Art Thou into PC Building?

Choose Thy Steed

  • Hi, I'm a PC

    Votes: 8 50.0%
  • Hi, I'm a Mac

    Votes: 6 37.5%
  • Hi, I'm a Potato

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Heh-heh, compootor go brrrrrrr....

    Votes: 2 12.5%

  • Total voters
    16

Draconomics

Fearless Papa of The Brethren of the Crust
Joined
May 27, 2020
Messages
1,731
Location
The Lonely Mountain
Curious if any of you wondrous people are into pc building or computer nerd stuff in general. I have been getting deeper into that realm for the last few years and finally got the inspiration to build a computer from scratch. If you have stories, ideas...whatever, share em here. Could be a fun thread...probably....maybe...hopefully....not likely...
 
I was pretty into PC gaming from 2007 to 2014. I built two gaming PCs, one in 2008 and the other in 2011 or 2012. I quit gaming, cold turkey the week after Christmas in 2014. Too many nights of gaming until 1 or 2 in the morning only to have the alarm go off at 4:00 AM. Plus, I was getting a little too wrapped up in it. All online multiplayer, almost all C.O.D. Did some team competition in a league. Heck, the team I was on even had a website and forum for a while.
 
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I've custom ordered from scratch, but never built my own. My son just did it about a year or so ago - I helped a bit. Nice project, and if you don't mind taking the time to do it, it's fun. Any more, I don't always feel like taking the time. Like RC Mike, I'm pretty much all Mac at home, but Windows for work.
 
I was pretty into PC gaming from 2007 to 2014. I built two gaming PCs, one in 2008 and the other in 2011 or 2012. I quit gaming, cold turkey the after Christmas in 2014. Too many nights of gaming until 1 or 2 in the morning only to have the alarm go off at 4:00 AM. Plus, I was getting a little too wrapped up in it. All online multiplayer, almost all C.O.D. Did some team competition in a league. Heck, the team I was on even had a website and forum for a while.
I never did much co-op gaming. Mostly I would play Zelda games using Nintendo console emulation. I've always been a Zelda nerd. About the only things I play regularly now are Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, and Planet Coaster. Next one potentially on the horizon is Xenoblade, but I'll need alot of time for that. Those games are massive.

On the subject of Planet Coaster (which is phenomenal), I used to play Roller Coaster Tycoon many years ago, back in '99. Such fond memories. That and Sim City 2000....I put hundreds of hours into SC2000.

Skyrim is a basically the game that never ends. Its magic everytime I hop into Tamriel. Never have I been so happy scouring the tundra for mushrooms with a slightly mentally deranged blue cat man.
 
I've built my own PC's for my studio, as well as my wife and son's PC. I've been building my own for over 20 years. I enjoy it, but only when I need a real upgrade. It used to be that a PC for a DAW had to be pretty badass, but now any mid-grade box with a couple of SSD's is more than powerful enough. I haven't been into gaming in years, but my teenage son's PC has a pretty good graphics card for gaming.
 
These days I do more gaming than guitar playing. I like MMO's and have been playing Guild Wars for the last 14 years or so. Guild Wars 2 is now coming up on it's 10th anniversary ... I built a nice LED gaming rig 6 years ago ... Intel i5-6500 with LED GT 980, LED 64mb ram, and the motherboard was an all singing and dancing LED motherboard for lots of colours and flashing in time to music. Now days I just use it as a spare PC while my gaming rig is an Asus ROG laptop.

Not a very good pic but you get the idea.
IMG_1143.jpg
 
These days I do more gaming than guitar playing. I like MMO's and have been playing Guild Wars for the last 14 years or so. Guild Wars 2 is now coming up on it's 10th anniversary ... I built a nice LED gaming rig 6 years ago ... Intel i5-6500 with LED GT 980, LED 64mb ram, and the motherboard was an all singing and dancing LED motherboard for lots of colours and flashing in time to music. Now days I just use it as a spare PC while my gaming rig is an Asus ROG laptop.

