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Entering a contest of sorts, need some help acquiring info for my entry.

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Vishera

Member
Joined
Jul 7, 2013
I'm entering a contest where you build a PC that would be the "modern equivalent" to your first ever computer. It's mostly "equivalent" in budget, and you have to sub,it a listing of the PC you're trying to "recreate", if it was a prebuilt, or some kind of proof of the individual components' prices, if it was custom.

My first system was an eMachines prebuilt with a Celeron D 330, either 256 or 512MB of RAM, can't remember, Windows XP, integrated graphics, and a 128GB IDE Western Digital HDD. It came with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse (no speakers, if I remember correctly). I'm trying to track down accurate pricing for a model like this, as I don't remember the exact model number. Does anyone know of a retro archive of some sort where I could find pricing history on stuff like this? This was around 2002 that my parents bought the machine, so I'm currently checking if Overclockers ever did any coverage on these...found an old thread asking about eMachines in general from '02 here on the forums, so I'm hopeful.

Anyways, wish me luck, and I appreciate any help that can be provided! :santa:
 
Way want to check the wayback machine/Internet archive?

Could probably find MSRPs for the components via some googling

Good lord for some of us this would be damn difficult, my first computer was an IBM that ran DOS in the late 80s/early 90s when I was ~5ish
 

I think this is it.

$550 for a tower, monitor, speakers, mouse, and keyboard. That was more expensive than I would've guessed, we weren't exactly gushing money back when we would've first gotten this. Wonder if it was a gift from my grandparents...

Either way, plugging in $550 to an inflation calculator, we get ~$1,030. Plenty of wiggle room, I'd say, though the rules do say we have to match parts, in terms of how "good" they are compared to how "good" the parts in the PC were. On that note, I have a question: What do you guys think a modern equivalent to an 80GB HDD would be today? I didn't really pay attention to computers extensively until the early 2010s, so I have no idea if that was a lot for the time, or?
 
My guess would be a 1TB Hybrid HDD or SSD.
That seems fair. These PCs were usually marketed as "affordable" (although $550 in ~2003 money is certainly cutting it close), so it certainly wasn't a lot by any means. Also, I forgot to set the year in my inflation calculator, it defaults to 2000. So budget is actually $950.
 
So. Something fun I've just realized with the way the rules are worded...

We're recreating these systems in spirit, with similarly performing components within the context of modern computing. So, for example, if your first PC was a Core 2 Quad Extreme based system (lucky bastard), that CPU was top of the line at the time, so you'd be allowed to use a 7950X3D as your CPU, or a 9950X3D (if that exists, I don't really keep up with CPU releases anymore), because that would be the top of the line right now. Where it gets interesting is, this would apply to RAM as well, and it's based on the percentage of what your maximum was. So, for a 32-bit system like mine, the limit was 4GB. The maximum possible RAM capacity for the eMachines model I had was 2GB, which is 50% of the limit. If you had a 64-bit system, the limit changes to your motherboard's max capacity.

So, for the motherboard I've picked out for my recreation system, the limit is 192GB. Which means I'm allowed 96GB of RAM., if it fits within the budget. :rofl:

To clarify, budget is the heaviest weighted metric, followed by "accuracy" (using parts that fit within the overall hierarchy of latest releases the same way the ones in the original system did).


So that's what I've come up with. Really highlights how imbalanced these systems were. Having a CPU that was essentially already e-waste out of the box, paired with 50% of the at the time hard limit on RAM capacity is just wild to me. Went with an entry level CPU with integrated graphics, since there was no dedicated GPU in the eMachines system. That hilarious 96GB of RAM. Some cheapo peripherals, and the cheapest monitor I could find, which for some reason was a 100Hz height adjustable MSI unit? Find that kinda weird. And a copy of Windows (required by the rules). I didn't even use the full budget, which surprises me. There's also a caveat in the rules that PSUs have to be decent quality, for safety reasons, I would assume they probably don't want the liability of people buying some ticking time bomb Chinese unit. I really like my case choice here, particularly because it's a top mounted PSU case, just like mid-2000s prebuilts always were. With that 120mm fan to replace the rear mounted 90mm included with the case as intake, and the PSU as exhaust, I'd say this system might actually stay fairly cool!

I'll update the thread with pictures when everything arrives, and let y'all know where I placed! I might also do some stress testing before I return everything, see how hilariously underpowered this mishmash of parts is...
 
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