10 Reasons Why Building a Gaming PC is Awesome

[Skewed Input]

Great article, but being someone who works in lT for a living, it aches me to constantly hear people talk about how they "Know everything about IT" because they put a few computers together at their house. That's like me putting together some IKEA furniture and telling everyone I'm pretty much a carpenter.

 

[DJMIKE25]

I pretty much do the same as the Author. I never do a test boot without anything plugged in. Once I do have it put together, there is always that feeling when you go to press the power button.....Will it start....Won't it start....Why won't it start..... my favorite.. IT STARTED!!.

 

[wcbert]

I tell people I own a Me PC. Built by Me and supported by Me. I only doing this, building my own because it would by very expensive to have i7-440K CPU with 32 GB Memory, 4 Hard drives, 2 are 2TB and the other 2 are 4 TB. A 225 SSD drive as C Drive. Along with a motherboard with build it quality sound, has Wifi and Bluetooth. Add a video card that can drive two NEC color calibrated monitors.

I price one out, would be very expensive and could not get everything. I work as photographer who has not bought into Apple/Mac world as a desktop computer. I do own 15 inch Mac Book Pro for travel as clients like to see a Mac Book. But I need this CPU power/Memory/HD space for my main programs I work with Photoshop, Lightroom and Capture 1 for photo editing and video editing.

But if I was not working as a photographer I would not be building my own. I would buy a less powerful one as I find building a PC is a real pain in the butt.

It takes one day to build a new PC and entire week to install the software, upgrade it and the get the setting in the programs, apps and printers correct before I can get back to work to use it.

And I look at my tower computer as a tool. Just like a screw driver or hammer. It only purpose it to get the job done.

 

[Pinkie Pie]

I wouldn't go so far as to say there are "thousands of things that can go wrong". If you buy quality parts from a reputable source and know which parts to buy and how to assemble them there's usually very little that can go wrong actually. It's something that sounds much harder than it is.

 

[Prosercunus]

#7 is specifically satisfying. The pessimist side of me just assumes I am going to get beeped at or even worse, no beeps.

 

[EClyde]

"The moment when you press the power button and everything works"

Only one that is true. You could have tried to write a good article instead you driveled out.

 

[robb213]

I always skipped #3. I've always preferred reading text reviews of parts from here and other places like Guru3D...maybe because it's something more to read while in the backroom

I always succumb to #2. And the one time I don't, which is this time around, I end up with GPUs I like (2x970s), but have problems that weren't made public until others found out about them (the 512MB VRAM partitioning).


Bending back that tension lever on an LGA processor though for the first time a long time ago scared the hell out of me. I remember hearing the scratching and thinking to myself "I just ruined a $300 CPU! Google for help!"

 

[BlackMoonWolf]

This is is definitely NOT finished.

You forgot "That new part smell."

I would also accept, "That new graphics card smell."

 

[Guest]

I got goosebumps while reading this(y)

 

[renosablast]

By the way, Paul Heimlich no longer works for Newegg.

 

[Antykain]

This is is definitely NOT finished.

You forgot "That new part smell."

I would also accept, "That new graphics card smell."

lol.. true. Almost in comparison to that "New car smell", but not quite. There is nothing like the smell of new PC components though. true.

 

[Artur65]

This is super. but I'm still a fun of sophisticated laptops with I7 and GTX 980 on board.

 

[hkhan1989]

HAHA Love this article!! I pretty much did the exact same steps in order!

I always install Crysis 1, that b*stard of a game use to always cripple any PC I use to install it on, I know there are now more powerful games, but I guess I'm old school and like to say, "this CAN run Crysis".

 

[TorturedChaos]

But I need this CPU power/Memory/HD space for my main programs I work with Photoshop, Lightroom and Capture 1 for photo editing and video editing.

That's along the lines of the same reasons I built my graphic design computer - Photoshop goes through ram like a fat boy at a cup cake factory! I'm wishing I would have went with a quad channel 32 gig ram setup instead of a dual channel 16 gig ram setup. God forbid I leave Photoshop open all night with a file loaded. It seems too magically use more ram just sitting there doing nothing, then I come in the next more to a "Windows is running out of memory" message.

 

[amstech]

Number 7 & 9 is whats it's all about.

This is super. but I'm still a fun of sophisticated laptops with I7 and GTX 980 on board.

980M.