Not a very good pic but you get the idea.
IMG_1143.jpg
I don't even know what that is, but it sure looks cool!
 
I was pretty into PC gaming from 2007 to 2014. I built two gaming PCs, one in 2008 and the other in 2011 or 2012. I quit gaming, cold turkey the week after Christmas in 2014. Too many nights of gaming until 1 or 2 in the morning only to have the alarm go off at 4:00 AM. Plus, I was getting a little too wrapped up in it. All online multiplayer, almost all C.O.D. Did some team competition in a league. Heck, the team I was on even had a website and forum for a while.
Kudos to you for realizing you needed to look the other way! I don't recall what year it was, but pretty sure around 1992 that I quit video games. I literally sat there one day playing Super Mario Bros, saving the princess with one dude, ending up with a bunch of points and prizes, and I thought to myself, I just spent the last year of my life doing this game in most of my free hours. What the fluck? I quit and will never game again and refuse to buy anything video game related for any child I may be buying gifts for! I WILL play pinball, pool and cribbage for days on end without any sleep as those are the 3 games that I will never give up on ;~)) I also play solitaire (4 varieties) on the computer once a day for about 30 minutes usually right before going to bed to exercise the brain and relax (I know, total contradiction there right, but it works for me)!
 
These days I do more gaming than guitar playing. I like MMO's and have been playing Guild Wars for the last 14 years or so. Guild Wars 2 is now coming up on it's 10th anniversary ... I built a nice LED gaming rig 6 years ago ... Intel i5-6500 with LED GT 980, LED 64mb ram, and the motherboard was an all singing and dancing LED motherboard for lots of colours and flashing in time to music. Now days I just use it as a spare PC while my gaming rig is an Asus ROG laptop.

Not a very good pic but you get the idea.
IMG_1143.jpg
Nice rig!
 
Kudos to you for realizing you needed to look the other way! I don't recall what year it was, but pretty sure around 1992 that I quit video games. I literally sat there one day playing Super Mario Bros, saving the princess with one dude, ending up with a bunch of points and prizes, and I thought to myself, I just spent the last year of my life doing this game in most of my free hours. What the fluck? I quit and will never game again and refuse to buy anything video game related for any child I may be buying gifts for! I WILL play pinball, pool and cribbage for days on end without any sleep as those are the 3 games that I will never give up on ;~)) I also play solitaire (4 varieties) on the computer once a day for about 30 minutes usually right before going to bed to exercise the brain and relax (I know, total contradiction there right, but it works for me)!
Thanks!
 
Been building my own boxes for 20 years or so, but still buy laptops when I need a new one! I love the build process and after having built about 15 or so boxes for me and others in that time, the most time consuming part for me is picking out all of the components ;~)) Due for a new build as my current main box is from 2015. Still running great, but want some things in a new box that are not possible on my current one. Specifically, I want 3 M.2 drive slots on the motherboard and will be putting 2TB M.2 drives in each of those slots. SSD's are great, but the M.2 drives are OMG when it comes to speed! I am also getting long in the tooth on my RAID array and the drives in there. At 7 years old, I am skating on thin ice with these mechanical drives! At least in the RAID 5 array, if one does go bad, I can recover, but time to get that stuff updated before the problems happen (do have external backups of the critical data though)!! Now I just need the spare cash to do this! Work has been cut for me by over 70% in the past 18 months, so don't know how soon I will be able to get to this project! Plus, if I do get some disposable income, I should probably buy another guitar, right?

Anyway, fun stuff (for me anyway) and if anyone wants any advice, I am happy to throw in my two cents. And don't be intimidated by it, it is not that difficult. Motherboard, power supply, RAM, CPU chip, hard drive (SSD or M.2 only), a box to put it all in and an OS is all it takes. Sure, you might want a video card, audio card, other expansion cards, etc. but for a basic box, that is about it as most MB's have video/audio built in.

ASUS is my go to MB and I have also had their Android phones, routers, disk drives and more, love their stuff (but HATE Acer which people often confuse it with)!
 
