How Not to Build a Gaming PC
By Zomboid_Ross 43 Comments
As anybody who knows me will tell you, when it comes to electronics and technology in general, I'm like water. I shouldn't mix with these things. Ironically, I work in an electrical maintenance department. Go figure.
The Witcher 2 came out earlier this year. I was watching videos of it and became interested in playing it. But considering my antiquated hardware, an HP Media Centre type thing, the only chance of actually playing it was waiting for the Xbox 360 port. I am a petty, impatient man. I figured that I should really play the first Witcher game so that I could be fully versed in the lore of it's universe. I thought that my old PC might actually be able to handle that so I headed Steam-ward and downloaded it. It seemed that I had gravely overestimated my PC's capabilities. But I've got a dual core Pentium that had a clock speed of over 3GHZ, I thought. And my graphics card was an Nvidia Geforce thing with numbers after it and everything. The game did run but it was pretty rough. Even at low resolutions. It was worse than a PSone game. Almost like Mode 7 on the SNES. I wondered if upgrading the graphics card would solve it. I discussed it with a friend at work who said that he had a spare. An old Geforce 9600GT. Looking at this card compared to the one I had I soon realised that my machine had not been built with games in mind. You'd have thought that the Media Centre moniker would've been a clue but as well as being petty and impatient, I am also a technical retard. The card my friend gave me was about ten inches long, encased in metal with a fan built into it. The card I removed looked fairly lame by comparison. I put it in, installed the drivers and started up The Witcher. I got a fairly good improvement. Great, I thought, and got on with guiding Geralt through his adventure.
About twenty minutes later the screen went black. Interesting. I thought that maybe the energy saving nonsense had kicked in but I couldn't get it to start up again. I did a hard reset and went in and turned all that stuff off, started the game up again and after about ten to fifteen minutes the screen went black for a second time. Brilliant. I began trawling through forums and asking friends. Of course! It was the power supply! It kept cutting out because the power supply couldn't handle it! You can't run a (comparatively speaking, at least) performance graphics card with a stock power supply! So, I found a 750 watt PSU to replace my crappy stock, 500 watt PSU. I installed it, fired up the machine and started playing The Witcher. From the start. Again. Because I hadn't saved it. I'm pretty familiar with the opening of that game so if you need to know anything just ask. Anyway, after about twenty minutes the screen went black again. After screaming 'fuck!' for a couple of minutes I decide to open the case and have a look. It was pretty damned warm in there and I noticed that the fan on the graphics card wasn't turning. Me, being the genius that I am, decided to touch the graphics card and burnt my finger. After another chorus of 'fuck!' with some 'shits' thrown in I came trundling to the conclusion that the graphics card that had been donated to my Witcher cause had probably been given to me because it was shagged. So I put it in the bin and ordered a new graphics card. Not wanting to break the bank and having no intention of building any kind of serious gaming machine I went for a 450 GTS. Budget all the way.
Now, at this point I figured that I may as well speed things up a little. After a bit of research I came to find that my CPU was fairly crap by modern standards. A Pentium D, despite being a dual core processor, is not that great. Something to do with architecture. I decided to upgrade a little bit. Just a little bit now. I checked out what I'd need to know about my motherboard to upgrade my processor. The socket type and junk like that. So I looked into it and bought myself a Pentium core2duo 3.2GHZ processor. It was the right power rating and socket so I thought it'd be a straight swap. I also ordered 4GB of DDR2 RAM to replace my 2GB of RAM as well. The RAM came first, and by this time I had my new graphics card so I put it all in and and started playing The Witcher and it was all fine. Still not running the game on any serious settings but it was serviceable. A bit framey at points but I figured that the new processor would tighten it up. I played about sixteen hours over the course of a few days.