 

[andrew_C]

I read the whole article from start to finish. That really summarizes my feelings on building a PC. Makes me love my ITX PC even more, and I never regret switching from gaming laptop to full fledged gaming ITX PC.

Changing the GPU of the PC is the most fun part for me, because I can always anticipate a huge leap in gaming performance the moment I turn the power on. I'm happy with my GTX 970, a bit crushed when it was finally revealed that this awesome GPU does not actually come with full 4GB VRam (3.5GB + 0.5GB). Looking forward for the next line of GPU (Nvidia GTX 1070 / Nvidia GTX 1080 next maybe?), knowing that I can always buy a new one, and pop it into my PC.

 

[Filip B]

I can't say that has been my experience since Windows 7. Even Linux these days, specifically I have been using SuSE for several years now, the setup is surprisingly easy.

Back in the days of Windows 3.1, or Windows 2000, and perhaps even Windows NT x64, I would agree with you but just not now. Some motherboards even come with the ability to upgrade the bios over the internet without having an OS installed. Things have gotten so much easier that I would have to say if you have not built your own in a while, you should try it.

I've been doing it since I built a 386-SX16 back in the early 90's, and it is almost trivial these days by comparison. In addition, I worked for a small company that built a hardware product which needed a PC. I convinced them that building their own was the way to go. They subsequently hired someone who had no technical background to build them. She told me that she could not build one, and I told her yes you can, trained her, and in less than a month, she was doing just fine.

I've built my latest rig back in june last year and I still think that getting all drivers for each piece of hw is horrendous in comparison to building a PC, but there are definitely worse things to do

 

[Filip B]

Maybe 15 years ago... and even then, all the drivers came neatly packed with the hardware you bought in a CD. So unless you were a freaking pig or those kids that rip boxes apart to get the "shinies" and then dumping everything else, that was not a hard part at all. Even on W95 all you had to do was hit next next skip next next and voila.

Yeah, like you're getting latest drivers on CD's .. geez
I'm not saying it's hard, but it is a huge pain in the *** to setup everything to be good to go

 

[Kibaruk]

Yeah, like you're getting latest drivers on CD's .. geez
I'm not saying it's hard, but it is a huge pain in the *** to setup everything to be good to go

Today you just install the ethernet driver (In case it's not auto-detected like 95% of hardware) and windows will download everything for you.

Also, you should always stick to rule number 1, if it's not broken don't fix it. If drivers work it's totally unnecesary to update them, unless it's the video card that might get some more fps out of improved software for example. Unless it's giving you problems you should never update drivers.

 

[mailpup]

I enjoy building gaming PCs but actually I enjoy building any PC, even basic office and non-gaming PCs. The process is basically the same, only the cost of components is different.

 

[Filip B]

Today you just install the ethernet driver (In case it's not auto-detected like 95% of hardware) and windows will download everything for you.

Also, you should always stick to rule number 1, if it's not broken don't fix it. If drivers work it's totally unnecesary to update them, unless it's the video card that might get some more fps out of improved software for example. Unless it's giving you problems you should never update drivers.

Well that wasn't my case. Had to download most of them manually and flash mobo drivers. I completely agree with your number 1 rule however I like to keep my mobo up to date unlike GPU drivers which I don't really download unless something is broken as it often is with new games.

 

[Kibaruk]

Well that wasn't my case. Had to download most of them manually and flash mobo drivers. I completely agree with your number 1 rule however I like to keep my mobo up to date unlike GPU drivers which I don't really download unless something is broken as it often is with new games.

So you don't care about graphic drivers, but you like to flash the mobo for compatibility with new procs risking bricking your pc, makes perfect sense =P

 

[Filip B]

So you don't care about graphic drivers, but you like to flash the mobo for compatibility with new procs risking bricking your pc, makes perfect sense =P

Never had problems with mobo drivers I can't say the same about nvidia drivers

 

[Antykain]

Never had problems with mobo drivers I can't say the same about nvidia drivers

Yessir.. I've done countless BIOS updates on what seems like countless mobo's and have yet to brick the board in doing so. Not saying it will never happen, it's just that I'm usually careful in making sure it's done the 'proper' way. And yeah, even though all I use is NVIDIA GPU's these days, I cannot say the same for the NVIDIA drivers. Some are great, some I've experienced you need to be careful with installing.

Remember 196.75 and 320.118 NVIDIA driver versions? lol..

 

[melkiik]

Totally agree on this one. Except maybe for part 8?