10 Reasons Why Building a Gaming PC is Awful

[Ziffel]

#7 should have been #1

 

[Evernessince]

Fyi people, this article is an old dug up one so don't try and contact the author over it. You can get newer one's from Kotaku.

On that note, for the uninformed, anti-static bracelets don't do anything if you have them clipped to a computer case or piece of metal that isn't grounded. You have to plug in a ground only power cable or 3 prong power cable with the PSU switch set to off while hooked to a wall outlet that is grounded. That or just buy anti-static gloves.

 

[MrV2K]

Dont forget...

1. Put together £1000 of computer components
2. Press On Button
3. Nothing
4. 3 more days of nothing..
5. Take back components to get RMA number
6. 3 day soak test.
7. All components returned to you with no errors
8. Build £1000 computer again
9. Press power button
10. Nothing
11. Phone friend who is IT specialist
12. Get asked if you switched power supply on.
13. Flick switch and press power button.
14. Lights go on.
15. Take own life.

 

[Scorpionking20]

I must concur with a few things on here. Having built a new pc in January and having buyers remorse.
Bought a ROG hero vii ... omfg. Sound cuts out if using speakers as if it goes to sleep need to raise the volume to wake it up. If using usb connected bt headphones, works fine til they run out.

Went on the Asus Rog website, which is not even supported by asus. Just the community. I moaned that you shouldn't give a system disc with the motherboard, if the apps on it suck donkey balls.
AI Suite 3, told to remove, though the one app that seemed ok, made my pc run at 4.2 without me manually overclocking.
But the Roggamefirst 3, some amazing awesome gaming network enhancer, that makes your network..... stop. Thats right, on my board, it just stopped all browsers, anything that was trying to download stuck at 99%. It was the worst. And yet other people with Rog boards, love it. Maybe a diff Rog board. I stopped using that site, and the included apps.

Looking for the screws on the diagram of the case instructions. Hunting for ages. At Midnight. Stupid time to build a pc. Later finding the motherboard / case screws already attached to the case. FFS ? If they are already in, don't tell me they should be in the packet.

It died. For ages I could not work out why my pc that I put together so slowly... hours it took, too tired perhaps, but it was working one minute then not... why... I even had my return sorted for Amazon after I gave up. But then I couldn't give up, and I found a power cable had somehow come loose. My infuriating errors were just mounting up.

I have grown to like my pc. Have yet to see if my 970 gtx 3.5gb gfx card sucks. Can't find a new game to test it out on. Payday 2 claims to run at 130+ fps.

That's a bummer. I have the same board, and everything works exceptionally well. I have 970s in sli in her too. I wish you the best of luck! rma'ing the board may be your only option if your sound isn't working.

 

[cartera]

That's a bummer. I have the same board, and everything works exceptionally well. I have 970s in sli in her too. I wish you the best of luck! rma'ing the board may be your only option if your sound isn't working.

Please be sarcasm....

 

[Guest]

I had a friend enter me into the PC gaming arena. My first upgrade was to a stock HP case with an AMD 955BE which unlocked to a quad with a micro atx motherboard. I had a few stutters here and there, but I am confident in my build ability and know what I want out of such a build. Out of thousands of dollars spent in parts and multiple builds I have had one... just one failure and that was an Asrock motherboard which was sent to the manufacturer and verified as faulty under warranty and replaced. I do believe in a lot of instances people are unable to recognize failures within their system and give up from frustration. A lot of complaining on BF4 does not solve your issue.

 

[CrayonMuncher]

Was reading this today waiting in a queue at a shop, knew I was gonna go home and build an i7 lga 2011 system at the time and thought it was gonna be ok, then I went home and through most of the above feelings in the list.

Moving from a am3+, I bought a retention bracket for the hyper 212 from coolmaster, checked it would fit and then sold another cooler (as the bracket hadn't arrived) I bought a week ago when I bought the first, faulty, lga 2011 motherboard, then I find out that, despite what is on coolemaster's box and a few websites, you need extra spacers to install, so it is currently working in a Jury rigged way bought a new cooler and will get it 2moro.

One good thing to add to a list is: installing a mobo and not having the lan work without drivers needed from the internet (seems to happen alot when you dont have the cd to hand)

 

[St1ckM4n]

What's up with the poor-quality reposts from Kotaku? This is article aimed at total noobs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the complete opposite end of TS target market and current readership.

Also just because your sources' standards regarding cuss words are slipping, doesn't mean TS has to follow suit.

 

[slamscaper]

I actually support the credit card method for applying thermal paste. I believe you should get a nice thin, even layer across the entire IHS. If you look at the pre-applied thermal paste on any other vendors coolers, you will notice they tend to use a nice even spread, no doubt applied by machine tools. I'm sure some engineering went into that and they realized this offered the best performance overall. The whole "add just a tiny drop" thing doesn't jive with me. While a agree the credit card method can be messy, especially if one adds too much thermal paste, I do believe it to be the best and most consistent method, once perfected.

