Building a PC: 10 years anniversary
So this remains impossibly relevant.
After building my rig waaaaaaaaaay back in 2012 and keeping it more or less unchanged over all this time (aside from a what appears to be a significant upgrade in 2015 which at closer inspection turns out to be a GPU and RAM upgrade), the time has come for a new one.
For reference:
Phwoar, right?
Well yes, but actually no.
At the same time, well, no, but actually yes.
Believe it or not, as lately as December of 2020 (where it passed away to greener pastures for reasons as of yet undetermined) my rig had not yet actually met a game that truly K.O.ed it.
Some sparred with it, sure. Some even landed blows to it.
Despite the bottom of the barrel i5 and the entirely unsuitable MoBos, this aging (to put it delicately) rig was perfectly capable of running games such as the latest Far Cry and Assassin's Creed games (with something like 300 hours sunk into Odyssey). I played through and enjoyed Wolfenstein New Colossus and Doom Eternal (both supposedly super optimised, though New Colossus did require a restart every now and then when performance took a nosedive). I got a bunch of kills in PUBG (by kills I mean getting killed. I suck at it). I played a ton of Mortal Kombat 11 on it.
My point is, a 5-year old gaming rig (counting from the last revision) was perfectly capable of running more or less anything I threw at it in a playable state so long as I compromised for lower quality graphics settings (apart from BF V and CoD: Black Ops 3. These two were not very playable no matter how much I compromised). And yes, it did run Crysis.
Now, was this because I somehow built a magic PC that caught lightning in a bottle? Or because game publishers announce specs above the actual specs required for their games?
Honestly, a bit of both. It was a (then) mid-to-high end PC that punched way above its weight class.
As you can probably tell, I am trying to recreate the same PC now in spirit. So let's see...did I follow the rules I set out a decade ago?
1. Decide what the PC's gonna be for: that was easy. It's a magic gaming rig that will last me 5-8 years, depending on upgrades. Easy, right?
Truth be told, it really wasn't as hard in action as it was on paper, and the name of the game was to plan on upgradeability.
And it all comes down to the motherboard.
This MoBo (carefully chosen this time around rather than picking one that suited
the rest of my components at random) will allow me to double my M.2 storage and RAM without hassle if needed. Its AM4 socket will likely allow me to replace the currently mid-range CPU with a new model fairly easily if needed (and seeing how AMD operates, will be future-proof for a while), and nowadays swapping a GPU is easier than finding one. So this rig's performance (and by extension, life expectancy) can be boosted a few years down the line fairly easily.And will it run Crysis? Yes. Crysis Remastered? Yes. Crysis Remastered on highest settings? Nah.
2.
Build on a budget: Well, for the most part, yes. Frankly, if it wasn't for the current GPU situation (what with the pandemic + bitcoin mining making finding a GPU a full-time job), this would have been a very affordable mid-to-high perfomance rig, and one I am confident can handle anything out now and anything that will come out in the next 3-4 years with little -if any- compromises.I technically could have stuck with Intel (this is the first time I ever got a CPU that isn't theirs) of the LGA1151 variety in a much older (and cheaper) DDR3 compatible Mobo (which are not easy to find nowadays) and also salvaged my RAM, but that would not have been very future friendly, or as good overall, so the extra splurge was justified.
Did getting a GPU from a retailer now also set me back over 300 euros than its MSRP? Yes, it did, but that is a different story.
Another briefly considered option was to grab an aggressively mid-to-low end AM4 MoBo, some DDR4 RAM, a small SATA SSD and a dirt-cheap Ryzen 3 1200, chuck my GTX 960 in there, and technically I'd have a rig that outperformed my old one for, give or take, half what I paid for my new GPU alone. However this was an option that made no sense fiscally, as I'd need to upgrade again soon so, essentially, money down the drain for a short-term solution.
On the other hand, I salvaged the HDD and will be using my old case: An MS-Tech Crow X3 (pictured). Sure, its aesthetic is decidedly last decade, but it's more than up for housing more modern hardware, it's solid, has tons of room and, most importantly, I love it to bits. Besides, with most of these components having RGB that side panel is gonna light up too much to worry about the look of the case not being as sleek.
3. Ask for help: Some of these parts are still in the mail, so building the thing hasn't occurred yet. However, I am confident the assembly won't be an issue. If anything, the time I have sunk into PC Building Simulator will come in handy.
What I did ask for help with, was picking these parts...then promptly proceeded to ignore all the advice I got and pick them myself.
However, this was because of painstaking personal research, tinkering with wishlists and the budget about a hundred times per day, hunting down stock informer websites and about a few dozen retailer options and listings and mostly knowing exactly what I wanted the end result to be like.
In other words, following steps 1 and 2 religiously.
Have I made a crucial mistake in there somewhere? It's not improbable.
Should you do the same? Probably not. It's not my first time building a PC (though admittedly it has been a while since I last did) so the experience, outdated as it may be, was a great starting point.
If it's your first time, you absolutely should ask for help or devote several hours in personal research and study before picking what you need.
As for asking someone for help with the assembly?
Nowadays that is as easy as typing your components and the words "building guide" on YouTube and watching someone else do it before you do. Even if you don't find the exact configuration in a video tutorial, you will find something really close that will apply.
So should you pick parts now and build one yourself?
Unless you already have a good enough GPU, can get your hands on one for a good price or are willing to pay over double for it?
Hold out a little while longer.
PS: Today I learned that my 1998-9 PC still exists in storage.
What do you think I should do with it? Restore it for retro purposes or build a sleeper secondary rig with its case? Leave a comment and let me know.
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