Over the last couple of months I’ve been researching the new computer I’ve been wanting for years and years, partly explaining my absence around here lately. You hear that Mat C? Research. Y’know, legwork, toil, hardship. None of your blatant lifting nonsense.
Anyway, the other week after finalising my build, ordering the parts and receiving them, I set about building the thing. Several hours and a couple of hiccups later I was the proud owner of a brand new custom built (nearly) silent PC that now runs pretty much anything I throw at it. At one point I had two versions of Magicka running simultaneously without realising, and without hitch. So ‘yay!’ would be an understatement.
Mat ‘C is for copy cat’ C was soon to follow suit, Steerpike is threatening to (based entirely on the lustre of my heat sink) and Lewis… well, Lewis is just losing his edge.
The last brand new machine I owned was bought for me during my second year of university which was nearly ten years ago. That machine was given to my parents some time after university and has since been replaced with something more appropriately sized for their living room. For the last few years I’ve had a titanic steel monolith of dust and noise handed down by my brother which has punched well above its weight considering its age, but still lacked the sort of clout that I was really beginning to need.
So for a long time I put off playing certain games knowing very well that my old system would’ve struggled with them. That restriction slowly conditioned me into pretty much outright ignoring any PC game more graphically intensive than Left 4 Dead 2. Given how little time I have these days to sink the sort of hours I once did into my favourite past-time, that restriction was welcome in a level-headed sort of way. “It won’t run on my computer” was a phrase holding back the horde; a horde clamouring at boarded doors and windows. Well now they’re inside and — whoa, would you look at that — they’re hungry for the morsels of time I don’t have.
Here’s a brief and obviously incomplete list of games I’m looking forward to playing on my new rig in the indeterminate future: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat, Bioshock 2, Metro 2033, Bulletstorm, Fallout 3 and/or New Vegas, Crysis and/or Warhead, Mount & Blade: Warband, Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light, Brink, Shogun 2, Freespace 1/2 Open.
On top of all this is the usual slew of indie games, oldies, outside possibilities and impulse plays. Frozen Synapse has just been released which gives me no other option than to give Steerpike a good panning. At the very least he can abuse his grenadiers some more. Revenge of the Titans’ identity crisis is over, emerging as an altogether different beast to what I played late last year. Sony has just parted the clouds and delivered the beautiful Wipeout HD— sorry, WipEout HD — plus the Fury expansion and Dead Nation unto me, for free. Then there’s Terraria which Armand coaxed me into playing (yes you did Armand). And Portal 2 co-op with Joel Goodwin over at Electron Dance (home to the best review on the internet of it). I’d also forgotten about Stacking seeing as the PSN went down on the evening I was going to buy it. This is just the tip of the hulking, ever-expanding iceberg.
And what about future releases? Battlefield 3? Skyrim? Human Revolution? It’ll be fantastic to play these on release rather than having to board myself in for a change; breathing in the zeitgeist rather than following around a stale lingering whiff of it. But my concern is the time it’ll take to even dent this lot, the usual web-surfing and house-keeping aside. I’ve never had it so good really but, blimey, it’s all a bit overwhelming.
Oh and we’re cruising through summer, and you know what comes after the word ‘summer’.
Sale.
Email the author of this post at greggb@tap-repeatedly.com
I prefer that article about getting a new rig by Mat C. That one was really good.
By the way, with your new PC Gregg, what you have actually is done is SIGNED A DEATH WARRANT. You no longer have a rational reason holding you back from shiny new games. They will find your twitching corpse slumped over your flash new keyboard, a note scrawled in lipstick on the monitor: LET’S ROCK.
“None of your blatant lifting nonsense.” Heh, heh.
Haha, you know sharing PC parts makes sense! Infact you said it made trouble shooting easier! INFACT you even bloody compiled my list of components! Knowingly! Willingly!
We should also take this opportunity to bask in the glow of each other’s superiority. You see that boy over there crying? Yes that one with the silly hair cut? That’s Lewis B sobbing into his copy of PC Gamer, shedding tears for the maximum spec Battlefield 3 he’ll never play. Bwahaha. Let’s savour this opportunity (before Lewis upgrades!). Savour it. Savooouuurrr iiiiiit!
Also Gregg, your system still has the edge on mine. I am but a mere mortal in the wake of your monstrous cooling system.
@HM: Haha, I wrote this article a few days after building my rig but I’ve been so distracted by it that I uh, forgot to post it up. When Mat C posted his I was all like “What the– why didn’t I– I’m rubbish.”
Gregg ‘B is for buffoon’ B.
@Mat C: I certainly did 😉 Only messin’ with you! I’m well impressed that you ditched the laptop idea and jumped straight in with a fully fledged self-build rig. Welcome to the ‘Master Race’ hahaha. Lew will be fine I’m sure but nevertheless, we should make the most of being ahead of his tech!