 

[hahahanoobs]

@Adhmuz @hahahanoobs You may know this already, but this article is a follow-up to the one we posted last week (The 10 Best Things About Building a New Gaming PC), so rather than seeing this as an absolute, it was written more within the context of the opposite side of PC building "awesomeness"

Yea I read the TechSpot piece and it was quite good, but this one was horrible. I'd go point by point (I almost did), but I think my original comment hit on the majority of the wrongs in the Kotaku article.

 

[RafnexGM]

I build almost a thousand pc, 90% works fine....

 

[RafnexGM]

I actually support the credit card method for applying thermal paste. I believe you should get a nice thin, even layer across the entire IHS. If you look at the pre-applied thermal paste on any other vendors coolers, you will notice they tend to use a nice even spread, no doubt applied by machine tools. I'm sure some engineering went into that and they realized this offered the best performance overall. The whole "add just a tiny drop" thing doesn't jive with me. While a agree the credit card method can be messy, especially if one adds too much thermal paste, I do believe it to be the best and most consistent method, once perfected.

HAHAHA you make my day LOL my method is put the heatsink viola!!!

 

[Arris]

3. Built my own PCs for over 17 years. Never ever worn an anti static strap. No problems.
6. The most consistent method I've seen recommended by paste suppliers and tech sites is a thin layer spread over the CPU surface(or heat spreader cover part) with a credit card.
7. So true, and when you have one of the cables turned the wrong way round, but can't fix it without disconnecting others around it it's painful. Last few motherboards I've bought have had headers that you attach motherboard cables to first, then just push it on in one go. Much easier that trying to push them on in the confined recesses of the PC case

I once had a friend who had bought a Crucial SSD with components for a new PC. He wanted my help to update its firmware prior to installing OS etc. I went round to his house, helped him out with putting everything together and then got to the point where the SSD needed updating. It couldn't be done via USB stick. It had to be on a CD. He hadn't bothered with a new CD/BD/DVD drive as everything was going in the direction of digital download. His old one wasn't SATA and his new motherboard only had new SATA connections... A great example of point 5.

 

[QuaZulu]

That had to be one of the worst pieces I've read in a while. The author was digging pretty hard to find faults that he complained about screws?! Applying thermal paste? $100 for a copy of Windows?! Oh and my favourite - "If you're building your own computer you're probably going to overclock." WHAT?! FFS, stock coolers and even my H100i has PRE-APPLIED paste!

PC building has cons of course, but these ones are just bad. Nothing about troubleshooting your own hardware, or dealing with drivers, or warranties, etc. This piece had NONE of that. Just some dude whining about petty crap.

I could go on and on tearing apart this pathetic piece, but I think this sums up PC building (or any job/hobby/project):

Newsflash: Building a PC isn't for everyone.
In other news, water is still wet.

"Why so serious?!" C'mon dude, laugh! Really, that's the point I get out of this article. Simple case and point - if you're using the screws pictured to build a PC you are either a) MacGyver or (more likely) b) going to have trouble!

 

[Peter Farkas]

Was fun to read this article! ;-) Thanks Techspot!

Last time when I finished assembling my new gaming rig at 21:30 on a Thursday, I realised that my monitor has only HDMI output, while my GTX 970 didn't have HDMI. So I had to find a store nearby immediately that is still open and have HDMI-DVI converter in store. Boy it was stressful rush to the store, but I made it 2 minutes before they closed.

From the above mentioned 10 points, the most painful for me is the Win license. way too overpriced...

Cheers

 

[Harish]

Some processors blast out due to insufficient memory..

 

[Guest]

You need to up-date the bios, becuse it does not reconize your new super dooper cpu ???
But, that the only cpu you got on hand ???

 

[Badvok]

You young'uns have it so good these days. Everything nicely labelled, standard connectors, and best of all easy access to guides and assistance; and yet you still find things to moan about.

I remember one of my early pc upgrades, done the work, hit the power and; Beep! Beep! Beep! Are beep codes detailed in the hardcopy manual that comes with the MB? Nope. Does the Web exist for quickly searching for a meaning? Nope, Sir Tim is still in his early 30s. Do I have another machine/device I can use to probe some Bulletin Boards for help? Nope, my one and only device is beeping at me! Several swaps, replugs, jumper changes later and finally I have the immense satisfaction of a job well done except for that one little MB jumper I set wrong.

Similar situation on my latest upgrade; plug in new GPU, PC only Beeps! A quick google, new MB firmware downloaded and installed; job done!

 

[Kasun Bandara]

What's the name of the game that's playing in the gif image?

