My New PC Gaming Computer

Final Parts List: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/4Wjcf8

I’m a fairly serious/casual gamer (as in serious love of many games, casual in that I can only play so many hours a week because of other life responsibilities). I play a lot of 3DS (Pokemon, Zelda) and I also own a Wii U, a PS4 and lots of other older/retro consoles.

I’ve been considering a gaming PC for a while. My main drive has been to support a mix of playing World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14. I’ve been playing both on my 2011-era iMac (Bootcamp-ing into Windows for FF14) but the graphics performance of the old machine was starting to become a real limiting factor. Additionally was the interest in playing some PC-only (or PC preferred) games, like Overwatch and Stardew Valley.

A few months ago I started assembling a parts list and talking to some other friends. Part of me just wanted to buy a pre-built system but for better or worse my geeky friends assured me the assembly wouldn’t be that bad and it would let me save some money or buy some better components.

My initial target was to spend about $1500 and go for a upper mid-tier machine. I wasn’t interested in VR right now and just wanted something to play games. After getting acquainted with the video cards and performance I choose the GTX 970. I had a full parts list waiting to go but I didn’t pull the trigger. This was around April and I was still traveling a bit. I was also working towards paying off my student loans and decided I’d do that first.

When I came back to my parts list at the end of May there was the announcement of the new GTX 1080 and 1070. These new cards were destroying the performance charts and I started to get a little greedy. I kept up with the release, and noticing the 1080 was selling out joined an alert website to let me know where and when it became available. I eventually grabbed a Founder’s Edition directly from Nvidia. I will concede the upcoming non-Founder’s Edition cards are probably better cooled and cheaper but I was anxious to play and didn’t want to wait until end of June / July to get my hands on this thing. I splurged.

I came back and cleaned up my final parts list. I ordered the rest of the machine from NewEgg with a few pieces from Amazon. (Even if a bit more I’d prefer to buy from NewEgg and Amazon who are very easy to work with regarding returns and such.)

One item I was not planning to buy but did, was a new monitor. I was really hoping to get dual use out of my Apple Thunderbolt monitor (which I use with my iMac to extend my display) but as I did research it would seem hooking that up to a display port was not going to work out. I ended up buying a Dell Gaming S2716DG 27-inch monitor to make it work, and it does. I just am not enjoying using it with my iMac as much as my other Apple monitor since the colors aren’t matching like they used to.

Assembly

After ordering the parts a week before, I sat at home Friday night and got started with the assembly. I took my time. I read the motherboard and other manuals as I slowly connected it all together.

Some things gave me trouble. It took a few attempts to get the motherboard mounted in the case. In general there was always a scary feeling of putting too much pressure on a part to get it to fit in. The case came with a ton of different screws and I had to take a lot of time to make sure I was using the right pair for the job.

Windows

I worked on Friday from 8pm till about midnight and then Saturday morning 9am until lunch to finish the assembly. Much longer than a seasoned PC gamer I’m sure — but keep in mind this was my first build since college and even then I had a lot of help from my roommate. Once assembled I was lucky in that it powered on into the BIOS right away.

Despite some known gaming headaches, I decided you use Windows 10. It installed fairly quickly. During initial setup I did opt-out of a lot of personalization features that do not interest me. My next challenge, getting the network card working.

My gaming PC is not near my cable modem so I need wireless connectivity and surprisingly this is not on the motherboard — I needed a seperate PCI card. The card I bought seemed to use PCI for the housing but also plugged into the USB on the motherboard. After spending some time downloading the latest drivers and playing the format game with some USB sticks I eventally installed the software but the card would not start up. It took some searching but I eventually found out I had to disable XHCI Handoff to enable the third USB connection on my motherboard which is what I was using to connect the wireless card. With all of that figured out, I had network access on my computer and began downloading some system updates and then some games.

The Games

I’m sure I’ll buy some more in time (and would greatly love your recommendations, email me) but for now the primary PC games for me are:

• Final Fantasy 14
• Overwatch
• Civilization V
• World of Warcraft (idle until Legion)
• Stardew Valley (New, not played yet)
• Rocket League (New, not played yet)
• Undertale (New, not played yet)
• Hearthstone (I play this on my iMac and iPad as well but there are some nice Windows-only analytics add ons I might try.)

Final Thoughts

I have mixed feeling about the time I spent doing the build. It does feel empowering to refresh my memory of how to do it all — but that said it’s not something I get a ton of enjoyment out of so let’s hope this box keeps ticking without too much maintenance in the years ahead. And while I do carry a little guilt about going for the super high end video card I also look forward to for the next few years being able to turn on ULTRA options without losing frames.