I love building pcs! If I could make a living at it, I totally would. I don’t know how companies like Maingear and Digital Storm ever got started.
Curse you rich, decadent old bastards! I’m using a rig that can’t push TF2 past 10fps at minimum settings.. Geforce 7300 LE =D
I miss my computer… What do you think, how much would it cost a brit to replace his motherboard and RAM then modernise his graphics card sufficiently to run the new wave of games – most notably Deus Ex HR and Skyrim?
We have a surfeit of Englishpeople on this site, by golly, with their quid and galleons and, like, Kiera Knightley and their incredibly intelligent-sounding accents and… Shakespeare… and… that… stupidness. You know what’s funny? They say they invented the language! When of course we in the American Midwest are the pronunciation capital of English! We’ve got Canadians like xtal and Helmut with their aboots and tomoorows, and the B and C and HM and J boys with their… their… um… SHUT UP!
Anyway, Jakkar old lad, I just priced oot a completely new machine on NewEgg and the total (case and all!) came to aboot $1400, which I think – day to day variances aside – is aboot 800 Pounds (pyndes, one might say in Cockney). Had I skipped some luxury items it wood easily have been $1100 or less.
If you just wanted a sort of “coore” oopgrade – let’s say CPyooo, RAM, mootherboard, and power soopply – heavens, I think you could get away with it for just a few hundred. Rob a liquor store.
Don’t rob a liquor store. That would be wrong!
Rob a check cashing center. They have all the money.
LATER: (Steerpike’s lawyer just called. I have to say it would be wrong to commit a crime. But they still have all the money.)
LATER LATER: (Also, apparently, Steerpike’s lawyer has all the money but no one is allowed to rob her so carry on.)
What the goddamnhell is a liquor store? I don’t think we have those in the United Kingdom.
Oh. You mean an *off-license*.
@Jakkar: me and Mat got ours for about £800-850 and that was obviously with hard drives, optical drives, cases and coolers etc. If you were just needing some vital guts similar (ie. the same) as ours then the motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU and PSU would set you back around £600 according to Scan. As I said to Mat when we were trying to slice a few pounds off of his build: they’re the most cost effective reputable components I could find so you’ll have trouble getting that price any lower without sacrificing some performance.
@Scout & HM: with how cheap alcohol and consumers are these days I’d guess that robbing an off-license would be a pretty disappointing affair. I say rob a pre-owned games store or a petrol station. Or a gas station. You crazy Americans with your gas powered cars.
Maximum PC magazine just did a “build an awesome gaming rig for $670” feature. They obviously cut some corners, but it might be a good place to start for a PC builder on a budget.
As for me, I have to be strong. I don’t need a new PC. When my current PC runs Crysis 2 just fine, even with all the frosting on, I don’t need a new one. I have to delete that Newegg wish list before I do something I’ll regret!
Haha Steerpike. As geeks, PCs are a natural extension of our penises, much like cars to motorheads. By Gregg and Mat upgrading as they have, we have both been castrated. It’s just not a nice feeling.
So man up and keep that list otherwise we are both destined to be on the scrap heap! 🙂
I retract my comments to the nature of ‘decadent bastards’, and furthermore my private unspoken thoughts which were gross and inaccurate in nature.
You’re all very helpful and exceedingly attractive. In a grizzled, elderly, slightly effette way.
Unfortunately as a dole-monkey (who has yet to receive his first payment and has still has no CV =>) all that be beyond me reach. First step is simply affording a new motherboard compatible with the old systems and learning how to rejigger the internals without frying anything, purchasing some new RAM, and… Well, no, that sounds altogether unrealistic.
I think I’ll simply sit in a corner and whimper until someone does something grossly generous or I find enlightenment. Enjoy your modern interactive entertainments, you yank cads! CHOKE ON THEEM! Or not. No. *love*
Ahhh, you lucky guys upgrading. I think I got my last PC in about ’07 or ’06 – but I am deliberately not getting one a-la Gregg’s holding-back-the-horde method of saving time and money. That, and if I upgraded my PC, my PS3 would start to get lonely and jealous.
Also, you guys have proper names for things. We just tack an ‘O’ onto the end of names, apparently…
Liquor Store/Off Licence = ‘Bottle-o’
Petrol/Gas Station = ‘Serv-o’
We’re so lazy.
And how did they come up with Off Licence? One would think that they needed to be On Licence or at least have one to sell alcohol.
I always perceived Off License to mean an alternative to needing a License to own, say, a pub or bar. Like, you don’t need your name above the door like you do at a pub to own a shop that sells alcohol.
I’ve just made that up off the top of my head. In reality I haven’t the foggiest idea what it means. Unless I’m right.. in which case, I did.
To be specific, an off-license is only licensed to sell alcohol to be drunk off the premises, as opposed to a bar or pub which is licensed to pen those unreliable sots within the building and keep them from walking in-front of trains. Nice try though, not far off ;>