
Building my first PC eventually landed me a dream job
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
Fast forward to 2006 and it was the height of Unreal Tournament 2004. I was the community lead for one of the most popular servers around at the time, one that featured assault and racing maps. When not at college studying, I would spend countless hours each day online with hundreds of people. It was awesome as a 16-year-old at the time with nothing better to do.
From there, I entered the working world and today I’m fortunate enough to get paid writing about technology I adore. I have so many fond memories of gaming on PC, coupled with experimenting on older hardware with different system builds, server deployment for games, and more.
The early days of PC gaming
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
My first PC was powered by an Intel Pentium P55C with a clock speed of approximately 200MHz.
The gameplay was spectacular at the time. This was the first PC Dungeons & Dragons game and I was instantly hooked. The only issue was lack of time to enjoy it while attending school and having but one hour every other day on the family PC. In 2001, my father had a custom PC built for him by a colleague from work and I was amazed at what was delivered. It was a masterpiece compared to the Tiny PC we had prior.
This is what got me started in wanting to build PCs. After weeks of begging my old man to give me what remained of our old family PC, he agreed and I was able to strip it bare. I recall it being powered by an Intel Pentium P55C with a clock speed of approximately 200MHz. RAM was far less than 512MB and the newly-acquired 10GB HDD was the highlight I thought would take me to the next level.
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
Migrating to the online world
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
I played a major role in running one of the more popular Unreal Tournament 2004 servers for years.
Having net access completely changed computing for me, particularly gaming. Over the years, I managed to save up enough to put together my own rig, getting rid of that underpowered monstrosity in 2005. This was where I entered into the Intel Celeron game with some amazing ATI (AMD Radeon) graphics. It was time to move on from Runescape and onto Unreal Tournament 2004.
Unreal Tournament 2004 was massively popular during 2004-2008. I helped run one of the more popular servers, which provided countless assault and racing maps for up to 32 people at a time to enjoy. It was wild with so many people on TeamSpeak and in-game. Managing a bustling community forum at the side was but the icing on a very delicious cake. (If you played on the BIG server, I went by “Traygon”, “RichEdmonds”, and “ShinRyuu”.)
The only surviving screenshot from my UT2K4 days on the AS-PWC-Office map.Source: Windows Central
This is where my PC building skills took off, alongside my desire to create some special-looking rigs myself. Oh, and Windows Vista launched. Continuing to manage servers, run my own, and dabble in some code, in 2008 I landed a job at an SEO agency in London as a technician — basically running scripts, assisting advisors with data sourcing, and managing infrastructure.
Beyond 60Hz and realistic visuals
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
That’s about the same time I joined WMExperts in 2010, which rebranded to Windows Phone Central. We were primarily a resource for all things Microsoft’s mobile platform, but with the end approaching it was time we expanded our coverage. The PC landscape improved drastically too. We had multi-core processors, amazing graphics processing cards, and massive storage drives. Advancements made in the modding scene made water-cooling a more appealing choice for system builders.
How did you get into PC gaming and did it help motivate you into building your own rigs? I’d love to read your stories!
We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.