 

[Alpha gammer]

Heh building a gameing pc aint hard or awful
been building them for over 10 yrs
even had the number 1 rank in the world a few yrs back in battlefield 2142
there are a lot of things to consider when building a game system
the technology and component compatabilty ,so the machine fits together and works first time!
like cpu and mb socket compat...and bios update via lan, lol needed cause wifi aint going to work
then ram compat with mb and what freq ud like.
gfx cards and ssd's and hard drives and other add ons juz plug in.. and the fiddly headers...oh well

first pc I built was a beigh box with Celeron 366 MHz cpu, 128mb ram lol @60mhz, Nvidia 32mb tnt2 m64, 2gig hard drive and some cheap psu that eventually blow the whole system to hell<never buy cheap psu>

now I got i7 3770k, gskill z 8gb @2.4 ghz, asrock ext4, galax 970gtx exoc, 2x 120gb ssd in raid0 1Gbps, 500gb storage, creative Sbz, tt tp 850 w gold psu, tt v4

lol not bad for a pensioner hey lol I got scitzophrenia hey, I hear voices and sometimes god's.
and in bf4 with most settings on ultra I get 120 fps ave, im more then happy with me gameing pc, lol considering that if I wanted the same system to buy from ebay or so would cost me 2500 buks

 

[Skewed Input]

" Wreaking havoc for those like myself who spent years getting professional training and certifications in the IT field. Self-entitled "IT" people then go on to tell everyone else how there's no reason for "IT professionals" while they're around."

See, the problem is you have "IT professionals" who insist that my defective ram chip is actually a horrible horrible piece of malware. Thats why I would rather people trust me than an IT professional because at least I can google things and better ensure people I know arent getting fed BS.

See the real problem is there will always be scam artists...pretending to be an "IT Professional". I've had a group of legitimate engineers stand around a computer arguing if the motherboard or the power supply was bad...know what was wrong? The VGA cable was unplugged yet still hanging onto the port.

Age old issue? People refusing to admit they're wrong and therefore Google a better answer, and for that my good sir, I tip my hat to you.

 

[Nojopar]

#7 should have been #1

I don't know why this is so damn funked up even to this day! I've been building my own for almost 20 years now and its ALWAYS been the most confusing and stupid part of computer builds (and that includes the era when you had to put so much pressure on RAM to install you were certain either the MB or the RAM was going to snap). We live in a world of USB. Why isn't this a USB header plug, even if it isn't ACTUALLY USB???

 

[Guest]

Definitely forgot about the part about updating Windows and installing drivers.

 

[treetops]

1. If you do your research this really won't matter. Critism is part of daily life get over it.

2. Just use your old key.... duh?

3. The anti static strap is barely noticable. Have you ever built a pc?

4. The mobo screws can be annoying. The case screws are really easy. In either case you just

need to calm down and take your time.

5. A screw you don't have? That never happens. Again, have you built a pc? Rubbing acl can be

bought at a local gas station. A wrench really? A tiny screw driver really? You act like its

some specialed screw driver. Its just a small screw driver.

Power adapter: Most gpu and psu provide a wide array of power cable CONVERTERS, this is some

of the basic research you should have done before buying your pc. You can run down to best buy

and get a converter for your power cable for what 3$?

6. Again calm down, watch a youtube video, it is very simple. It is just thermal paste, it

doesn't really matter beyond 1 celcius or so what type or method you use. If your computer way

seems to hot, clean off your old paste and re apply.

7.Again calm down its really not that hard.Put your glasses on.

I hate LED lights, some stay on while your computer is off and can be annoying if you like

sleeping in a dark room. I do not plug them in.

8. This is also true for a prebuilt machine.

9. This is also true for a prebuilt machine.

10. This is also true for a prebuilt mach


What you really have to worry about is one of your parts arriving DOA. Not everyone has compatible parts to swap out to try to figure out which part is malfunctioning.

My little bro built a new computer, had a blank screen. Tried to find out something from the beep codes to no avail. After months of turmoil he found out his mobo bios has to updated before it would work with his CPU. He could have had a bad cpu, psu, mobo, ram and or gpu. He did not have a temporary cpu to upgrade his bios and gave up.

He should have bought a super cheap used cpu to upgrade the bios but at that point he was tsed out.

 

[Guest]

Actually some of thecworse things are thecstuff on the mobo discs.. I.e. the usb hubs that wont work till the drivrs are installed, which install from the usb hub?? Or what the programs that look like they do something, intel ime, but arent needed. Or setting mobo otions before installing th os, then realising that you need to set the option then re install the OS. Then realising you need to install a hypervisor then change the bios options then re install the OS. And the sleep and hibernate options. Raid. Hmm..fake raid...hard raid..raid5? Raid0? Raid6 or Raid10.. Aaaargghh.