL-AM
Lite-On IHAS24

It came with a 3 year warranty, and after 2.5 years it failed. I sent the computer back, and it came back with a
i3 2120
Kingston 4GB 2x2GB 1600Mhz
ASUS P8H77-LE

and that computer is now used as a folding rig. Nothing really other than the case and GPU is upgraded, and it's still a good computer.