Taking the Plunge into PC Gaming

Voat's /v/gaming community is something I enjoy hanging out in (#gaming on Techtronix). Though, some folks there (especially Reacher & Kadynce) find it hard to believe that I am not a PC gamer. I've been a console person my entire life. Well, that's about to change.


I've decided to build my own PC, just the way I like it. Here's the parts list. Originally I was going to side with a microATX (mATX) board, but eventually I moved up to an ATX because the board had more PCIe slots, which I needed because I was going to be adding in a WLAN card, etc. Early on in my build idea, I wanted to build a "portable desktop", but realizing that what I wanted wasn't going to be realistically possible with what I wanted, I moved up to a mid-tower desktop. The case that you see in the parts list is the one that I already ordered and have in the mail.

This new PC that I'm building will also be my "next gen" gaming machine. I currently have a PS3, and with this new PC, I won't be purchasing a PS4, at least for the considerable future. It'll be difficult to leave my PS3/PS4 friends behind, though. I still haven't figured out how I'm going to address this issue, though. However, it'll be able to handle any of the current PC games on decent graphics settings. I remember seeing the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 running Grand Theft Auto V on high(er) settings on YouTube. Depending on when I actually buy the GPU though, I could get the GeForce GTX 970 at a cheaper price, if there's a drop. According to Wikipedia, there's a new generation due to be released eventually, perhaps sooner rather than later. We'll see.

Don't let all of the mid-range stuff fool you though: this PC is expensive. The most expensive components in this build are the GPU, CPU, and motherboard. Some may raise question to why I have a high tier CPU in this build. That's because I'm going to be doing some CPU intensive tasks such as video encoding. This PC is going to serve more than just a gaming rig, obviously.

In this build, you'll also notice an overclocking CPU (and matching motherboard). With this new desktop, I'm going to experiment with the actual art of CPU overclocking, just to experience it firsthand. I know that overclocking will generate extra heat, so that's why I went with a liquid cooler for the CPU instead of a high performance fan-based CPU cooler. Besides, I'm not a big fan of a huge heatsink drawing away attention from all of the other pretty components, since the case will have a side window.

For the color scheme, I'm going with black + red. It's become more of a popular thing lately, but I'm personally into the black + red themes. This generation of components really seems to embrace it too, which makes it easier for me I guess. I guess this isn't such a good thing for folks who are trying to create blue builds, or green ones for that matter.

Anyways, I think that pretty much wraps it up for this post. I'll definitely take some pictures and make more posts when I'm actually ready to build this thing. It will be a few months before I have enough money to buy all of the components, but like I've said before the case is already ordered. Gonna start somewhere, right? :)