The new CPU eventually came and I excitedly got it out of the box. I put my PC up on the desk and opened it up. I hoovered out the few years of dead skin and cat hairs that had coated the motherboard then I took off the old cooler, popped out the old chip, fired in the new one, put the new cooler on top, put it all back together, wrestled it back down to the ground, turned it on and...nothing. Not a fucking beep or fan whir or anything. Tremendous. I asked Google what it all meant. Despite my motherboard physically being able to take the processor it didn't have enough BIOS or something. Instead of sending the CPU back to Amazon, I did what any self respecting idiot would've done. I ordered a new motherboard. One that had loads of BIOS. I also had to buy another 4GB of RAM because the new motherboard took DDR3 and the old one was DDR2. Great. I also figured I should buy Windows 7 because I didn't have an XP disc and I'd been pre-warned that I would have to do a fresh install because I was changing the motherboard. So, a couple of hundred pounds and a few days later the stuff arrives. I put it all together, installed Windows, put my Steam folder back in place and got everything the way I wanted it. I loaded up The Witcher, selected the load option. No files. No fucking files. I quit the game and asked Google where the saved games for The Witcher were kept. Oh, they were in another folder out with your Steam folder, Beave. Y'know, one of the folders that you didn't make a backup of that was wiped because you installed Windows 7? Sixteen hours of progress gone. I'd just found a guy in a swamp who spoke funny because he'd been hit on the head with a brick. He said 'Buh buh buh' before everything. It was great. I have to admit, the thought of playing through that amount of content for a second time did not appeal to me.
Since my machine was a lot more capable than the old build I downloaded some other older games that I had thought about playing. I was plodding away at them and the back of my mind began to itch with thoughts of Geralt and his grimy world. I started again and after days I eventually got back to where I was. Then I started to make progress and it was great. So that's that then, isn't it?
Is it fuck. I kept having thoughts about playing newer games. Imagining a reality where I had a PC that could run Battlefield 3 with parts that were on or above the recommended spec. I don't even like generic modern warfare type things. These thoughts kept me up at night looking at components on Amazon. I had been playing a fair bit of Trackmania 2 and it was fine but every now and then it got a tiny, and I mean a tiny, bit framey. I decided I would buy a new graphics card. Obviously. The 450 GTS had barely been in for a month. Like I've mentioned before, I am an idiot. Also, I have little to no willpower or patience. I bought an Asus Geforce 560TI. I guess nobody will ever really know why, but there you go. That's what I did.
A couple of days later I had my new GPU. I pulled out my 450GTS and put in my new graphics card. I carried on with The Witcher and Trackmania 2 but it still wasn't up to scratch. In a moment of madness I decided to get an AMD Phenom II x6 and a new motherboard. Crazy. I'm still a bit baffled by it. Did I get the right stuff? Nope. My motherboard and processor arrived, I heaved up my machine, opened it up, disconnected everything, unscrewed the old motherboard and lifted it out. Then I opened up the new motherboard. I looked at it, I looked at the case and then I looked back at the motherboard. I struggled to hold back the tears. The new motherboard was too big for my old case. It just proves my stupidity really. It didn't cross my mind that this new thing would be too big. It didn't cross my mind that my trusty old PC was some kind of pygmy.
Determined not to be beaten I headed out to buy a new, bigger case. I knew of a small PC shop close by so I went there. 'Do you have any cases that will take this motherboard?' I asked as I showed him a piece of paper with a bizarre code written on it that I'd hoped he'd understand. 'Well, we do. Usually. But I just sold the last one this morning.' Stuff like that happens to me all the time. When I go out looking for something specific, that something will, more often than not, disappear from existence making me feel slightly mental. I made my farewells and left. I got in the car and put my head on the steering wheel. My next option, I decided, was to make the 30 minute drive to Ayr to go to PC World. The world of PCs. They were bound to have a case. It's the fundamental piece of the PC. Without it, you can't build a PC. Its what all the shit goes in. I know that much. I walked in and a little person walked over and asked if I needed a hand. I had been wandering around looking for a case and couldn't see any. Standing under a massive banner that proclaimed 'Build Your Own PC!' I asked him if they had any cases. He just looked blankly at me. 'Y'know, empty cases for putting components in?'. He sheepishly said that they didn't stock cases. 'But this is PC World! There's a sign there saying 'Build your own PC!'. How are people supposed to do that if you don't stock the one, basic requirement?'. He seemed to understand my frustration. He looked around and then whispered under his breath that there was a custom PC shop in the town centre and I should go there. They'd have what I needed. I glumly thanked him and left.