Been building my own boxes for 20 years or so, but still buy laptops when I need a new one! I love the build process and after having built about 15 or so boxes for me and others in that time, the most time consuming part for me is picking out all of the components ;~)) Due for a new build as my current main box is from 2015. Still running great, but want some things in a new box that are not possible on my current one. Specifically, I want 3 M.2 drive slots on the motherboard and will be putting 2TB M.2 drives in each of those slots. SSD's are great, but the M.2 drives are OMG when it comes to speed! I am also getting long in the tooth on my RAID array and the drives in there. At 7 years old, I am skating on thin ice with these mechanical drives! At least in the RAID 5 array, if one does go bad, I can recover, but time to get that stuff updated before the problems happen (do have external backups of the critical data though)!! Now I just need the spare cash to do this! Work has been cut for me by over 70% in the past 18 months, so don't know how soon I will be able to get to this project! Plus, if I do get some disposable income, I should probably buy another guitar, right?

Anyway, fun stuff (for me anyway) and if anyone wants any advice, I am happy to throw in my two cents. And don't be intimidated by it, it is not that difficult. Motherboard, power supply, RAM, hard drive (SSD or M.2 only), a box to put it all in and an OS is all it takes. Sure, you might want a video card, audio card, other expansion cards, etc. but for a basic box, that is about it as most MB's have video/audio built in.

ASUS is my go to MB and I have also had their Android phones, routers, disk drives and more, love their stuff (but HATE Acer which people often confuse it with)!
You’re right about the don’t be intimidated part. The first one I built I researched for a long time, bought all the gear I wanted, and then sat on it for 6 months. Intimidated through the roof. When I finally got the nerve to do it I was pissed at how easy it was. The next one I built I did the day after I got the last component for it. It really isn’t that hard.
 
I have built several computers over the course of the years but it’s become less fun after working in IT. I still keep a gaming PC but I rarely use it unless it’s for flight simulation. I work on a mac day-to-day.

If I am going to game now it’s usually on a console. The last thing I want to do after a day at work is update drivers or other PC maintenance. Consoles just work.
 
You’re right about the don’t be intimidated part. The first one I built I researched for a long time, bought all the gear I wanted, and then sat on it for 6 months. Intimidated through the roof. When I finally got the nerve to do it I was pissed at how easy it was. The next one I built I did the day after I got the last component for it. It really isn’t that hard.
Same here. I put off building one from scratch for a long time. I still have nightmares about PC builds back in the 90's. There's a saying that everything in the 90's was ugly...definitely true for PC's. Nothing but taupe colored metal bins with an assortment of sharp edges.

I had done a build off a Lenovo back in 2016 and slowly upgraded all the components. Eventually it couldnt hang with newer programs. The last one I built was such a breeze. Everything worked about perfect out of the gate. This is it, my first Ryzen build. Your eyes do not deceive you, there is a cat in there.
 
I spend most of my computer time (work and after hours) on a Mac, but a Windows PC is still my gaming platform of choice. I've been building those for my wife and myself since the late 90s. Building them is not difficult if you can wield a screwdriver without maiming yourself, but picking the components requires some knowledge, or somebody else to do it for you. I plan on building a new pair of machines around holiday time at the end of this year, and know I need to brush up on what's current in CPUs, chipsets, motherboards, and video cards to do it right. Twenty years ago I used to read that stuff all the time for fun, but these days it seems like more of a chore.
 
Same here. I put off building one from scratch for a long time. I still have nightmares about PC builds back in the 90's. There's a saying that everything in the 90's was ugly...definitely true for PC's. Nothing but taupe colored metal bins with an assortment of sharp edges.

I had done a build off a Lenovo back in 2016 and slowly upgraded all the components. Eventually it couldnt hang with newer programs. The last one I built was such a breeze. Everything worked about perfect out of the gate. This is it, my first Ryzen build. Your eyes do not deceive you, there is a cat in there.
Nice! It has definitely gotten easier (and more colorful) over the last 20 years.
 
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