I found the custom PC shop in town down a strange alley. I walked in and there was a guy getting a demonstration of a gaming mouse. Adjustable surfaces and compartments for weights and more buttons than a keyboard. I'm out of my depth here, I thought. If I ask the shopkeeper for a case without knowing names and numbers and statistics he'll probably snort at me and eject me from the premises. The mouse demo came to an end and then they started talking about energy drinks and caffeine pills for all night sessions. I made a promise to myself that I would never become like that while I picked up the ludicrous mouse that they had been talking about. It looked like a stealth bomber. Crazy. But strangely compelling. I put it back down before I did anything rash. Finally, it was my turn to be served, the previous guy had to go because his mum was waiting for him in the car outside. He looked about 35. That figures, I thought. I explained my situation to the shopkeep. He was surprisingly understanding. 'I'll just bring up a short list of 5 or 6 cases on the screen here and talk you through them.' he said. I told him it wasn't necessary. I only wanted a cheap, plain-looking case. Nothing fancy. He glared at me. 'Are you in a hurry?' he said. 'I...guess not.' I conceded. He spoke for what seemed like days about fans, sizes, trays for hard drives, places to neatly stow your cables and so on. I asked him if the number of fans was the measure of a good case, trying to be funny. Instead I received a lecture on cooling, overclocking, SLI, crossfire, spitfires and STDs or something. I managed to come to a decision and he brought it out for me. On the box it said Pantheon, WHERE THE GODS ARE SETTLED. I shook my head in disbelief. 'Do you want to see it out of the box?', 'No, it's fine.', 'It'll only take a minute.' I sighed and told him to knock himself out. The thing was gigantic. My old case would literally fit inside the new one. I nodded as though I was impressed, he put it back in the box, I paid and made a sharp exit.
I got home. I unpacked the residence for gods and began to build the PC. Again. Once I had it all together, I plugged it in, held my breath and pressed the power button. Nothing. Again. I looked inside. There were lights on and stuff. I turned it off and went over everything. I turned it on. Nothing. I was overcome with despair. Why?! How can I be so bad a this?! What have I done wrong?! I checked everything! I thought back to going to the manufacturer's website on my phone and seeing the name of my processor on the list of accepted CPUs for this motherboard. I opened my laptop to double check. I found the chip on the list but at the far right of the table, in a section that I didn't see on my phone, it said 'with updated BIOS'. Again, my head found my hands. Again, I held back the tears. I walked through to the living room. My long-suffering girlfriend asked what was wrong. With a trembling bottom lip, I explained. 'Just send it back.' she said. I hadn't thought of that. I could send it back and order a replacement. I asked Google what I should get. I found the recommended board on the manufacturer's website and the CPU was there. I showed my girlfriend just to make sure it wasn't a mirage. I ordered it and arranged to return the other one. A couple of days later I got my new board.
I had been speaking to a guy at work about this. He told me that he had just readied his computer for Battlefield 3. He had bought the same CPU as me and everything. He told me that it was easy. He didn't have to reinstall Windows 7, it just sorted itself out. Excellent. I took him at his word. When my new board arrived I didn't bother backing anything up. I started disassembling the PC again. It took a lot of force to get the cooler off. With a jerk I pulled it free. Despite being clamped down, the CPU came with it. Shit, I thought. That can't be good. I tentatively turned over the cooler to inspect the chip. I had bent a pin. I had to laugh. It was one of those laughs that you hear from people on the edge. Nervous and with no hint of actually finding anything funny. I put everything down and left the room. After half an hour of shooting people in the face on the Xbox, I decided to have another look at my disaster. I got a pair of tweezers and very carefully coaxed the pin back into position. When I had straightened it, I locked it into the motherboard and hoped for the best. I built up the PC again. I only had one minor setback. My new board wouldn't take my old school DVD ROM drive. I went out to my local PC shop again. I asked for one. None in stock. Jesus. I began to wonder how that place had managed to stay open considering they never seemed to actually stock any PC components. I ordered one off of Amazon thinking that it wasn't urgent. People pretty much download everything these days anyway. I got home and turned on the PC sans DVD ROM drive. It started, fans and all. I was so relieved. It began to boot up and told me Windows would have to run a repair. I figured that it would probably install what it needed for the new hardware and I'd be on my way. Sadly, Windows informed me that it could not repair the machine. I tried again. Failure. Again. Nothing. I'd have to do a fresh install of Windows. Then it dawned on me. I didn't have a fucking DVD ROM drive. Mercifully, a friend had an external USB drive I could use so I managed to get Windows installed. I got everything back the way I wanted and then realised that I had lost my Witcher saves again. Fuck that game. Seriously.
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